My Research

Overview

As an evolutionary social & personality psychologist, my research applies adaptationist principles to the study of human nature. To this end, my (typically collaborative) research applies theory and methods from multiple disciplines, including social-personality psychology, evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, cross-cultural psychology, computational modeling, behavioral endocrinology, and molecular genetics.

Selected ongoing research topics:

--An adaptationist framework for personality psychology

--Socioecological causes of emergent personality structure

--Coordination of behavioral strategies with environmental and somatic cues to mortality risk

--Fitness correlates of social status and personality in small-scale societies

--Mapping the cross-culturally universal architectures of human adaptations for social valuation (e.g., partner preferences, status allocation criteria)

--Evolved functions and computational architectures of emotions

--The self-interested underpinnings of moral judgment