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 indi ...

, who, together with

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

husband

John Tooby John Tooby (born 1952) is an American anthropologist, who, together with psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology. Biography Tooby received his PhD in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University i ...

, 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 evolv ...

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 hereditary i ...

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 higher le ...

, 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 for ...

Robert L. Trivers, 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 Roger Newland Shepard (January 30, 1929 – May 30, 2022) was an American cognitive scientist and author of the "universal law of generalization" (1987). He was considered a father of research on spatial relations. He studied mental rotation, an ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, 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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

in 1991, becoming a full professor in 2000. In 1992, together with Tooby and Jerome Barkow, 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 Center for Evolutionary Psychology (CEP) is a research center co-founded and co-directed by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides and is affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara. The center is meant to provide research support and compr ...

. 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 ha ...

Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology The Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology is an annual award that has been given by the American Psychological Association since 1974. It is given to outstanding research psychologists who are in the early st ...

, 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 National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award is a research initiative first announced in 2004 designed to support individual scientists' biomedical research. The focus is specifically on "pioneering" research that is highly innovative ...

, 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 int ...

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