Michael Muthukrishna

4.2k total citations · 3 hit papers
50 papers, 2.1k citations indexed

About

Michael Muthukrishna is a scholar working on Sociology and Political Science, Social Psychology and Cultural Studies. According to data from OpenAlex, Michael Muthukrishna has authored 50 papers receiving a total of 2.1k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 25 papers in Sociology and Political Science, 21 papers in Social Psychology and 10 papers in Cultural Studies. Recurrent topics in Michael Muthukrishna's work include Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (18 papers), Cultural Differences and Values (17 papers) and Language and cultural evolution (10 papers). Michael Muthukrishna is often cited by papers focused on Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (18 papers), Cultural Differences and Values (17 papers) and Language and cultural evolution (10 papers). Michael Muthukrishna collaborates with scholars based in United Kingdom, Canada and United States. Michael Muthukrishna's co-authors include Joseph Henrich, Adrian V. Bell, Thomas J. H. Morgan, Edward Slingerland, Mark Schaller, Susanne Shultz, Kieran C. R. Fox, Maciej Chudek, Michael Doebeli and Patrick François and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología.

In The Last Decade

Michael Muthukrishna

44 papers receiving 2.0k citations

Hit Papers

align trajectories

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

Beyond Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) Psychology: Measuring and Mapping Scales of Cultural and Psychological Distance

2020 371 citations Michael Muthukrishna, Joseph Henrich et al. profile →
A problem in theory

2019 334 citations Michael Muthukrishna, Joseph Henrich Nature Human Behaviour profile →
The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation

2020 218 citations Joseph Henrich, Michael Muthukrishna Annual Review of Psychology profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name	h						Papers	Cites
Michael Muthukrishna United Kingdom	19	953	718	370	311	290	50	2.1k
Thomas J. H. Morgan United States	17	826 0.9×	595 0.8×	262 0.7×	572 1.8×	192 0.7×	43	1.9k
Paul E. Smaldino United States	24	1.1k 1.1×	396 0.6×	366 1.0×	221 0.7×	170 0.6×	78	2.2k
Charles Efferson Switzerland	21	1.3k 1.4×	631 0.9×	410 1.1×	416 1.3×	311 1.1×	52	2.1k
Tatsuya Kameda Japan	26	1.0k 1.1×	751 1.0×	304 0.8×	195 0.6×	346 1.2×	82	2.4k
Maciej Chudek Canada	10	746 0.8×	498 0.7×	239 0.6×	191 0.6×	233 0.8×	13	1.2k
Adrian V. Bell United States	13	801 0.8×	447 0.6×	313 0.8×	249 0.8×	137 0.5×	28	1.4k
Aiyana K. Willard United Kingdom	20	1.4k 1.4×	924 1.3×	293 0.8×	76 0.2×	489 1.7×	43	2.2k
Nicolas Baumard France	25	1.2k 1.3×	646 0.9×	565 1.5×	100 0.3×	617 2.1×	78	1.9k
Pontus Strimling Sweden	20	769 0.8×	412 0.6×	118 0.3×	283 0.9×	213 0.7×	77	1.4k
Edward Slingerland Canada	21	1.2k 1.3×	675 0.9×	354 1.0×	186 0.6×	428 1.5×	62	2.1k

Countries citing papers authored by Michael Muthukrishna

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Michael Muthukrishna's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Michael Muthukrishna with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Michael Muthukrishna more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Michael Muthukrishna

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Michael Muthukrishna. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Michael Muthukrishna. The network helps show where Michael Muthukrishna may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Michael Muthukrishna

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Michael Muthukrishna. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Michael Muthukrishna based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Michael Muthukrishna. Michael Muthukrishna is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

Sort: Min cites: Since: Top N: Style:

20 of 20 papers shown

Ellis, Erle C., Yadvinder Malhi, Hannah Ritchie, et al.. (2025). An aspirational approach to planetary futures. Nature. 642(8069). 889–899. 4 indexed citations

Abdellaoui, Abdel, Hilary C. Martin, Martin Kolk, et al.. (2025). Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences. Nature Human Behaviour. 9(5). 864–876. 3 indexed citations

Muthukrishna, Michael, et al.. (2025). AI Can Revolutionise Education but Technology Is Not Enough: Human Development Meets Cultural Evolution. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. 26(3). 482–492.

Lomas, Tim, Richard G. Cowden, Holli‐Anne Passmore, et al.. (2025). The ecology of subjective wellbeing: a global analysis of environmental factors associated with life evaluation. The Journal of Positive Psychology. 1–19.

Muthukrishna, Michael, et al.. (2024). Indirect reciprocity undermines indirect reciprocity destabilizing large-scale cooperation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 121(19). e2322072121–e2322072121. 4 indexed citations

Muthukrishna, Michael, et al.. (2024). Reply to Gross et al.: Indirect reciprocity undermines large-scale cooperation under realistic conditions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 121(27). e2410085121–e2410085121. 1 indexed citations

Antonakis, John, Roberta Dessí, Thomas Fischer, et al.. (2023). Theory in leadership and management. The Leadership Quarterly. 35(1). 101736–101736. 3 indexed citations

Muthukrishna, Michael, et al.. (2021). Paradox of diversity in the collective brain. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 377(1843). 20200316–20200316. 1 indexed citations

Spicer, Rachel, et al.. (2021). Cultural evolution of genetic heritability. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 45. e152–e152. 42 indexed citations

10.

Schaller, Mark & Michael Muthukrishna. (2021). Modeling cultural change: Computational models of interpersonal influence dynamics can yield new insights about how cultures change, which cultures change more rapidly than others, and why.. American Psychologist. 76(6). 1027–1038. 10 indexed citations

11.

Bendixen, Theiss, Jennifer A. Mather, & Michael Muthukrishna. (2021). The Evolution of Big Brains. 6(1).

12.

Henrich, Joseph & Michael Muthukrishna. (2020). The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation. Annual Review of Psychology. 72(1). 207–240. 218 indexed citations breakdown →

13.

White, Cindel & Michael Muthukrishna. (2020). Religion and Cultural Distance. OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints). 1 indexed citations

14.

Slingerland, Edward, Quentin D. Atkinson, Carol R. Ember, et al.. (2020). Coding culture: challenges and recommendations for comparative cultural databases. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2. e29–e29. 27 indexed citations

15.

Muthukrishna, Michael & Joseph Henrich. (2019). A problem in theory. Nature Human Behaviour. 3(3). 221–229. 334 indexed citations breakdown →

16.

Muthukrishna, Michael, et al.. (2019). Archetypes are a Poor Primitive for a Theory of Mental Representations. Psychological Inquiry. 30(2). 87–92. 3 indexed citations

17.

Muthukrishna, Michael, Joseph Henrich, Wataru Toyokawa, et al.. (2018). Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of Genuine Overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations. PLoS ONE. 13(8). e0202288–e0202288. 24 indexed citations

18.

Muthukrishna, Michael, Michael Doebeli, Maciej Chudek, & Joseph Henrich. (2018). The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How culture drives brain expansion, sociality, and life history. PLoS Computational Biology. 14(11). e1006504–e1006504. 76 indexed citations

19.

Fox, Kieran C. R., Michael Muthukrishna, & Susanne Shultz. (2017). The social and cultural roots of whale and dolphin brains. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 1(11). 1699–1705. 79 indexed citations

20.

Wan, Stephen, Cécile Paris, Michael Muthukrishna, & Robert Dale. (2009). Designing a citation-sensitive research tool. 45–45. 8 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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