Jonathan Schulz

Jonathan Schulz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University and a visiting scholar at Stanford University. He serves as Co-Principal Investigator of the interdisciplinary Historical Psychology Project and holds a board position with ASREC (Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture).

His research centers on Cultural Evolution, specifically examining how human psychology co-evolves with formal and informal institutions to shape contemporary societal structures. Key focus areas include the historical impact of kinship networks on economic development, behavioral responses to institutional change, and the psychological roots of cooperation patterns influenced by religious and social frameworks.

Dr. Schulz received the 2023 Royal Economic Society Prize for his groundbreaking work on Kin-networks and Institutional Development. His research has been published in premier journals including Science, Nature, Nature Human Behavior, PNAS, and Journal of Political Economy, and has received extensive coverage in major media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

He leads the Historical Psychology Project, an interdisciplinary research initiative investigating how kinship structures influence psychological traits, political behaviors, and economic outcomes across societies, utilizing methodologies ranging from game theory to analysis of historical and modern social networks.