Experts
Laurie Santos
Professor of Psychology, Yale University
A conversation with the director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at Yale University. Read More
Scientists had to consider how primates think in order to develop the right experiments to study them. Read More
Why Wall Street investors may think more like monkeys than we might have imagined. Read More
Why our prejudices may be deeply ingrained in our evolutionary development. Read More
Our ability to learn from others is crucial for the evolution of cumulative technologies, but often paralyzes our causal intuition. Read More
Our two closest living primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, leave scientists puzzled over the origins of human sexual behavior. Read More
There are morphological indications that we're somewhere between a species meant to pair bond and our polygamist evolutionary relatives. Read More
From elaborate dancing displays to incredibly attractive armpits, the animal kingdom is full of colorful ways for males to woo mates. Read More
Cognitive science reveals that policymakers should better understand how deeply our decisions are influenced by the presentation of choices. Read More
From falling prey to expectations to taking advice from friends, an understanding of our cognitive evolution helps us avoid misperceiving the limits of our knowledge. Read More
Dr. Laurie Santos’s studies of monkey “economics” suggest that greedy, loss-averse human behavior may have deep evolutionary origins. Read More
What separates us from the apes may be the human tendency to nudge other humans and say, “Hey, look at this cool thing.” Read More
Can monkeys reason about what’s going on inside others’ heads? To find out, Dr. Laurie Santos placed them in a position to trick human researchers. Read More
The Yale psychologist explains why she studies human infants and adult monkeys that are so smart they’re named after James Bond characters. Read More
A conversation with the professor of psychology at Yale University. Read More
About Laurie Santos
Dr. Laurie Santos is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Her research provides an interface between evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, exploring the evolutionary origins of the human mind by comparing the cognitive abilities of human and non-human primates. Her experiments focus on non-human primates (in captivity and in the field), incorporating methodologies from cognitive development, animal learning psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.