Journal Articles, Commentaries, and Book Chapters
(Listed by Date)
Johnson, Tim, and Nick Obradovich. (2025). Testing for completions that simulate altruism in early language models. NATURE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR 9, 1861–1870 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02258-7 [Peer-reviewed research]
Johnson, Tim, and Nick Obradovich. (2024). New methods for deprecating artificial intelligence systems will preserve history and facilitate research. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS 15, 10254 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-54758-1 [Peer-reviewed policy piece / commentary]
Johnson, Tim, and Nick Obradovich. (2024). Measuring an artificial intelligence language model's trust in humans using machine incentives. JOURNAL OF PHYSICS: COMPLEXITY 5 (1): 01500. doi: 10.1088/2632-072X/ad1c69. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Obradovich, Nick, Tim Johnson, and Martin Paulus. (2024). Managerial and Organizational Challenges in the Age of AI. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) PSYCHIATRY. 81 (3): 219–220. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.5247 [Peer-reviewed, research-focused opinion piece]
Johnson, Tim. (2023). Seeding the spatial prisoner’s dilemma with Ulam’s spiral. COMPLEXITY 2023 (1649440): 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/1649440. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim. (2022). Prime numbers and the evolution of cooperation, II: Advantages to cooperators using prime-number period lengths in a finite population constrained to prisoner’s dilemma strategies that alternate between periods of activity and inactivity. CHAOS, SOLITONS, & FRACTALS: X (100079). [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim. (2022). Prime numbers and the evolution of cooperation, I: A prisoner’s dilemma model that identifies prime numbers via invasions of cooperators. CHAOS, SOLITONS, & FRACTALS: X (100081). [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Gu, Yugi, Connie X. Mao, and Tim Johnson. (2022). Evidence supporting a cultural evolutionary theory of prosocial religions in contemporary workplace safety data. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 12: 5239. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09322-6 [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim, and Dalton Conley. (2021). Reply to Velu and Iyer: The promise and limits of “near-miss” pandemic-related research. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, USA (PNAS) 118 (40) e2112944118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2112944118. [Research-focused comment]
Johnson, Tim, and Oleg Smirnov (2021). Cooperators can invade an incumbent population of defectors when one-shot prisoner’s dilemmas occur multiple times within a generation. CHAOS, SOLITIONS, & FRACTALS: X 7 (100068): 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csfx.2021.100068 [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim, and Oleg Smirnov. (2021). Temporal assortment of cooperators in the spatial prisoner’s dilemma. COMMUNICATIONS BIOLOGY 4 (1283): 1-10. (Pre-print version on arXiv: 2011.14440v1 (q-bio.PE)) [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Conley, Dalton, and Tim Johnson. (2021). Past is future for the era of COVID-19 research in the social sciences. PROCEEDING OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, USA (PNAS) 118 (13): e2104155118. [Research-focused opinion piece]
Johnson, Tim, Christopher T. Dawes, James H. Fowler, and Oleg Smirnov. (2020). Slowing COVID-19 transmission as a social dilemma: Lessons for government officials from interdisciplinary research on cooperation. JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 3: doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.31.150 [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim, Christopher T. Dawes & Dalton Conley. (2020). How Does a Statistician Raise an Army? The Time When John W. Tukey, a Team of Luminaries, and a Statistics Graduate Student Repaired the Vietnam Selective Service Lotteries, THE AMERICAN STATISTICIAN 74 (2): 190-196. DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2019.1677267. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim, and Gregory B. Lewis. (2020). Inspecting the Merit System’s “Pivotal Idea”: Does Competitive Examination Increase the Qualifications and Quality of the U.S. Federal Service? REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 40: 202-221. Online First Edition: https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X18794808 [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim, and Dalton Conley. (2019). Civilian public sector employment as a long-run outcome of military conscription. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, USA (PNAS) 116 (43): 21456-21462. Early view: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908983116 [Peer-reviewed basic research]
[Please note that this article was a “contributed article,” which allowed us to choose our own peer reviewers and, for the purposes of full disclosure, please know that one of the reviewers and I overlapped during our graduate studies program. Also, please know that this article appeared previously as a circulated working paper: Johnson, Tim, and Dalton Conley. (2019). Military Service and Public Sector Employment: Birthdates Called in the Vietnam Draft Lotteries Appear Excessively in the Population of Civilian U.S. Federal Personnel Records. NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH WORKING PAPER SERIES, No. 25859. Cambridge, MA.]
Johnson, Tim, and Dalton Conley. (2019). Deaths of Despair: Lessons from the Vietnam Draft Lottery. MILBANK QUARTERLY. Online Early View: DOI: 10.1111/1468-0009.12423. [Research-focused opinion piece]
Johnson, Tim, and Oleg Smirnov. (2018). Inequality as information: Wealth homophily facilitates the evolution of cooperation. Scientific Reports 8: 11605. DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-30052-1 [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim, and Robert W. Walker. (2018). The Career Advancement of Military Veterans in Recent Cohorts of the U.S. Executive Branch. PUBLIC PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT 47: 382–397. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Johnson, Tim. (2018). Moral externalization is an implausible mechanism for cooperation, let alone “hypercooperation”. BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES 41: E106. doi:10.1017/S0140525X18000110. [Comment]
Sangick Jeon, Tim Johnson, and Amanda L. Robinson. (2017). Nationalism and Social Sanctioning Across Ethnic Lines: Experimental Evidence from the Kenya-Tanzania Border. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL POLITICAL SCIENCE 4: 1-20. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Han Il Chang, Christopher T. Dawes, and Tim Johnson. (2017). Political Inequality, Centralized Sanctioning Institutions, and the Maintenance of Public Goods. BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH. doi: 10.1111/boer.12140 [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson, Christopher T. Dawes, Matt McGue, and William G. Iacono. (2017). Numbers Assigned in the Vietnam-Era Selective Service Lotteries Influence the Military Service Decisions of Children Born to Draft-Eligible Men: A Research Note. ARMED FORCES & SOCIETY. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X17707197. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson. (2017). "The Preferential Hiring of Military Veterans in the United States." In Louis Hicks, Jose E. Coll, Eugenia L. Weiss (eds.), THE CIVILIAN LIVES OF U.S. VETERANS: ISSUES AND IDENTITIES. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. [Book chapter in an edited volume]
Jowei Chen and Tim Johnson. (2016). "Political Ideology in the Bureaucracy." In Ali Farazmand (ed.), GLOBAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, PUBLIC POLICY, AND GOVERNANCE. Basel, Switzerland: Springer International. [Encyclopedia entry]
Tim Johnson and Christopher T. Dawes. (2016). Do Parents' Life Experiences Affect the Political and Civic Participation of their Children? The Case of Draft-Induced Military Service. POLITICAL BEHAVIOR. doi:10.007/11109-016-9334-z [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson. (2015). Service after Serving: Does Veterans' Preference Diminish the Quality of the US Federal Service? JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH AND THEORY 25, 669-696. doi: 10.1093/jopart/muu033. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Adam Bonica, Jowei Chen, and Tim Johnson. (2015). Senate Gate-Keeping, Presidential Staffing of "Inferior Offices" and the Ideological Composition of Appointments to the Public Bureaucracy. QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 10, 5-40. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Jowei Chen and Tim Johnson. (2015). Federal Employee Unionization and Presidential Control of the Bureaucracy: Estimating and Explaining Ideological Change in Executive Agencies. JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 27, 151-174. doi: 10.1177/0951629813518126. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson and Nicholai Lidow. (2014). Band of Brothers (and Fathers and Sisters and Mothers…): A Research Note Estimating Rates of Military Participation Among Liberians Living with Relatives in the Military. ARMED FORCES & SOCIETY. doi: 10.1177/0095327X14562858. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson, Mikhail Myagkov, and John Orbell. (2013). Distinctive Preferences Toward Risk in the Substantive Domain of Sociality. POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY 34, 1-22. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson. (2012). The Strategic Logic of Costly Punishment Necessitates Natural Field Experiments and At Least One Such Experiment Exists. BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES 35, 31-32. [Comment]
Tim Johnson and Oleg Smirnov. (2012). An Alternative Mechanism through which Economic Inequality Facilitates Collective Action: Wealth Disparities as a Sign of Cooperativeness. JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS, 24, 461-484. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson and Oleg Smirnov. (2012). "Cooperate with Equals: A Simple Heuristic for Social Exchange." In Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and the ABC Research Group (eds.), SIMPLE HEURISTICS IN A SOCIAL WORLD. New York: Oxford University Press. [Please note that a portion of this chapter constitutes a reprint of "An Alternative Mechanism through which Economic Inequality Facilitates Collective Action: Wealth Disparities as a Sign of Cooperativeness."] [Book chapter in an edited volume]
Bettina von Helversen, Andreas Wilke, Tim Johnson, Gabriele Schmid, and Burghard Klapp. (2011). Performance Benefits of Depression: Sequential Decision Making in a Healthy and a Clinically Depressed Sample. JOURNAL OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY, 120, 962-968. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Oleg Smirnov and Tim Johnson. (2011). "Formal Evolutionary Modeling for Political Scientists." In Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott (eds.), MAN IS BY NATURE A POLITICAL ANIMAL. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Book chapter in an edited volume]
Oleg Smirnov, Christopher T. Dawes, James H. Fowler, Tim Johnson, and Richard McElreath. (2010). The Behavioral Logic of Collective Action: Partisans Cooperate and Punish More than Non-Partisans . POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, 31, 595-616. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson, Christopher T. Dawes, James H. Fowler, Richard McElreath, and Oleg Smirnov. (2009). The Role of Egalitarian Motives in Altruistic Punishment. ECONOMICS LETTERS, 102, 192-194. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Bettina von Helversen and Tim Johnson. (2008). "Der Einfluss von "Satisficing" und "Maximizing" auf das Entscheidungsverhalten." In W. Sarges & D. Scheffer (eds.), Innovative Ansätze für die Eignungsdiagnostik. Reihe: Psychologie für das Personalmanagement (pp. 265-273). Göttingen: Hogrefe. [Book chapter in an edited volume]
Christopher T. Dawes, James H. Fowler, Tim Johnson, Richard McElreath, and Oleg Smirnov. (2007). Egalitarian Motives in Humans. NATURE, 446, 794-796. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
Tim Johnson, Mikhail Myagkov, and John Orbell. (2005). Sociality as a defensive response to the threat of loss. POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES, 23, 13-9. [Peer-reviewed basic research]
James H. Fowler, Tim Johnson, and Oleg Smirnov. (2005). Egalitarian Motive and Altruistic Punishment. NATURE, 433, E1. (doi:10.1038/nature03256). [Peer-reviewed basic research]