Thomas F. Müller

Thomas F. Müller

Research Scientist

Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Biography

My main research interests lie in the experimental study of social interaction and communication, and in the cultural transmission of these behaviors and their outcomes. I make use of artificial language games to study the emergence and evolution of communication, and also study the interactions of humans in constrained, large-scale online environments to learn more about the change and organization of cultural traits. At the Center for Humans and Machines at the MPIB, I am now studying the impact of Artificial Intelligence on these cultural processes.

Interests
  • Social Interaction
  • Language Evolution
  • Cultural Evolution
  • Impact of AI on Cultural Evolution
Education

  • Dr. phil. in Psychology (summa cum laude), 2021

    Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute SHH, Jena

  • M.Sc. in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, 2016

    Friedrich Schiller University Jena

  • B.Sc. in Psychology, 2014

    Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Publications

Levin Brinkmann, Fabian Baumann, Jean-François Bonnefon, Maxime Derex, Thomas F. Müller, Anne-Marie Nussberger, Agnieska Czaplicka, Alberto Acerbi, Thomas L. Griffiths, Joseph Henrich, Joel Z. Leibo, Richard McElreath, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Jonathan Stray, Iyad Rahwan (2023). Machine Culture. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 1855-1868.

Cite DOI

Thomas F. Müller, Levin Brinkmann, James Winters, Niccolò Pescetelli (2023). Machine Impostors Can Avoid Human Detection and Interrupt the Formation of Stable Conventions by Imitating Past Interactions: A Minimal Turing Test. Cognitive Science, 47(4), e13288.

Cite DOI

Levin Brinkmann, Deniz Gezerli, Kira von Kleist, Thomas F. Müller, Iyad Rahwan, Niccolò Pescetelli (2022). Hybrid Social Learning in Human-Algorithm Cultural Transmission. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 380(2227), 20200426.

Cite DOI

Olivier Morin, Thomas F. Müller, James Winters, Tiffany Morisseau (2022). Cultural Evolution of Precise and Agreed‐Upon Semantic Conventions in a Multiplayer Gaming App. Cognitive Science, 46(2), e13113.

Cite DOI

Thomas F. Müller, James Winters, Tiffany Morisseau, Ira Noveck, Olivier Morin (2021). Colour terms: native language semantic structure and artificial language structure formation in a large-scale online smartphone application. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 33(4), 357-378.

Cite DOI

Thomas F. Müller (2021). The emergence and organization of communicative signals through interaction. Doctoral Dissertation.

Cite DOI

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