Dan Conroy-Beam
Assistant professor
Email: dconroybeam@ucsb.edu
Dan uses an evolutionary and computational perspective to understand mate choice and mating relationships. Specifically, he is interested in how mate preferences are integrated with one another computationally in order to make mating decisions as well as the decision rules people use to navigate their mating markets and their relationships. Dan's work combines agent-based modeling of mate choice with studies of real couples to compare and explore candidate models for how people evaluate potential mates, pursue partners, and regulate their relationships.
Katy Walter
Graduate Student
Email: walter@psych.ucsb.edu
Katy joined the CMC Lab in the fall of 2017. She received her BA with departmental honors in Science, Technology and Society, from Vassar College in 2015. Katy became interested in studying human mating psychology from an evolutionary perspective through her senior thesis research which examined sex differences in mate preferences and mating strategies. She is interested in using agent-based models to understand how evolution has shaped the psychology of men and women in areas like mate preferences, mate value, mating strategies, mate choice, relationship satisfaction, leadership, power, and status
Ben Gelbart
Graduate Student
Email: benjamin.gelbart@psych.ucsb.edu
Ben joined the CMC Lab in the summer of 2019. He received a BA in Psychological Science and a minor in Anthropology from Arizona State University in 2017. Ben became interested in evolutionary psychology while completing an independent project on sex differences in jealousy responses as an undergraduate. Currently, Ben is using computational models to understand the cognitive architecture of romantic jealousy and romantic love. More broadly, he is interested in understanding all forms of relationship conflict, including parent-offspring conflict, friendship conflict, and romantic conflict.