BussLab

Current Graduate Students

	Laith Al-Shawaf Email Laith Al-Shawaf joined the BussLab in August 2009 after graduating from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. His undergraduate concentrations were in Psychology, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science. Through his readings and conversations with professors, he discovered Evolutionary Psychology (EP), a powerful theoretical lens for understanding and explaining human cognition and behavior. In addition to his diverse interests within EP, Laith also has an interest in cognitive neuroscience, which he hopes to incorporate into his research at UT. Along with collaborator Dr. Arne Dietrich, he is currently working on a paper that approaches the topic of altered states of consciousness from the perspectives of evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
	Jaime Confer Website Email Jaime joined the Buss lab in August of 2006. She received her undergraduate degree from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania in Psychology (2005). Upon being introduced to Evolutionary Psychology through documentaries on human mating, she has found EP to be an exciting and compelling theoretical lens through which to view human behavior. Her research interests revolve around female physical attractiveness and female status hierarchy negotiation, with a strong emphasis on conspicuous consumption and consumer attempts to feign status and genetic fitness.
	Judith Easton Website Email Judith Easton joined the BussLab in August 2006. She received her B.S. from York College of Pennsylvania where her advisor, Dr. PengKwei Chang, introduced her to the field of Evolutionary Psychology. She then went on to earn her M.A. from Dr. Todd Shackelford at Florida Atlantic University. Her research interests are in the area of mating; particularly female mating strategies and jealousy/infidelity. While at FAU, she examined potential mate preference shifts after having children and the clinical disorder of morbid jealousy from an evolutionary perspective. She is currently continuing work on both projects as well as examining potential variations in the contexts of female short term-mating and how females' mate preferences may shift across those contexts. She has also begun a collaboration with Jaime examining mate value trajectories.
	Cari Goetz Email After earning her B.S. in Psychobiology from UCLA, Cari joined the Buss Lab in the fall of 2007. At UCLA, she was fortunate enough to gain exposure to the evolutionary approach to studying human thoughts and behavior through involvement in the labs and coursework of both Dr. Dan Fessler and Dr. Martie Haselton. Cari has come to appreciate Evolutionary Psychology as a valuable perspective that draws on various disciplines to explain the way we think and act. While she is fascinated by most EP-based inquiries, some of her main research interests lie in areas of mating and female sexuality.
	David Lewis Email David joined the BussLab in 2005 after obtaining his B.A. in Biology and Spanish from Tufts University. David currently has two broad programs of research, one exploring the evolution of friendship, and one exploring the “reactive heritability” of personality. His work on friendship includes identifying the distinct types of friends men and women have and the adaptive problems these friends help solve. His work also explores the effect that the unintentional costs and benefits we receive from our friends have on how we behave towards them. David’s work on “reactive heritability” investigates how heritable individual differences in personality emerge from a universal human psychology in response to heritable, non-personality attributes important to natural and sexual selection. David eagerly and enthusiastically welcomes any interested collaborators to contact him.
	Carin Perilloux Website Email Carin joined the BussLab in 2004. She received her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Computer Science from Knox College in 2003. During her senior year at Knox she took a course on evolutionary psychology with Dr. Frank McAndrew which refocused her study of psychology. Her research interests center around sexual conflict. She has conducted large-scale surveys on romantic breakups as well as sexual victimization. She has also conducted two studies with labmate Diana Fleischman: one which examined parental guarding behavior and one which looked at risky behavior over the menstrual cycle. She is currently focused on several studies centered around men's sexual overperception bias and individual differences in physical attractiveness.