Benjamin G
- Research Program Mentor
PhD at University of California, Santa Barbara
Expertise
Emotion, close relationships, social psychology, evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics
Bio
I am a social and evolutionary psychologist and postdoctoral investigator at Yale University. I received my PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2025. I am passionate about studying emotions and close relationships and mentoring students on these topics! Emotions guide some of the most important decisions we make, from who we marry (e.g., love) to the dangers we avoid (e.g., fear) to the values we prioritize (e.g., compassion); understanding emotion is critical to understanding human psychology more broadly. In addition to my work on emotion, I also have experience working on projects related to behavioral economics and ethnographic coding. I'm excited to share my expertise on emotions, close relationships, behavioral economics, anthropology/ethnographic coding, data analysis, data processing, and the scientific process itself with highly motivated students all around the world!Project ideas
Design a Study of your Choice and Present the Results!
YOU get to come up with your own research question and design a study of your choice. Learn all the basics of the scientific process, including formulating a question, generating a hypothesis, designing and implementing a study, and understanding the results. I will guide you throughout every step of the process including providing you with assistance in analyzing and interpreting your findings. At the end of your project, you will get a chance to create a presentation or other medium showcasing both what you did and what you found.
Compare/Contrast Emotions or Behaviors Across Cultures and Visualize the Results!
Is love universal? What about jealousy? Do all cultures have marriage? Do all cultures have art? Anthropologists have written thousands of first-hand accounts ("ethnographies") of the cultures they have lived or immersed themselves in. I will help you compare and contrast accounts of an emotion or behavior of your choice across cultures to help you uncover whether that emotion or behavior reflects a core feature of human nature or a culturally learned phenomenon. At the end, I will help you create a scientific poster summarizing your results and visualizing points of overlap and non-overlap.
Discover if Humans are Rational!
Economists have documented hundreds of ways in which humans behave irrationally—loss aversion, overconfidence, anchoring, fairness bias, and more. Yet in everyday life, these biases are often invisible to us because they feel normal. In this project, you will design a brief, digital economic game in which players make decisions involving money, points, or resources. The game should be structured so that a “rational” choice is clear, but most players predictably choose otherwise. Examples of behaviors/biases you might choose to target include loss aversion, fairness and punishment, or overconfidence. You will then get an opportunity to distribute this economic game to those in your network and see the results for yourself!