Music and Mutations Could Be Linked [Article] – November 17, 2022
“A November 2021 Evolution and Human Behavior study mapped collaborations between a global sample of electronic artists between 1975 and 1999. The resulting dataset reveals how people interact and ‘reproduce’ music by launching new and divergent varieties. A clear path of treelike descent runs through the subgenres.”
Deradicalizing domestic extremists [Article] – July 1, 2021
“‘…conspiracy theories do appear to spread more quickly on social media.’ In that domain, Youngblood said the most important unexplored area is how cognitive biases influence the way radical ideas transform and proliferate online.”
Voices of Islam Radio [Live Interview] – February 2, 2021
“Research has shown that higher levels of poverty are linked to increases in violence and extremism. If people’s basic needs are taken care of, it can slow down the expansion of extremism. That being said, it must be highlighted that the spread of far-right extremism is also built on large activist networks and media infrastructure.”
Canada’s Sparrows Are Singing a New Song. You’ll Hear It Soon. [Article] – July 2, 2020
“The study, which took 20 years, is ‘the first to track the cultural evolution of birdsong at the continental scale,’ said Mason Youngblood, a doctoral candidate in animal behavior at the CUNY Graduate Center who was not involved in the research.”
Breaking up is hard to do: Hip Hop is a cauldron of conformity [Article] – September 25, 2019
“Hip hop performers and fans tend to view themselves as members of a large homogenous cohort, united around certain values. In that scenario, it might be expected that music signifiers, especially samples, are deployed to reinforce rather than challenge identity.”
Researcher uses music sampling to study cultural conformity bias [Article] – September 25, 2019
“Mason Youngblood, a psychologist at City University of New York, has found a way to study cultural conformity bias in groups of people by studying music sampling used on commercially sold songs. In his paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, he describes how…”
Parsing Science [Podcast] – April 30, 2019
Doug Leigh and Ryan Watkins invited me on to Parsing Science to talk about my recent study on the cultural transmission of music sampling! We got into the history of sampling, how it transformed music production, as well as the data and methods behind the study.
Queens College Student’s Research Is for the Birds [Article] – April 17, 2019
“Around dawn, you can find him ‘birding’ in neighborhoods like Forest Hills, Jamaica and Queens Village with a microphone and two undergraduate assistants in tow, trying to capture the sweet sounds of one bird: the tiny house finch.”
The Life Plot [Podcast] – January 24, 2019
Mario Benitez and Joel Daness invited me on to The Life Plot to talk about public perceptions of evolutionary biology, common cultural transmission mechanisms in humans and animals, and the current state of pop music.
Mason Youngblood 