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Social Cognition in Naturalistic Groups

Traditional psychology experiments examine (social) decisions in relatively artificial and standardized situations. We aim to better understand collective dynamics in the real world by studying cognitive decision-making processes in groups that interact in natural and complex environments. To achieve this, we primarily combine immersive computer games and field research with statistical modeling.

Image from Wu et al., 2925, Nature Communications: a) Map "Collective Foraging Task" with mapped movements and legend, b) Screenshot from a player's view within the Minecraft environment
From Wu et al., 2025, Nature Communications, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence und ©2025 Mojang AB; TM Microsoft Corporation
Simulations showing the influence of individual strategies on collective performance in a social reinforcement-learning model with three conditions: no learning, low conformity and high conformity social learning
From Tump et al., 2024, Perspectives on Psychological Science, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Publications

  • Schakowski, A., Deffner, D., Kortet, R., Niemelä, P. T., Kavelaars, M. M., Monk, C. T., ... & Kurvers, R. H. (2025). Socioecology drives adaptive social foraging dynamics in the wild. OSF preprints: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qbvp9_v1
  • Wu, C.M., Deffner, D., Kahl, B., Meder, B., Ho, M.H. & Kurvers, R.H.J.M. (2025). Visual-spatial dynamics drive adaptive social learning in immersive environments. Nature Communications, 16(1), 3539.
  • Deffner, D., Mezey, D., Kahl, B., Schakowski, A., Romanczuk, P., Wu, C.M. & Kurvers, R.H.J.M. (2024). Collective incentives reduce over-exploitation of social information in unconstrained human groups. Nature Communications, 15(1), 2683.
  • Tump, A. N., Deffner, D., Pleskac, T.J., Romanczuk, P., & Kurvers, R.H.J.M. (2024). A cognitive computational approach to social and collective decision-making. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 19(2), 538-551
    Mezey, D., Deffner, D., Kurvers, R.H.J.M. & Romanczuk, P. (2024). Visual social information use in collective foraging. PLOS Computational Biology, 20(5), e1012087.