Research

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Publications

Levine, D. K. [2026]: "Behavioral Mechanism Design as a Benchmark for Experimental Studies," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, forthcoming.

Scaramozzino, F., McKay, R., & Furl, N. (in press). Signal discrimination detection in the psychotic phenotype: Increased sensory precision and reduced decision threshold associated with psychotic-like experiences. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. doi:10.1080/13546805.2025.2587020.

Mede, N.G., Cologna, V., Berger, S. et al. (in press). Public communication about science in 68 countries: Global evidence on how people encounter and engage with information about science. Science Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547025137

Ritzberger, K., Weibull, W. J., Wikman, P. A note on asymptotic stability and game blocks. Economic Letters 264 (2026). https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/economics-letters

Levine, D. K., C. Martinelli and N. Stoelinga [2026]: "Vote or Fight?" Economic Journal, forthcoming.

Levine, D. K., Modica, S. and Rustichini,A. [2026]: Cooperating Through Leaders. Economic Journal.

PrologMCP: A Standardized Prolog Tool Interface for LLM Agents, A Mensfelt, A Prabhakaran, A Haret, V Trencsenyi, K Stathis, Joint Workshop on Statistics and Knowledge Integration for Logic, Learning, Ethical Decisions, and LLMs, 18 July 2026, Lisbon, arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.14935, 2026.

Towards a common framework for autoformalization, A Mensfelt, DT Cucala, S Franco, A Koutsoukou-Argyraki, V Trencsenyi, K Stathis. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 40 (48), 40971, 2026.

Towards logically sound natural language reasoning with logic-enhanced language model agents. A Mensfelt, K Stathis, V Trencsenyi. 2025 IEEE 37th International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI), 2025.

Approximating human strategic reasoning with LLM-enhanced recursive reasoners leveraging multi-agent hypergames. V Trencsenyi, A Mensfelt, K Stathis. International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems and Agent-Based Simulation, 15-27, 2025.

Generative agents for multi-agent autoformalization of interaction scenarios. A Mensfelt, K Stathis, V Trencsenyi. ECAI 2025, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications (IOS Press). doi:10.3233/FAIA251256, 2025.

Gervais, W., McKay, R. T., Brown-Iannusszi, J., Ross, R. M., Pennycook, G., Jong, J. & Lanman, J. (2025). Reply to Quillien: Intuitive preferences and interpretive humility in intentionality judgments. PNAS, 122(38), e2518353122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2518353122

Wildman, W. J., Ross, R. M., McKay, R. T., Sosis, R., Watts, J., Shaver, J., Price, M. E., Cristofori, I. & Hoogeveen, S. (2026). Uncoordinated, contradictory, yet cumulatively effective: How four critiques of the Humanities Study of Religion inflict collateral damage on Scientific Study of Religion. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2026.2630498

Pongou, R., & Sidie, G. J. (2026). Bayesian fairness: Reward rule and disappointment under incomplete information. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, forthcoming. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mic.20250372&&from=f

Creignou, N., Haret, A., Papini, O., & Woltran, S. (2026). Representation Results for Belief Update in Closed Fragments of  Propositional Logic. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 85. https://doi.org/10.1613/jair.1.20040

Bauer, R., Haret, A. (2026). Sharing is Caring: A Probabilistic Model of Deliberation as Selective Evidence Disclosure. LOFT 2026.

Mensfelt, A., Prabhakaran, A., Haret, A., Trencsényi, V., Stathis, K. (2026). PrologMCP: A Standardized Prolog Tool Interface for LLM Agents. Joint Workshop on Statistics and Knowledge Integration for Logic, Learning, Ethical Decisions, and LLMs (SKILLED-LLMs 2026).

Trencsenyi, V., Mensfelt, A., & Stathis, K. (2025). The influence of human-inspired Agentic Sophistication in LLM-driven Strategic Reasoners. [Accepted to ECAI2025, preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09396]. https://ebooks.iospress.nl/volumearticle/75904

Trencsenyi, V., Hypergame Rationalisability: Solving Agent Misalignment in Strategic Play. [Accepted at ICAISC2026, preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11942

Ritznerger, K., J. W. Weibull, and P. Wikman (2025): "Solid Outcomes in Finite Games", Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 224, 2025, 105977, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jet.2025.105977

Levine, D.K. [2025]: "The Evolution of Resilience", Journal of Economic Theory, 230 Block.

Cologna, V., Meiler, S., Kropf, C.M. et al. (2025). Extreme weather event attribution predicts climate policy support across the world. Nat. Clim. Chang., 15, 725-735. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02372-4

Shaver, J.H., Sosis, R., Ross, R. M., Watts,J., Price, M., Wildman, W.J., Hoogeveen, S., McKay, R. T. & Cristofori, I. (2025). Religion's Hilbert problems, ten years later: Progress, pitfalls, and new horizons. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 15(1), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2025.2464354

Mede, N. G., Cologna, V., Berger, S. et al. (2025). Perceptions of science, science communication, and climate change attitudes in 68 countries - the TISP dataset. Scientific Data, 12, 114. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-04100-7

Cologna, V., Mede, N. G., Berger, S., et al. (2025). Trust in scientists and their rolein society across 68 countries. Nature Human Behaviour.  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02090-5

Komosinski, M., Mensfelt, A. 2025. Enhancing Quality-Diversity Optimization Through Domain-Specific Dissimilarity as Crowding Distance. Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, NEW York, NY, USA. 898-906. https://doi.org/10.1145/3712256.3726459

Lloyd, A., McKay R. & Furl, N. (2025). Stochastic decisions support optimal foraging of volatile environments, and are disrupted by anxiety. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01256-y

McKay, R. (2025): 'God, Golf, and the Statistical Brain', International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. doi: 10.1080/10508619.2025.2492914.

Gervais, W.M., McKay, R., Brown-Iannuzzi, J.L., Ross, R.M., Pennycook, G., Jong, J. and Lanman, J.A. (2025). 'Belief in belief: Even atheists in secular countries show intuitive preferences favoring religious belief' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(13). doi:10.1073/pnas.2404720122.

Bagga, P., Paoletti, N. & Stathis, K. (2025). 'Adaptive strategy templates using deep reinforcement learning for multi-issue bilateral negotiation', Neurocomputing, 623, article no: 129381.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2025.129381.

Trencsenyi, V., Mensfelt, A., & Stathis K. (2025). The influence of human-inspired Agentic Sophistication in LLM-driven Strategic Reasoners. [Accepted to ECAI2025, preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09396]

J. I., R. Dutta and D. K. Levine [2025], 233: "Leaders and Social
Norms: On the Emergence of Consensus or Conflict," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

McKay, R., Hall, L., Strandberg, T., Vasilichi, A., Gall, A. & Johansson, P. (2025). 'I Once Was Blind': Experimental manipulation of religious attitudes via choice blindness. Religion, Brain & Behavior.

Scaramozzino, F., McKay, R. & Furl, N. (2025). Posterior parietal cortex modulates perceptual decisions depending on psychotic phenotype. Neuropsychologia.

Tappin, B. M. & McKa, R. T. (2025). Estimating the casual effects of cognitive effort and policy information on party cue influence. Political Psychology. 

Levine, D. K. and C. Martinelli [2024], 65: 1607-1624: "Razor-Thin Mass Elections with High Turnout," International Economic Review.

van de Wouw, D., McKay, R. & Furl, N. (2024). Biased expectations about future choice options predict sequential economic decisions. Communications Psychology, 2, 119. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00172-8

Wildman, W.J., Ross, R.M., McKay, R.T., Watts, J., Hoogeveen, S., Sosis, R., ... Shaver, J. (2024). Religion Brain Behavior adopts stricter transparency standards. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 14(4), 341-344. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2024.2424031

McKay, R., Levy, N., van Elk, M. & Ross, R. M. (in press). From drowning to debunking: The Cognitive Science Science of Religion's role in unravelling religious beliefs. Religion, Brain & Behavior. 

Röseler, L... McKay, R., et al (2024).The Open Anchoring Quest dataset: Anchored estimates from 96 studies on anchoring effects. Journal of Open Psychology Data, 12(8),- 1-3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/jopd.92

McKay, R., Price, M., Ross, R.M., Watts, J., Cristofori, I., Hoogeveen, S., ... Wildman, W. (2024).Replacing the irreplaceable. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 14(2), 111-118. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2024.2356389

Furl, N., Coltheart, M., & McKay, R. (2024). The paradox of delusions: Are deluded individuals resistant to evidence? In E. Sullivan-Bissett (Ed.) Belief, Imagination, and Delusion (pp240-264) Oxford University Press.

Shahid, N.S., Mensfelt, A. & Stathis, K. (2024). 'Explaining Teleo-reactive Strategic Behaviour', In ICTAI - International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence. IEEE, 28-30 October. IEE Computer Society. pp.905-912. doi:10.1109/ICTAI62512.2024.00131.

Mensfelt, A., Stathis, K., & Trencsenyi, V. (2024). 'Autoformalization of Game Descriptions using Large Language Models', In First International Workshop on Next-Generation Language Models for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.12300

Mandler, M. (2024) 'The pure advantage of risk in production', European Economic Review, article no: 104717. doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104717.

Mandler, M. (2024) 'Increasing returns and the efficient acquisition of information', Journal of Economic Theory, 220, article no: 105815. doi.org/10.1016/j.jet.2024.105815.

Komosinski, M. and Mensfelt, A. (2024) 'Distance-Targeting Mutation Operator for Evolutionary Design of 3D Structures', In Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. GECCO, July 14–18, 2024, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages https://doi.org/10.1145/3638529.3654060.

Neary, P., Gerke, S., Gutin, G., Hwang, S., (2024). Public goods in networks with constraints on sharing. Journal of Economic Theory. Public goods in networks with constraints on sharing

Neary P., Lynham, J., (2024). Tiebout sorting in online communities. The annals of Regional Science. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00168-024-01293-y.pdf

Neary, P., Gutin, G., Yeo, A., (2024). Finding all stable matchings with assignment constraints. Games and Economic Behavior. Finding all stable matchings with assignment constraints

Neary, P., Gutin, G., Karapetyan, D., Vickery, A., Yeo, A., (2024). Speeding up deferred acceptance. Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design, accepted and subject to minor revisions. https://www.arxiv.org/pdf/2409.06865 

Bentall, R. P., Alsuhibani, A., Bennett, K., Braddick, M., Butter, S., Hyland, P., McBride, O., McKay, R., Shevlin, M., Stocks, T. V. A., & Hartman, T. K. (2024) 'The emotional consequences of novel political identities: Brexit and mental health in the United Kingdom', Political Psychology, 45, pp. 133–149. doi.org/10.1111/pops.12923.

Gibson-Miller, J., Zavlis, O., Hartman, T. K., Bennett, K.M., Butter, S., Levita, L., Martinez, Ap. P.,  Mason, L., McBride, O., McKay, R., Murphy, J., Shevlin, M.,  Stocks, T. V. A., & Bentall, R. P. (2024) 'A network approach to understanding social distancing behaviour during the first UK lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic', Psychology & Health, 39(1), pp. 109-127. doi:10.1080/08870446.2022.2057497.

Bagga P. and Stathis, K. (2023) 'Towards Explainable Strategy Templates using NLP Transformers', XAIFIN2023: Workshop on Explainable AI in Finance. ACM, 27 November. New York: ICAIF. doi/10.48550/arXiv.2311.14061.

Shahid, N.S., O'Keeffe, D., Stathis, K. (2023) 'A Knowledge Representation Framework for Evolutionary Simulations with Cognitive Agents', ICTAI - International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence. IEEE, 6-8 November. Atlanta: IEEE Computer Society. pp. 361–368. doi:10.1109/ICTAI59109.2023.00059.

McKay, R. T., Gervais, W., Davis, C. J. (2023) '‘So Help Me God’? Does oath swearing in courtroom scenarios impact trial outcomes?', British Journal of Psychology, 114, pp. 991–1014. doi:10.1111/bjop.12651.

Levine, D. K., Modica, S. and Sun,J. (2023) 'Twin Peaks: Expressive Externality in Group Participation', Journal of Public Economic Theory, 25(5), pp. 897-929. doi:10.1111/jpet.12654.

Levine, D. K., Mattozzi,A. and Modica, S. (2024). 'The Tripartite Auction Folk Theorem', European Economic Review, 162.

Corrao, R., Fudenberg,D. and Levine,D. K. (2024). 'On Concave Functions over Lotteries', Journal of Mathematical Economics, 110.

Lloyd-Cox, J., Pickering, A. D., Beaty, R. E., & Bhattacharya, J. (2023) 'Toward greater computational modeling in neurocognitive creativity research', Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/aca0000627.

Working Papers

Fudenberg, D. and D. K. Levine [2026]: "Taking the Easy Way Out: AI, Self-Control, and Human Capital Formation," Royal Holloway, University of London.

Levine, D. K. [2026]: Artificial Intelligence vs Humans: a field report from an economist (book) Levine, D. K. [2026]: "The Largesse Design Problem," Royal Holloway, University of London.

Levine, D. K., A. Mattozzi and S. Modica [2026]: Social Mechanisms and Political Economy: When Lobbyists Succeed, Pollsters Fail and Populists Win (book) Levine, D. K., A. Mattozzi and S. Modica [2026]: "Labor Associations: The Blue Wall of Silence," Royal Holloway, University of London.

Sidie, G. J., (2026). Ex-Post Bilateral Fairness: Foundations for Incentives and Equilibrium in Bayesian Economies. 

Hunter, A., McKay, R., Tappin, B. & Efferson, C. (2025). Socially motivated reasoning: How the partisanship of one's peers affects evaluations of policy-related evidence. Journal of Politics.

Cheso, D., Bjornsdottir, R.T., McKay, R., & Zagefka, H. (2025). The Brief Transprejudice Scale: Development and validation. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations.

Gaia Giampietro, G., Bjornsdottir, T., McKay R., Mickes, L. & Furl, N. (2025). Caricatured faces in eyewitness lineup tests hurt identification performance. Memory & Cognition. 

Ambrus, E., Hartig, B., Johansson, P. & McKay. R. (2025). A blind spot for flattery: People are more receptive to enhancing than diminishing manipulations of their personal qualities. 

Hartig, B., McKay, R. & van der Leer, L. (2025). Pleasant surprises and rude awakenings: Solving the betrayal aversion puzzle.

Hoogeveen, S., et al. (2025). Does she still love and feel hungry? Afterlife continuity beliefs and religion across 24 countries. Cognition.

Furl, N., van de Wouw, D. S., Bogowicz, N., Kanda, S., Akhtar, R. & McKay, R. T. (2025). Humans form biased beliefs from samples of evidence in forensic scenarios. JEP: LMC. 

Levine, D. K. [2026]: "Predicting Cooperation with Trembles," Royal Holloway, University of London.

Neary, P., Hwang, S., Newton, J., Sawa, R. (2025). Pairwise imitation and tournaments graphs. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5161849

Trencsenyi, V., Mensfelt, A., Stathis, K. (2025). Hypergames: Modelling Misaligned Perceptions and Nested Beliefs for Multi-agent Systems, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Neary, P., Gutin, G., Yeo, A. (2025). Note on the size of a stable matching. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.24637

Levine, D. K. [2024]: "Method of Moments and Maximum Likelihood in the Laboratory," Royal Holloway, University of London.

Mandler. M. (2024) The fitness benefit of risky alleles. Royal Holloway College, University of London.

Mandler, M. (2024) Decision-making for extreme outcomes. Royal Holloway College, University of London.

Levine, D. K. (2023) Phoenix From the Ashes: The Evolution of Mechanism Designers. Royal Holloway, University of London. Available at: dklevine.com.

Levine, D. K. (2023) True Myths. Royal Holloway, University of London. Available at: dklevine.com.

Corrao, R., Fudenberg, D. and Levine,D. K. (2023) Adversarial forecasters, surprises and randomization. Royal Holloway, University of London. Available at: economics.mit.edu.

Levine, D. K. and Ohanian,L. (2023) When is Appeasement a Sign of Strength?. Royal Holloway, University of London. Available at: dklevine.com.

Levine, D. K. (2023) Efficiently Breaking the Folk Theorem by Reliably Communicating Long Term Commitments. Royal Holloway, University of London. Available at: repec.org.

Neary, P., Deligkas, A., Eiben, E., Gutin, G., Yeo, A. (2023) Some coordination problems are harder than others. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.03195

Neary, P. Lim, W., Sobel, J. (2023). Getting permission: experimental evidence. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5028171