Publications | Alberto Acerbi

Publications

(2025). Tecnopanico. Il Mulino.

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(2025). Weak individual preferences stabilize culture. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 122 (8), e2412380122.

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(2025). Positive sentiment and expertise predict the diffusion of archaeological content on social media. In Scientific Reports, 15, 2031.

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(2024). People believe misinformation is a threat because they assume others are gullible. In New Media & Society, 26, 11.

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(2023). Machine Culture. In Nature Human Behaviour, 7 (11).

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(2023). Large language models show human-like content biases in transmission chain experiment. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 120 (44), e2313790120.

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(2023). Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election. In Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10, 573.

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(2023). Self-Interest, prosociality, and the moral cognition of markets: A comparative analysis of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations. In Rationality and Society, 35 (4).

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(2023). Sentiment analysis of the Twitter response to Netflix's Our Planet documentary. In Conservation Biology, e14060.

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(2023). Digital Culture. In Tehrani, J. et al. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution, Oxford University Press, pp. C41S1 - C41S10.

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(2023). Misinformation on Misinformation: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges. In Social Media + Society, 9 (1).

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(2022). The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance. In Scientific Reports, 12.

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(2022). The self-control vs. self-indulgence dilemma. A culturomic analysis of 20th century trends. In Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 101.

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(2022). Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R. New York, Routledge.

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(2022). From storytelling to Facebook. Content biases when retelling or sharing a story. In Human Nature, 33 (2).

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(2022). Research note: Fighting misinformation or fighting for information?. In Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 1 (3).

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(2021). Culture without copying or selection. In Evolutionary Human Sciences, e50 (3), 1 – 17.

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(2021). Review of Joseph Henrich, The Weirdest People in the World. In Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 5 (1).

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(2021). Social information use and social information waste. In Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B, 376, 20200052.

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(2021). Modelling cultural systems and selective filters. In Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B, 376, 20200045.

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(2021). Beyond social learning. In Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B, 376, 20200050.

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(2020). Cultural Accumulation and Improvement in Online Fan Fiction. In Karsdorp, F. et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Humanities Research, CEUR-WS, pp. 2 - 11.

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(2020). The impact of the “World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates” list on scientific publications and media. In Journal for Nature Conservation, 54, 125794.

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(2019). Cultural evolution in the digital age. Oxford University Press.

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(2019). Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics. In Evolutionary Human Sciences, 1, e11.

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(2019). Why people die in novels: Testing the ordeal simulation hypothesis. In Palgrave Communications, 5, 62.

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(2019). Cognitive attraction and online misinformation. In Palgrave Communications, 5, 15.

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(2019). Copy-the-majority of instances or individuals? Two approaches to the majority and their consequences for conformist decision-making. In PLOS ONE, 14(1), e0210748.

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(2018). imsdb movie scripts (dataset). In OSF.

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(2018). Did Einstein really say that? Testing content versus context in the cultural selection of quotations. In Journal of Cognition and Culture, 18 (3-4), 293-311.

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(2018). Reply to ‘Sigmoidal Acquisition Curves are Good Indicators of Conformist Transmission’. In Scientific Reports, 8, 14016.

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(2018). Folk-economic beliefs as “evidential fiction”: Putting the economic public discourse back on track. In Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 41, e159.

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(2017). Role of Neutral evolution in word turnover during centuries of English word popularity. In Advances in Complex Systems, 20 (6-7), 1750012.

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(2017). Cultural complexity and demography: the case of folktales. In Evolution and Human Behavior, 38 (4), 474-480.

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(2017). Birth of the cool: a two-centuries decline in emotional expression in Anglophone fiction. In Cognition and Emotion, 31 (8), 1663-1675.

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(2017). Review of Tim Lewens, Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges. In Philosophy of Science, 84 (1).

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(2016). A cultural evolution approach to digital media. In Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 636.

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(2016). A reappreciation of “conformity”. In Animal Behaviour, 122, e5-e10.

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(2016). Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures. In Scientific Reports, 6, 36086.

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(2016). Social learning solves the problem of narrow-peaked search landscapes: experimental evidence in humans. In Royal Society Open Science, 3(9), 160215.

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(2016). The role of redundant information in cultural transmission and cultural stabilization. In Journal of Comparative Psychology, 130(1), 62-70.

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(2015). Emergence of Leadership in a Group of Autonomous Robots. In PLOS ONE, 10(9), e0137234.

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(2015). If we are all cultural Darwinians what’s the fuss about? Clarifying recent disagreements in the field of cultural evolution. In Biology & Philosophy, 30(4), 481-503.

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(2014). Dog Movies Stars and Dog Breed Popularity: A Case Study in Media Influence on Choice. In PLOS ONE, 9(9), e106565.

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(2014). Biases in cultural transmission shape the turnover of popular traits. In Evolution and Human Behavior, 35(3), 228 – 236.

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(2014). Books average previous decade of economic misery. In PLOS ONE, 9(1), e83147.

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(2014). Regulatory traits: Cultural Influences on Cultural Evolution. In Cagnoni, S. et al. (Eds.), Evolution, Complexity, and Artificial Life, Springer, pp. 135 – 147.

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(2013). Robustness of emotion extraction from 20th century English books. In IEEE BigData 2013 Proceedings, pp. 1 – 8.

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(2013). Fashion vs. Function in Cultural Evolution: The Case of Dog Breed Popularity. In PLOS ONE, 8(9), e74770.

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(2013). The expression of emotions in 20th century books. In PLOS ONE, 8(3), e59030.

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(2012). Old and Young Individuals’ Role in Cultural Change. In Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulations, 15 (4).

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(2012). Emergence of Leadership in a Group of Autonomous Robots. In Proceedings of the Post-Graduate Conference on Robotics and Development of Cognition, pp. 36 – 39.

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(2012). Behavioral constraints and the evolution of faithful social learning. In Current Zoology, 58 (2), pp. 307 – 318.

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(2012). The Logic of Fashion Cycles. In PLOS ONE, 7(3), e32541.

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(2012). Regulatory Traits in Cultural Evolution. In Cagnoni, S. et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Italian Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation, University of Parma, pp. 1 – 9.

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(2011). Modeling imitation and emulation in constrained search spaces. In Learning & Behavior, 39 (2), pp. 104 – 114.

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(2011). Predation and the phasing of sleep: an evolutionary individual-based model. In Animal Behaviour, 81 (4), pp. 801 – 811.

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(2010). The Sometimes Evitable Route to Conservatism and Persuasiveness. A Reply to Xue and Costopoulos. In Current Anthropology, 51 (2), pp. 269 – 270.

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(2009). Umano troppo umano. Riflessioni sull’opposizione natura/cultura in antropologia. Firenze, SEID.

(2009). Cultural evolution and individual development of openness and conservatism. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 106 (45), pp. 18931 – 18935.

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(2009). Orienting learning by exploiting sociality: an evolutionary robotics simulations. In IJCNN 2009 Conference Proceedings, Piscataway, NJ, IEEE Press, pp. 20 – 27.

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(2009). Naturalmente differenti. Spiegazioni naturalistiche e variabilità culturale. In Lutri A. et al. (Eds.), Umano troppo umano. Riflessioni sull’opposizione natura/cultura in antropologia, Firenze, SEID, pp. 1 – 1.

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(2009). Modelli evoluzionistici della cultura. In Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 0, pp. 2 – 19.

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(2008). Trasmissione sociale di comportamenti in una popolazione di robot autonomi. In Sistemi Intelligenti, 20 (2), pp. 259 – 247.

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(2008). Social learning in embodied agents. In Connection Science, 20 (2-3), pp. 69 – 72.

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(2008). To sleep or not to sleep: the ecology of sleep in artificial organisms. In BMC Ecology, 6 (10), pp. 1 – 12.

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(2008). Le trasmissioni della cultura. In Lutri A. (Ed.), Modelli della mente e processi di pensiero: il dibattito antropologico contemporaneo, Catania, ED.IT, pp. 139 – 157.

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(2007). La natura della cultura. Modelli simulativi dell'apprendimento sociale. PhD Thesis.

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(2007). The evolution of pain. In Almeida e Costa, F. et al. (Eds.), Advances in Artificial Life. Proceedings of ECAL 2007, Berlin, Springer, 816 – 824.

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(2007). Social Facilitation on the Development of Foraging Behaviors in a Population of Autonomous Robots. In Almeida e Costa, F. et al. (Eds.), Advances in Artificial Life. Proceedings of ECAL 2007, Berlin, Springer, pp. 625 – 634.

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(2007). Social Learning and Cultural Evolution in Embodied and Situated Agents. In Proceedings of the First IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life, IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, pp. 333 – 340.

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(2007). Adaptation and Social Facilitation in a Population of Autonomous Robots. In Berthouze, L. et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics, Lund, LUCS, pp. 85 – 91.

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(2006). Cultural transmission between and within generations. In Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulations, 9 (1).

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(2006). Trasmissibilità culturale di tratti discreti e continui. In Greco A. et al. (Eds.), Scienze cognitive e robotica: Atti del Terzo Convegno Nazionale AISC, Genova, Erga Edizioni, pp. 159 – 164.

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(2006). Antropologia cognitiva e modularità della mente: il caso della folkbiology. In Ferretti F., Marraffa M. (Eds.), L’architettura della mente: saggi sulla modularità, Catanzaro, Abramo Editore, pp. 189 – 212.

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(2005). Antropologia cognitiva: uno stato dell'arte. In Sistemi Intelligenti, 17 (3), pp. 469 – 48.

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(2005). La mente nella cultura: cognizione ed analisi dei fatti culturali. In XXIV Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia dell’Università di Siena, pp. 207 – 230.

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(2005). Esiste una folkanthropology? E, se esiste, a chi interessa?. In Solinas P. G. (Ed.) Memorie, Relazioni, Senso Comune, Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze Sociali, Università di Siena, pp. 85 – 94.

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