Dr. Laurie Santos

Biography

Laurie Santos is the Chandrika Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003. Her research focuses on understanding what makes the human mind unique by comparing cognitive capacities between non-human animals and humans. Santos directs the Canine Primate Laboratory (CapLab), where she explores the origins of human cognition by studying groups of non-human animals, particularly our closest evolutionary relatives, non-human primates. Her lab utilizes methods from cognitive development to directly compare the abilities of non-linguistic primates with preverbal human infants. Additionally, the lab investigates the role of human experience in shaping non-human animals' cognition by focusing on domesticated dogs. Current research projects delve into whether non-human animals exhibit aspects of human-like theory of mind and how they use representations to navigate moral problems. Furthermore, she studies how animals share human-like decision-making biases and the nature of human-unique constraints in pedagogy and social learning.

Research Interests