Psychology

Joanna Scheib

Associate Adjunct Professor

Publications

Teaching

Dr. Scheib's research focuses on psychosocial issues among individuals and couples who use donor insemination to build their families.  This includes developing policies for releasing sperm donor identities to adult offspring, and examining the effects of open-identity donation on recipient families, adults with donor origins, and donors and their families.  Other research focuses on family-building among single women and lesbian couples, identifying the role of psychosocial resources in women's decisions to have children, and determining how women choose sperm donors.  Dr. Scheib conducts research in collaboration with The Sperm Bank of California in Berkeley - the first organization in the USA to offer open-identity donation.

Dr. Scheib also conducts research on human mate choice and reproductive relationships using theories of natural selection and research findings from anthropology, social psychology, and animal behaviour. Specifically, she examines female choice for attributes indicative of a mate's quality and the role of cooperation in the joint endeavor of a mateship.

Link to research at  The Sperm Bank of California.