Leda Cosmides (born May 1957) is an American

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how ...

, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, helped develop the field of

evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...

Biography

Cosmides originally studied

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditar ...

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, receiving her BA in 1979. While an undergraduate, she was influenced by the renowned

evolutionary biologist Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...

Robert L. Trivers Robert Ludlow "Bob" Trivers (; born February 19, 1943) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), a ...

, who was her advisor. In 1985, Cosmides received a PhD in

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...

from Harvard. After completing postdoctoral work under Roger Shepard at Stanford University, she joined the faculty of the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the ...

in 1991, becoming a full professor in 2000. In 1992, together with Tooby and

Jerome Barkow Jerome H. Barkow is a Canadian anthropologist at Dalhousie University who has made important contributions to the field of evolutionary psychology. He received a BA in Psychology from Brooklyn College in 1964 and a PhD in Human Development from the ...

, Cosmides edited '' The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture''. She and Tooby also co-founded and co-direct the Center for Evolutionary Psychology. Cosmides was awarded the 1988 American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research, the 1993

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It has ...

Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology, a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

, the 2005 National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award, and the 2020

Jean Nicod Prize The Jean Nicod Prize is awarded annually in Paris to a leading philosopher of mind or philosophically oriented cognitive scientist. The lectures are organized by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique as part of its effort to promote i ...

Selected publications

Books *Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., (eds) (1992) ''The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture'' (New York: Oxford University Press). *Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2000) ''Evolutionary psychology: Foundational papers'' (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). *Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (in press) ''Universal Minds: Explaining the new science of evolutionary psychology'' (Darwinism Today Series) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Papers *Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1981) Cytoplasmic inheritance and intragenomic conflict. ''Journal of Theoretical Biology'', 89, 83-129. *Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1987) "From evolution to behavior: Evolutionary psychology as the missing link" in J. Dupre (ed.), ''The latest on the best: Essays on evolution and optimality'' (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press). *Cosmides, L. (1989) "The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task," ''Cognition'', 31, 187–276. *Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1992) "Cognitive adaptations for social exchange," in Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., (eds) (1992) ''The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture'' (New York: Oxford University Press). *Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2003) "Evolutionary psychology: Theoretical Foundations," in ''Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science'' (London: Macmillan). *Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2005) "Evolutionary psychology: Conceptual foundations," in D. M. Buss (ed.), ''Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology'' (New York: Wiley). *

References

External links

Leda Cosmides's Website

Detailed CV

Center for Evolutionary Psychology
by Leda Cosmides & John Tooby

Barkow, Jerome H., Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby (eds), New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992 {{DEFAULTSORT:Cosmides, Leda American women psychologists American psychologists American cognitive scientists Evolutionary psychologists Human Behavior and Evolution Society Stanford University alumni University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Scientists from Philadelphia Radcliffe College alumni 1957 births Living people Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows Jean Nicod Prize laureates 21st-century American women scientists

Biography

Selected publications

See also

References

External links