RESEARCH

  • What causes some leaders, more than others, to selfishly wield their power in ways that undermine their group?

  • How does being higher versus lower in the hierarchy affect one’s desire to form strong connections with others?

  • Why do some mentors invest substantial amounts of time, energy, and resources in their mentees, and how do their underlying motives influence the types of support they offer?

  • How does the motivation to maintain one’s place atop the hierarchy sway leaders’ decisions and affect the way they treat their followers?

  • How might lower-ranking group members protect themselves from highly dominant leaders?

  • When and why do some mentors treat their mentees like strategic coalition partners, whereas others treat their mentees like kin?

  • What strategies do lower-ranking group members use to advance their own hierarchical standing?

  • How do people leverage their coalitional relationships as a means to further their own status within their group’s hierarchy?

  • What types of mentees tend to receive the most attention and support from their mentors, and why?

Answers to the above questions have profound implications for groups, relationships, and the people within those groups and relationships. Finding answers to these types of questions is the central aim of the research we conduct in the EPOCH Lab.

At a broad level, our research leverages theory from social psychology and evolutionary biology to examine the motivational aspects of adaptive social cognition and behavior. We examine the downstream behavioral consequences of people’s motives and pinpoint some of the specific cognitions, emotions, and hormonal processes that those motives elicit. Moreover, we conduct experiments to uncover how key contextual factors influence whether a person’s motives give rise to prosocial behavior or antisocial behavior.