I’m interested in the kinds of representations that the human mind is designed to spontaneously create. I adopt a ‘reverse-engineering’ approach to that question, using conceptual tools from evolutionary biology, statistics and computer science to ask what a mind that is well-designed (from the point of view of natural selection) should look like.

My PhD research investigated the idea that we spontaneously represent the propensity of others to make tradeoffs between their welfare and ours, and that these representations play an important role in social behavior and social emotions.

Currently I am interested in how the mind creates sparse causal representations, of the kind we use when we explain an event by mentioning only one of its causes. I am also exploring the idea that our intuitive concept of cause may work as a building block for more complex concepts.

In previous work, I have used evolutionary game theory and agent-based models to study the evolution of social behavior, looking at why people are sometimes modest, and why they signal their commitment to others.

You can find my publications here.