Center for Research on Experimental Evolutionary Psychology

Thomas McCauley graduated with a B.S. in psychology from the University of Delaware in 2014, and an M.A. in experimental psychology from the College of William & Mary in 2017. He joined the lab in fall of 2017, while it was located at the University of Miami, with the aim of pursuing questions pertaining to the evolved psychological mechanisms underlying cooperation, punishment, emotion, and morality. His goal is to understand how these mechanisms interact with enduring ecological features by identifying points of variance and invariance in their function across diverse societies. He is also interested in statistics, experimental methodology, reproducibility in psychological science, and meta-science.

Zeve Marcus holds a B.A. in psychology and M.A. in experimental psychology from the University of California, San Diego. His background includes work in sensation and perception, behavioral neuroscience, and social cognition. He joined the lab with the goal of better understanding the attentional mechanisms involved in prosocial decision making. Zeve is also interested in statistical programming, analytics, psychometrics, educational psychology, and narratives in science.

Megan Mulhinch received a B.S. in neuroscience from the University of Michigan in 2019. While there, she conducted research with the Cognitive Evolution Group (led by Dr. Alexandra Rosati), including an honors thesis examining the role of theory of mind in trust, and assisting with field experiments in the UK and Puerto Rico studying the role of social cognition on social behavior in two macaque species. Now, she is interested in integrating her experience with social, cognitive, and evolutionary perspectives in order to examine the evolutionary origins of the cognitive mechanisms underlying human social decision-making.

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Chyna Tang graduated with a BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2021. From 2021 to 2023, she was Lab Manager at Dr. Daniel Fessler's human behavior laboratory, an experience that fostered her enthusiasm for the fields of evolutionary anthropology and psychology. At present, her pursuits are centered on the examination of human cognition and emotions through the lens of evolutionary perspectives.

Brooke Donner began working in the lab after graduating from the University of Florida with a B.S. in psychology in 2018. She moved with the lab from the University of Miami to the University of California, San Diego in 2019 and continues to manage several large research projects and the daily goings-on of the lab. She is also working toward her Montessori early childhood teaching credential.

Annabel Dang graduated with a B.S. in biopsychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2022 and joined the lab in September 2022. She did her undergraduate honors thesis project on the effects of familial expectations regarding major choice on the emotional well-being of college students with Dr. Hongbo Yu. She is interested in learning about how moral decision making, social behavior, and mental health are affected by one’s cultural upbringing and religious background. Annabel plans to further her studies by pursuing a PhD in psychology.

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Shuai Shao received a B.S. in psychology from Beijing Normal University in 2017, and an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2018. His goal is to study social cognition and decision-making from developmental, evolutionary, and cross-cultural perspectives. Specifically, his current research focuses on children’s and adults’ (1) moral reasoning (e.g., prosocial lies) and (2) economic decisions (e.g., resource allocations).