Jessica D Ayers

ASSERT Aligning Stakeholders and Structures to Enable Research Transformation (ASSERT) is a cohort faculty development program where faculty, from all ranks and various academic units, become an ASSERTive co...

Glad to have had the chance to pitch why we need to research friendship to @boisestate.bsky.social stake holders as an ASSERT (www.boisestate.edu/ifits/facult...) fellow at today’s pitch event.

Submit those abstracts! @ahrako.bsky.social and I cant wait to review them!

Friends!!!! It’s that time again… Submit abstracts for @spspnews.bsky.social EP preconference: my.spsp.org/Events/Submi...

We are accepting data blitz & poster submissions!

We (@ahrako.bsky.social &me) are so excited to see y’all in Chicago!
Https://ep2026.mystrikingly.com
#EPatSPSP2026 #SPSP2026

Controversies in Evolutionary Psychology Podcast Episode · Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast) · 06/03/2025 · 2h 1m

Best part of being a professor? Having my lab listen to Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast) with David Pinsof and Dave Pietraszewski so I have an excuse to listen too! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

We know a lot about ovulatory hormones in early reproductive life - but what about near menopause? Read more about my RA’s research project here www.ayerslab.org/blog/why-we-...

How do people know whom, and how much, to help? we (@jessicadayers.bsky.social @leecronk.bsky.social Daniel Balliet @jeremykoster.bsky.social & @athenaaktipis.bsky.social) tackle this question among the Mayangna of northern Nicaragua, who rely primarily on horticulture for subsistence 🧵(1/10).

You can find the slides here: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/f11g4...

Excited to announce that I won the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society best faculty talk at NEEPS this year!

APE lab represented at NEEPs 2025!

Why Understanding Friendship Requires Evolutionary Psychology My name is Benjamin Zubaly. I am an incoming PhD student in the Evolutionary Social Psychology lab at the University of Michigan and a research assistant in the Ayers Psychology an

After a great @humbehevosoc.bsky.social panel on friendship, I thought it was a perfect time to share Benjamin Zubaly’s thoughts on why evolutionary theory is needed to understand friendships www.ayerslab.org/blog/why-und...

APE lab RAs presenting at our undergraduate talk psych poster session!

Got to present some of my favs in the Research and Creative Activity SPARC mixer

Spring 2025 Everyday Upstanders - Social Psychology site

Learn about our spring 2025 Everyday Upstanders! bsusocialpsych.mystrikingly.com/spring-2025-...

Dr. Weaver talking to us about motherhood at Talk Psych

Two preconferences, one poster, one symposium, many events, and more reunions than I can count. #SPSP2025 is a wrap and I am so grateful for the reconnection. Until next year!

5) @psycheddiego.bsky.social extended interdependence research by surveying Mayangna participants to examine how shared fate impacts their cooperation. The more positive stake & shared fate in relationships, the more people tended to cooperate. #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025

4) Ryan Dobson conducted a longitudinal progesterone study to re-examine the social support vigilance hypothesis. Between women fluctuations in P were predictive of vigilance but within woman fluctuations were not. #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025

3) Sierra Peters tested competing predictions about sexual desire. Within subject fluctuations in desire for partners predicted greater desire for alternatives (& vice versa). Priming desire for alternatives increased desire for partners, but not vice versa. #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025

2) Susan Chen examined how different life history correlates are related to youth gang involvement. Such an interesting study of an under-considered population! #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025

Last, some highlights from the #EPatSPSP2025 datablitzes:

1) A seriously cool talk by @wnmerrell.bsky.social about how we infer clustered (patchy) resource distribution based on an area’s hierarchicalness (& vice versa). Who knew lobstering could be so socially complex?! #SPSP2025

Most interesting take away? That there was a sex difference in how much we people liked the gossiper (women liked less) but not in whether or not people would want to be friends with them or their morality

Gossip has many useful functions from info spreading to norm enforcement. Men & women tend to info share at similar rates. But are there gendered differences in what we perceive as gossip, & our social perceptions of gossipers? Does context matter? (2/3) @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social #EPatSPSP2025

Last but certainly not least in our fantastic invited lineup, @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social dazzled us with work on gendered perceptions of gossip. (1/3) #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025

@dconroybeam.bsky.social ‘s talk is the reason why #indanwetrust is my lab motto. Clear, easy to implement, precise suggestions for complex problems, presented in a way that are engaging and thought provoking and ultimately move science forward.

For example, we can more readily quantify jealousy in a given situation if we make some formal priors while setting up our theory (see example) (4/5) @dconroybeam.bsky.social #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025

One solution? Express theories via formal mathmatical modeling. Formalizing specific predicted values allows us to more accurately compare, test, and update our assumptions than just making broad, directional verbal predictions (3/5) @dconroybeam.bsky.social #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025

EPs tend to be good at generating verbal hypotheses. One problem with verbal theorizing though is that it’s like playing a game of telephone.. perception of hypothetical constructs varies across researchers & generates noise (2/5) #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025 @dconroybeam.bsky.social

@dconroybeam.bsky.social gave all of us the talk we needed to hear about ways to improve our work through more formal theoretical modeling. Clear testable predictions are just as important to field replicability as good methods and analysis! (1/5) #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025 #InDanWeTrust

Biggest take away: Will is awesome. Archeozoology is FANTASTIC. the use of genome studies & his work on horse bones show us how science should be done. Plus the gene culture coevolution leading to the adoption of horse use as opposed to other pack animals 🔥

Horses were one of our oldest preferred food sources, but they have since become central friends in many cultures and we build slightly murderous but beloved airport statues of them. How and when did this switch happen? (2/3) #SPSP2025 #EPatSPSP2025