My name is Mason Youngblood, and I am an incoming postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University. 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 data visualization. Some of my favorite examples from my published and submitted work are shown below: