Students apply HERE by June 1, 2024
THE ADAPT MISSION
The Advancing Diversity through Anthropological and Psychological Training (ADAPT) Program exists to give more students—from a broader range of backgrounds—access to high-quality training and hands-on research opportunities in Evolutionary Social Science.
The ADAPT Experience
ADAPT will provide financial, social, and professional support for undergraduate students. Students will receive remote, mentored research experiences with an HBES mentor, culminating in presentations at a special poster session at the summer conference. ADAPT also provides additional programming to prepare students for successful futures (e.g., programming basics, CV sessions, graduate school counseling).
Together with their mentors, students plan, design, conduct, and/or analyze data related to a research project designed with their mentor. Collection of new data is not necessary. Working with existing data and community-based field work are welcome and encouraged, as are well-powered studies using online or student samples or construction of computational or mathematical models. Students will typically be involved in broader lab activities in addition to the focal research project. Mentors must be active HBES members.
Priority will be given to students at home institutions where they are less able to access evolutionary social science research opportunities. HBES encourages students from all backgrounds (e.g., gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, immigrant status, national origin, nation of scholarship) to apply.
Brief Timeline
- Prospective mentors apply by December 31, 2023 (use the application form in the Mentors section)
- Students apply by June 1, 2024
- Awards are made before July 15, 2024
- Program runs from September, 2024 – May, 2025
- Students and mentors attend and present their research at HBES 2025
MENTORS
Name: Jennifer Byrd-Craven
University: Oklahoma State University
Lab: OCEAN (Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis)-Psychobiology Lab
Research description.
The Psychobiology lab of OCEAN (Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis) explores the neuroendocrine underpinnings of human social behavior. We explore a variety of relationships, but primarily focus on female friendships (and competition), family, and mating relationships. We employ an interdisciplinary approach to examine the interplay between social context and neuroendocrine responses.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
My lab currently has several projects examining:
- neuroendocrine responses involved in female-female competition
- neuroendocrine, immune reactivity, and diurnal functioning in individuals with developmental adversity in laboratory social rejection experiences
- the mechanisms linking social support (specifically from romantic partners and friends) to health, including physiological and behavioral synchrony. Students can get experience cleaning and analyzing raw hormone and immune response data, coding video data from laboratory tasks, and will take part in remote lab meetings with the core and affiliated faculty and graduate students of OCEAN.
Name: David Puts
University: Penn State
Lab: Behavioral Endocrinology and Evolution Lab
Research description.
Our research focuses on the evolution and development of human sexuality and sex differences. We are especially interested in how sex hormones influence our mating psychology, behavior, and anatomy—and how these traits were shaped by sexual selection. If you are a motivated student interested in some of these topics, we want to hear from you!
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
Title: Sexual Selection and Endocrine Research on Faces, Voices, and other Characteristics in Human Females
Summary: An ADAPT student accepted to our lab would be able to work on one or both of two ongoing studies focusing on sexual selection and hormones in human females.
Study 1 addresses a major gap in the literature on sexual selection in human females. Various traits, including psychological and behavioral characteristics, as well as body shape, faces and voices, have been proposed to be targets of ancestral selection selection operating on human females. However, little information exists on the relative contributions of such features to female mating success. This study adopts methods and analytical approaches from our past work on sexual selection in males (Hill et al. 2013 Evol Hum Behav https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.05.004), plus new approaches, to measure female traits and explore their influence on components of mating success. Students working on this study will learn multiple skills, including social network analysis, acoustic measurement of voices, and face shape measurement from 3D images.
Study 2 explores female anatomical, behavioral, and psychological phenotypes across the ovulatory cycle as a function of ovarian hormones. A limitation of past research on this rapidly-growing topic is the collection of a limited number of samples (usually 2 or 4) across the ovulatory cycle, prohibiting the discovery of acute patterns of change. In this study, research participants provide daily hormone and phenotype data for at least one cycle. Students working on this study will learn multiple skills related to hormone sample processing and analysis, oral microbiome analysis, psychometrics, and acoustic measurement of voices, and face shape measurement from 3D images.
Name: Ana Maria Fernandez
University: Universidad de Santiago de Chile
Lab: Lab for Evolution and Interpersonal Relations
Research description.
Please see our lab website for research description.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
We apply experimental and survey methods to study affect in interpersonal relationships. At the moment, there are three possible projects to work on:
- Jealousy evoked by close partners investing/ receiving resources in economic games
- Studying attachment variables in emerging adults and their relationship to jealousy, relationship satisfaction and clossenes, identification with a partner
- The relationship of Love, attachment and jealousy in three latin countries and two languages
Name: Diego Guevara Beltran
University: University of Arizona
Website: https://psycheddiego.mystrikingly.com/
Research description.
Diego’s research aims to understand the psychological underpinnings of cooperation: why do people cooperate (i.e., what are the costs and benefits of cooperation)? What are the psychological mechanisms that facilitate (or hinder) cooperation? And what are the consequences of cooperation (or failing to cooperate) for social relationships and wellbeing?
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
Students would have the opportunity to work on a variety of different topics according to their interests.
- Connected Lives: Overcoming the Self through Empathy (CLOSE). This project is centered around cohabiting romantic couples. There are several methodological components to this project, including in-person discussions of conflict and support, physiological recordings, daily diary, ecological momentary assessment, affective responses to social rejection, and a variety of questionnaires assessing personality, empathy, relationship functioning, psychological wellbeing, and health, among others.
- Social behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: This project is composed of two longitudinal data sets, one based on international respondents and one based on a nationally representative sample of US participants. Items include a variety of measures, including those relating to interdependence, prosociality, help given and received, risk management, health-related behaviors, time orientation, fundamental motives, and personality, among others.
- Interdependence and cooperation among the Mayangna of Nicaragua: This project is composed of two data sets of surveys/interviews and behavioral measures among the Mayangna of Nicaragua, a small-scale indigenous group of horticulturalists. The first includes social network data of a person’s network, the characteristics of the individuals that comprise that network (e.g., relatedness, status), interdependence with members of one’s network, and cooperation with member’s of one’s network. The second data set is comprised of measures of shared fate, various forms of cooperation, and empathy towards three members of one’s network.
Name: Randy Corpuz
University: University of Massachusetts Boston
Lab name: Father-Infant Neuroscience and Child Health (FINCH) Lab
Research description.
My lab’s research program uses a multidisciplinary approach to explore the enduring impact of early experiences on psychological and physical development. The bulk of our data is collected from families in the community. These community projects are designed as longitudinal studies—i.e., the same family provides data at multiple time points across months (or years). This research is organized around three broad themes:
- early environmental “calibration” (with a focus on fathers);
- intergenerational transmission (e.g., stress reactivity across generations);
- psychobiology of the human family (e.g., hormones, genes).
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
Students will be encouraged to formulate original research ideas related to parental investment, psychobiology (e.g., testosterone and cortisol), and family health (adult, infant). They will utilize a combination of existing datasets from completed community projects, ongoing online surveys, and will be provided with mentorship in designing original research to include in our lab’s future projects. Program mentees will learn skills related to rudimentary and advanced (i.e., multi level modeling) statistical analyses using R, SPSS, AMOS, and/or M Plus. In addition, students will be active members of the lab and be expected to be participating members in lab meetings where each mentee will be expected to (formally and informally) discuss their research progress and project ideas.
Name: Siobhan Mattison
University: University of New Mexico
Lab : Human Family and Evolutionary Demography Lab
Research description.
Siobhán Mattison is a Disabled mother of two and an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She was a rotator in the Cultural Anthropology (and numerous other) Program(s) at the National Science Foundation, supporting work related to social and biological sciences aimed at broadening knowledge and participation. Her current projects use mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) to understand the effects of family and social structure on individual and population health. She works in Vanuatu and China, and consults on projects in Africa, Bangladesh, and other parts of the world. She is especially interested in projects and students that increase diversity of thought and participants generating thought. She would welcome work that arises in partnership with local communities.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
I have numerous projects that could involve students, including data drawn from fieldwork in China, from fieldwork in Vanuatu, and from historical household registers in Taiwan. The data are intended to address how gender and family structure (e.g., adoption) relate to health and human activity. There is the potential for mentored field experiences for the student and I’d be happy to mentor independent projects.
Name: Jordann Brandner
University: Elon University
Website: Faculty website and personal website
Research description.
Hi, I’m Dr. Jordann Brandner and I am an interdisciplinary psychologist who studies evolutionary social cognition – how our psychology has evolved to understand and think about social situations. My research focuses on understanding the judgment and decision-making processes that create our social lives. Some of the most important aspects of a person’s social life are their relationships, whether they are professional, familial, romantic, or platonic. However, the decisions guiding these relationship choices are often unclear to the average person. My research combines perspectives in evolutionary, social, and cognitive psychology to understand the processes underlying relationship decisions. I have three main research areas: the study of sexual overperception (men’s tendency to perceive a woman’s friendliness as sexual interest), the study of sex ratio perception (ratios of men to women in an environment), and the study of mate value assessments (how we determine an individual’s overall attractiveness from their traits). I also have a variety of other projects and interest areas, so I welcome different topics involving relationship decisions & perceptions or evolutionary cognitive psychology. My mentorship philosophy includes holistic mentorship (not just about academic pursuits, but also about the student as a person), an emphasis on clear communication, and building skills that help with academic and professional life.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
Typically students in my lab develop their own research projects from hypothesis to publication. I encourage my students to look at behaviors through different levels of analysis, synthesize theories to create competing hypotheses, and develop strong methods of testing them. After data collection, I teach my students data management and open science skills as we work on the analysis. Finally, students are encouraged to communicate their results at scientific conferences. Throughout, I prioritize strong communication skills and often coauthor papers with students to teach them about academic publishing. This deep involvement in their own research projects helps my students prepare for either graduate school or non-academic careers as they work on project- and time-management skills. Given that this is a virtual mentorship program, this is still plausible for my research. Many of my projects can be completed online and I also have a lab that can collect in-person data if required. However, I also have the opportunity for students to reanalyze and develop hypotheses from previously collected datasets.
My current projects are on sexual overperception, perceptions of sex ratios, and assessments of mate value, in addition to other projects that tie to evolutionary psychology. In all of my areas, I combine perspectives in evolutionary, social, and cognitive psychology to understand the processes underlying these judgments and decisions. I approach research with a cognitive computational approach and emphasize the use of competing hypotheses whenever possible.
Name: Dimitris Xygalatas
University: University of Connecticut
Lab: Experimental Anthropology Lab
Research description.
Dr. Xygalatas is a cognitive anthropologist interested in cultural practices that soothe, excite, unite and divide humans, such as ritual, sports, and music. His research combines laboratory and field methods to study human interaction in real-life settings. He has conducted several years of fieldwork in Southern Europe and Mauritius, and continues to go to the field each year. At UConn, he is an Associate Professor in the departments of Anthropology and Psychological Sciences, and directs the Experimental Anthropology Lab, which develops methods and technologies for studying social behavior in real-life settings.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
Under this mentorship program, trainees will work with the PI and other lab members on an interdisciplinary project examining ecological and social factors that contribute to shared arousal in collective gatherings such as religious rituals and sporting events. Examples of questions we will be asking are: What makes a sports game more exciting? Which aspects of the game result in greater excitement and bonding among the fans? How is religious trance experienced and how does it spread? How may features of the environment, including the natural and built landscape as well as other people, facilitate or enhance this experience? To answer these questions, trainees will be involved in organizing, coding, and analyzing existing datasets that combine physiological, behavioral, and survey data collected in real-life settings around the world, from places of worship to sports stadiums. Good knowledge of excel is required. Knowledge of coding (e.g. R, Matlab, or Python) is desirable but not necessary. Through their involvement in the project, trainees will learn to quantify qualitative data (e.g. through analyzing video recordings); organize, clean, and analyze physiological data; and write a scientific paper in which they will be co-authors.
Name: Liana Hone
University: University of Florida
Lab: Reducing Intoxicant-Involved Sexual Consequences (RIISC) Lab
Research description.
Dr. Hone received her MS and PhD in Psychology with an Emphasis in Evolution and Human Behavior and her MPH with a focus on Strategies for Eliminating Health Inequities. She is an Assistant Professor of Health Education and Behavior, director of the RIISC (Reducing Intoxicant Involved Sexual Consequences) Lab at the University of Florida, and Associate Director of the SHARC (Southern HIV and Alcohol Research Consortium) Professional Development Program. Dr. Hone aims to identify novel individual- and environmental-level targets for sexual health promotion.
In service of this aim, Dr. Hone is interested in the application of evolutionary theory to characterizing the role of sociosexuality— attitudes, behaviors, and desires related to casual sex—in substance use and consequences (i.e., alcohol, cannabis, blackouts) and sexual outcomes (e.g., sexual aggression perpetration, sexual drinking game motivations, HIV transmission). She has taken an evolutionary approach to examining sex differences in binge drinking, alcohol-related cognitive deficits, and alcohol-related regretted sexual experiences in line with NIH’s directive to consider sex as a biological variable. Dr. Hone’s other research interests span predictors of sexual morality, religiosity, and HIV stigma, as well as alcohol administration methods and mHealth interventions for substance use and sexual consequences.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
Projects: I have several large (N = 800-1,600) datasets (online and in-person) and multiple untested hypotheses that would lend themselves to posters and eventually, papers. Online sample variables (N = 800) include the Dating Behaviors Scale (self and others; Haselton & Buss, 2000), Sociosexual Orientation Inventory-R (Penke & Asendorpf), The Macleod Assessment of Risk Knowledge (MARK), the Sexual Experiences Survey Revised (Koss et al., 2007), NIAAA alcohol use questions, condom use questions, sexual partner questions. In-person (N = 800) variables include the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (Simpson & Gangestad), Religious Commitment Inventory (RCI; Worthington et al., 2003), the Cooperative/Competitive Strategy Scale (Simmons et al., 2001). Additional online (N = 1,600) variables include the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (Simpson & Gangestad), Religious Commitment Inventory (RCI; Worthington et al., 2003), Atkinson and Bourrat’s list of moral transgressions, Weeden, Cohen, and Kenrick’s avowals of sexual morality.
Skills: They may attend my monthly online SHARC professional development program meeting (https://sharc- research.org/training/professional-development-program-pdp/), my weekly lab meeting, and ADAPT meetings with me, as needed. They will learn to analyze existing data using SPSS (or write-up results from output after analyzing data with me via screen sharing if they do not have SPSS). They will practice presenting their poster in my lab meeting. I will provide CV and application material feedback. I will help them apply for funding to attend the Research Society on Alcohol and/or Collaborative Perspectives on Addiction in addition to HBES if they are interested.
Name: Nicholas Grebe
University: Occidental College
Lab name: Comparative Behavioral Endocrinology Lab
Research description.
Hello! I’m beginning a new lab at Occidental, a liberal arts college, in the Fall of 2024, which means my research program is already geared towards directly involving undergraduate students who have an interest in the evolutionary social sciences. When I was a student, I was lucky enough to have advisors who gave me the freedom to explore my broad interests, and I plan on continuing that as an ADAPT mentor. The common core of my research is the interplay between the endocrine system and social behavior, but we could explore this huge, huge topic through a number of different routes. I have experience conducting studies on both humans and non-human primates, and I work with both newly collected and archival data.
Working with data that are already collected can be helpful for remote collaboration–I’ve published meta-analyses and secondary data analyses on hormonal patterns across the human lifespan, and I also partner with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to analyze their long-term field data on mountain gorilla physiology and behavior. I’d be excited to work on projects with an ADAPT trainee that build on these kinds of data sources.
I’m also a big proponent of the open science movement, for a number of reasons, including its ‘big tent’ approach that allows for researchers from diverse career stages and/or institutions to directly contribute to large-scale research. For one example of a group I’ve worked with, see the ManyPrimates consortium. This group is very active in collaborative ‘open science’ research on primate behavior, and I think an ADAPT trainee would learn a lot about forward-thinking research methods and comparative psychology by participating in a ManyPrimates project.
Finally, I’m also interested in starting new research projects, focused on human participants, that seek to provide a detailed picture of how different formulations of hormonal contraceptives might lead to different downstream impacts on women’s behavior and social relationships. It would be great to directly work with an ADAPT trainee to design a study in this vein.
These are just a few examples of potential projects. I encourage applicants to reach out directly if they have ideas/questions of their own.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
I will be starting my lab at a liberal arts school (Occidental College) in Fall 2024. This means I am already focused on and intentional about building a portfolio of research conducive to hands-on involvement from undergraduates. Some of these projects, along with skills likely to be gained from working on them, include:
- Analyses of archival data on mountain gorilla behavior, social structure, and physiology collected by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (students will gain valuable experience in data cleaning/wrangling, general R coding skills, and working with intensive longitudinal data from wild animals)
- Collaboration and participation in forthcoming projects under the “ManyPrimates” umbrella–this is the best-established ‘team science’ consortia in comparative psychology and primatology that has multiple projects underway / formally published (students will gain exposure to open science practices such as interdisciplinary partnerships, pre-registration, and collaborative writing, and will have opportunities for authorship via various categories of contributions)
- Designing new surveys and experiments for online data collection from human participants–these projects would focus on the potential impacts of different formulations of hormonal birth control on women’s behavior relating to pair-bonding and mating effort (students will learn how to design surveys, gain ethical approval for human-participants research, and recruit participants)
Name: Justin Mogilski
University: University of South Carolina Salkehatchie
Lab name: The Mogilski Lab
Research description.
I study how people form and maintain multiple, concurrent intimate relationships (e.g., polyamory, swinging) using experimental and survey methods from personality and social psychology, marketing, sexuality science, and evolutionary biology. My current focus is on how people who form multiple relationships navigate the challenges that arise when sex and romance extend outside a pair-bond. This includes jealousy and partner disinvestment, envy and partner competition, disgust and pathogen transmission, parenting and childcare coordination, stigma and reputation management, etc. Applicants should describe how they might adopt an evolutionary perspective to study these experiences among people who have multiple relationships with the consent of their partner(s)(e.g., consensual non-monogamy, plural marriage, etc.).
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
I have a large international dataset (N = ~5,500) of people in single-partnered (e.g., monogamous) and multi-partnered (e.g., non- monogamous) intimate relationships who reported on aspects of their relationship quality, rate of partner conflict, and personal health and wellbeing. Students will have the opportunity to test empirical predictions with this dataset and write up the results for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. I guide students as they form, justify, and preregister their hypotheses, test these hypotheses with statistical analysis, and report their results via conference presentation and manuscript submission. Ambitious students will be encouraged to design an original research project that replicates and elaborates a meaningful pattern in the dataset, or which otherwise expands scientific knowledge of how people maintain multiple, concurrent intimate relationships.
Name: Peter Jonason
University: University of Padua
Lab: Personality, Relationships, and Evolutionary Psychology (P.R.E.P.) lab
Research description.
Are you interested in mating, motives, morality, and malevolence? So are we at the Personality, Relationships, and Evolutionary Psychology (P.R.E.P.) lab at the University of Padua (IT) and Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego (POL). Want to develop psychometric skills, to prepare yourself for a career in research, and to learn learn how to publish articles in leading journals? Then look no further than our lab. Here we study various aspects of psychology like mate choice, the Dark Tetrad traits, prejudice, organizational psychology, and happiness from an evolutionary perceptive, usually life history theory (www.peterjonason.com). In joining our lab, you will have the chance (depending on your interests) to work with members from places like Romania, Austria, Australia, Poland, Italy, the UK, and the USA, present your research at academic conferences, and (if all goes well) get at least one publication on your CV. You will have the chance to build new research along with participate in existing research in hopes of building a research career, and maybe, getting your Ph.D. with one of our members.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
My lab is a multi-site, international consortium of researchers interested in topics like life history strategies, social media addiction, prejudice, personality, happiness, depression, romantic relationships, organizational psychology, and more. Students who join my lab will have the opportunity to learn how to build online surveys/experiments, collect data, analyze data, and present that data. In addition, he/she will become part of our international network which will allow the student to go on to an independent career integrating cross-national data into her/his research. Pressing projects now focus on (1) how the Dark Triad traits operate in the workplaces from a mismatch perspective, (2) building and exploring life history theory models of mate choice, and (3) and the development of moral and motivational decision-making tasks beyond standard Likert-style responses.
Name: H. Clark Barrett
University: UCLA
Lab name: Barrett Lab
Research description.
I am a biological anthropologist specializing in evolutionary psychology, the study of the mind’s evolved mechanisms and processes. I use methods from anthropology and cognitive science to examine similarities and differences in how people conceptualize and think about minds, bodies, social processes, and the ethics of everyday life. In my research I collaborate with Shuar and Achuar communities in Ecuador and conduct multi-site research with collaborators around the world. My work has examined diverse topics including social learning about danger, theory of mind, afterlife beliefs, ownership, conceptualizations of lying, cooperative decision-making, moral judgment, and the ethics of evolutionary research. My most recent project, the Geography of Philosophy Project, is a multi-site collaboration with researchers in over a dozen countries that examines concepts of knowledge, wisdom and understanding around the world, putting Indigenous epistemologies into critical dialogue with literatures in philosophy and cognitive science. If you are potential ADAPT mentee interested in any of these topics and would like to find out more, please get in touch!
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
ADAPT students in my lab could work on developing their own project that dovetails with current projects. In addition, ongoing projects that ADAPT students could be a part of include:
- The role of mental states and situational context in moral judgment: A debate currently exists about how and when people’s moral judgments take into account others’ mental states, including their goals, intentions, knowledge, emotions, and motivations, and how much moral judgments are influenced by the immediate situational context of the act being judged, as well as cultural and other social factors. ADAPT students could play a role in designing and carrying out empirical studies on moral judgment.
- Bringing Indigenous epistemologies and ethics into evolutionary and cognitive approaches to knowledge: My recent collaborative project, the Geography of Philosophy Project, examined Indigenous perspectives on knowledge, wisdom, and understanding around the world, bringing them into dialogue with formal, academic approaches to knowledge in philosophy and cognitive science. This project has uncovered multiple ways in which Indigenous approaches to knowledge could enrich and in some cases challenge academic treatments of what knowledge is, including in evolutionary social science, and inform discussions of responsibilities individuals and communities have towards knowledge. ADAPT students could play a role in helping to develop empirical projects to assess aspects of Indigenous epistemologies that promise to broaden and make more precise how knowledge is theorized in evolutionary and cognitive science.
- Ethics in evolutionary science: A recent thread of my research develops and applies the concepts of epistemic and ethical risk to evolutionary work. Because evolutionary explanations of ourselves have unique power due to their explanatory depth, this increases the stakes of getting them wrong, both in terms of the effects of wrong explanations on future science and the public sphere, and potential harms these false explanations might cause. In my lab, we are beginning to develop empirical studies of epistemic and ethical risk in evolutionary science. ADAPT students could help in conceptualizing, developing, and carrying out these studies.
Name: Patrick Durkee
University: California State University, Fresno
Website: pdurkee.com
Research description.
My research aims to understand the evolved psychological mechanisms that underpin variation in broad personality traits.
What would an ADAPT student work on in your lab?
Students can expect to study individual differences in the functioning of evolved psychological mechanisms, such as emotions (e.g., pride, anger, shame) and assessment systems (e.g., formidability, status-impact, and mate-value assessment), to better understand the nature of personality dimensions derived from the lexical tradition (e.g., Big Five, HEXACO). Students with a variety of interests will have the opportunity to develop hypotheses and design studies in accordance with this broad aim. Students can also work with existing datasets that I have collected. I prioritize teaching students about open science practices and helping them to develop skills necessary to contribute to reproducibility in the social sciences. Feel free to contact me with any questions!
PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS
Eligible students will be currently enrolled in college or recent graduates (within 2 years of graduation) who intend to apply to graduate programs.
Students winning ADAPT positions will engage in hands-on, remote mentored research experiences, receive $1,200 USD in funding to support their time in the program and up to $3,000 USD to support their travel to the summer HBES conference where they will meet their mentor in person and present their research in a special poster session. HBES is committed to financially covering your travel expenses (travel, lodging, and registration) up to $3000.
Priority will be given to students at institutions where they are less able to access social science research opportunities. Students from underrepresented minority and other under-served groups are encouraged to apply.
Students must commit to regular meetings with mentors and research labs as well as to taking part in additional monthly programming and attending the HBES conference to present their work.
To apply, students will be asked to identify one or more prospective mentors, provide a CV or resume, a short personal statement, and contact information for one reference, and complete short answers to several application questions.
Applications will be due on June 1, 2024.
Apply to be an ADAPT mentee here
CONTACT
If you have questions about ADAPT, please contact Jaimie Krems (jaimie.krems@ucla.edu), Dan Conroy-Beam (dconroybeam@ucsb.edu), or HBES President Clark Barrett (barrett@anthro.ucla.edu)
Jaimie Arona Krems is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at UCLA, co-founder of the Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis (OCEAN), and co-creator of ADAPT. Krems investigates the ways that people maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of their social relationships. Much of this work focuses on (a) identifying the challenges that people have recurrently faced to find, make, and keep friends and that women have recurrently faced in navigating their social words (friendly and otherwise). Using a combination of in-lab experiments, cross-cultural surveys, agent-based models, and archival data analysis, Krems (b) explores the cognitive and behavioral solutions for these challenges.
Jaimie is a co-creator of ADAPT and member of the ADAPT advisory board.
Daniel Conroy-Beam is an Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UCSB and co-creator of ADAPT. Conroy-Beam uses an evolutionary and computational perspective to understand social decision making, primarily in the domain of mate choice. His work combines agent-based modeling with real-world behavioral data to study how people evaluate potential mates, navigate dynamic mating markets, and manage their romantic relationships.
Dan is a co-creator of ADAPT and member of the ADAPT advisory board.
Clark Barrett is Professor of Anthropology at UCLA, and Director of the UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture. He studies the evolution of cognition and the developmental and social processes that shape it. His work current focuses on moral judgment, theory of mind, how people conceptualize knowledge and the responsibilities that come with it, and the role that these play in the scientific process. He works with Indigenous communities in South America, and is interested in how Indigenous epistemologies and values can inform scientific practices and theory building in the evolutionary and cognitive sciences.
Clark is current President of HBES, and is a member of the ADAPT advisory board. He is available to serve as an ADAPT mentor, and is also available to answer any questions about the program at barrett@anthro.ucla.edu
David Pietraszewski is an Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work integrates social, developmental, cognitive, and evolutionary approaches to psychology. His empirical work focuses on social categorization procedures in the mind for assigning agents to groups. His theoretical work involves creating mechanistic (or computational) theories of social phenomena, including groups in conflict, using principles of adaptationism.
David is the Scientific Content Coordinator for ADAPT, responsible for the creation and curation of scientific training materials for enrollees in the ADAPT program. He also currently occupies one of the lead mentorship roles in ADAPT, meeting with enrollees in the program on a monthly basis.
Dani Grant is a 5th-year Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado Boulder studying human cooperation. Her research areas of interest include (a) how people find, initiate, and maintain friendships (b) how gratitude functions as a social emotion, and (c) social decision-making related to political division, media influence, and sacrificing for the well-being of the greater community.
Dani is the graduate student coordinator for the ADAPT Program.
