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My name is Mason Youngblood, and I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Minds and Traditions Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology (formerly the Science of Human History). In my research, I apply methods from computational social science, cultural evolution, and behavioral ecology to questions about human and non-human animal behavior. Specifically, I’m interested in understanding how cognitive biases and population structure shape the cultural evolution of behaviors and beliefs (e.g. music, extremist ideology, birdsong, conspiracy theories).

I’m also passionate about R and data visualization. Some of my favorite examples from my published and submitted work are shown below: