Yvan Russell

Dr. Yvan Russell is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Middlesex University's Faculty of Science and Technology. His research focuses on evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, and animal behavior studies. He holds a PhD in evolutionary and comparative psychology, with expertise in social behavior mechanisms across species. His work bridges disciplines like economics, biology, and cognitive science, exploring topics such as cooperation dynamics, reputation systems, and decision-making under uncertainty.

Key research areas include: cooperative strategies in common-pool resource games, AI's capacity to model human cooperation, and the role of biophilia in sustaining ecological resources. He has published extensively on topics like vaccine hesitancy drivers, childhood social homophily, and interdisciplinary research challenges. His experimental work spans primatology (e.g., chimpanzee grooming reciprocity) and avian kleptoparasitism patterns.

Recent projects analyze how GPT models operationalize prompts for altruism/competitiveness and examine environmental vs social uncertainties' impact on resource appropriation. Russell also investigates how evolutionary principles apply to modern human behavior through experimental economics frameworks.

His academic contributions span over 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, with active supervision of postgraduate research. He maintains a lab focused on interdisciplinary behavioral studies, combining field observations with computational modeling.