Katherine McAuliffe
Principal Investigator
Katherine McAuliffe is an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College where she directs the Cooperation Lab and co-directs the Boston College Virtue Project. Her past work has focused on how children across societies acquire and enforce norms of cooperation, with a particular focus on children’s emerging understanding of fairness. More recently she has begun to study the psychology of virtue from a developmental and cross-cultural perspective, specifically investigating the mechanisms that promote honesty, fairness, forgiveness and trustworthiness in children and adults alike. She complements these lines of work with a comparative approach, examining how nonhuman animals solve cooperative dilemmas. She received a BSc in Marine Biology from Dalhousie University, an MPhil in Biological Anthropology from Cambridge University and a PhD in Human Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University.
Richard Ahl
Post - Doctoral Scholar
Rick received his B.A. from Brown University and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University. His previous research explored children’s intuitive theories about the human-made and social worlds. His current research is aimed at uncovering children’s intuitive economic theories about resource valuation and distribution, building off his prior finding that children view high-wealth people as likely to share with others. As part of the Virtue Project team, he leads studies on how moral exemplars can promote fair and honest behavior in adolescents and adults. In collaboration with Dorsa Amir, he also studies cross-cultural and developmental variation in children’s virtuous behavior.
Shalini Gautam
Post - Doctoral Scholar
Shalini received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Queensland, Australia, under the supervision of Professor Thomas Suddendorf. She is particularly interested in how children’s understanding of possibilities in the past, present and future may influence their moral judgements and behaviours. For example, can young children reflect on how things might have gone differently in the past? Are they able to imagine and prepare for the future? How, and in what way, do children make moral judgements if they cannot yet imagine such possibilities? What moral exemplars influence children’s virtuous behaviour? In her postdoc, and as part of the Virtue Team, she wants to explore such questions both in the U.S. and cross-culturally.
Julia Marshall
Post - Doctoral Scholar
Julia received her B.A. in psychology from Emory University and her PhD in psychology from Yale University under the supervision of Dr. Paul Bloom. She is broadly interested in social cognitive development and cooperation. Specifically, Julia is interested in what dimensions children and adults rely upon to shape intuitions about obligation. For example, do children and adults utilize social relationship (i.e., friends, strangers) to guide their judgments about obligation? Additionally, Julia is also interested in the emergence of cooperative behavior, specifically punishment. When do children punish others and why? In her post-doc, Julia will be examining these questions further through an intergroup lens. How do group dynamics impact children's and adults' judgments about obligation? And, how do such dynamics also matter for the emergence of punishment in young children?
Jacob Glassman
Graduate Student
Jacob is a second-year Ph.D. student and a NSF GRFP fellow in the Cooperation Lab at Boston College. Jacob graduated from the University of Maryland where he earned degrees in psychology and philosophy and a minor in statistics. Jacob's research broadly explores how children and adults think about and engage in intergroup conflict resolution, and his current work investigates different constructive intergroup conflict resolution strategies like compromise and forgiveness. He is also interested in how intergroup conflict is transmitted intergenerationally and how perceptions of threat are associated with the development of intergroup attitudes and behavior. Jacob is passionate about harnessing research in the pursuit of resolving intergroup conflict and conducts research which has the potential to contribute to this goal.
Abby McLaughlin
Graduate Student
Abby received her BA in Neuroscience from Columbia University and is now a fourth-year grad student in the Cooperation Lab. She is interested in the development of religious beliefs and the ways in which these beliefs affect children's social behavior. She is also interested in the motivations underlying punitive behavior and forgiveness.
Sophie Riddick
Lab Coordinator
Sophie received her B.A. in Psychology from Providence College in December 2021 and is now a full-time lab coordinator for the Cooperation Lab. She is intrigued by children’s developing social cognition, particularly as it relates to their reasoning about resource transfers and wealth inequality. Specifically, she is curious about (1) when in development children start to distinguish between differing means of acquiring resources (i.e., self-acquisition vs. inheritance, windfall vs. effortful gain), (2) whether children differentially value and perceive resources as a function of how those resources are acquired, and (3) whether this consequently results in distinctive patterns of sharing.
Gabby Drake
THESIS STUDENT
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Spring 2022.
Amy Lu
THESIS STUDENT
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Spring 2022.
Alexa Riley
Thesis student
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Mikaela Savage
thesis student
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Julia Smith
thesis student
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Caroline Walsh
thesis student
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Kirin Zhang
thesis student
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Spring 2022.
Blair Zhou
thesis student
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Shelby Colvin
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Spring 2023.
Grace Cuddihy
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Taline Deukmedjian
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Jack Dwyer
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Cory Easton
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Summer 2022.
Victoria Fertig
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Spring 2023.
Mairead Gatcliffe
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Ashley Kim
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2023.
Eunice Kong
Research Assistant
Student at Wellesley College. Lab member since Summer 2023.
Anastasia Prussakova
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Summer 2022.
Sabrina Rick
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Spring 2023.
Grace Wen
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Spring 2023.
Olivia Wen
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2022.
Sarah Wiederman
Research Assistant
Student at Boston College. Lab member since Fall 2023.
Lab Alumni
Paul Deutchman
former Graduate Student
Paul was a graduate student in the Cooperation Lab from August 2018 to May 2023. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania where he is conducting research with the Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics and teaching psychology capstone courses in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program.
Aaron Baker
Former Lab Coordinator
Aaron joined the Cooperation lab in September of 2020 after receiving his B.A. in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley and worked as a lab manager until August 2022. He is interested in building models that better account for how agents incorporate social information as part of their cognitive mechanisms. He is now a graduate student at Yale University, studying social learning and computational modeling.
Hannah Bolotin
Former Lab Coordinator
Hannah was a lab manager for the Cooperation Lab. She is interested in how intergroup relations and biases influence cooperation and administration of punishment. She received a B.A. in psychology and education from Wesleyan University and was a part of the lab from June 2019 to December 2021.
Justin Martin
Former POST-DOCTORAL SCHOLAR
Justin was a post-doctoral researcher in our lab from November 2017 to June 2021. Justin's research focused on the ways in which humans regulate each others' behavior. In particular, his research focused on how humans use punishment to change others' behavior, and how this adaptive purpose has shaped the processes underlying punishment. He is now a Senior Associate Data Scientist at JPMorgan.
Laurent Pretot
Former POST-Doctoral researcher
Laurent was a SNSF post-doctoral researcher from September 2017 to August 2020. He is now a professor of experimental psychology at Pittsburg State University, Kansas, where he teaches various psychology courses and continues his research on decision-making in children and other animal species.
Melisa Kumar
Former graduate student
Melisa was a graduate student in our lab from January 2018 to December 2020. She now lives in Istanbul, Turkey and is an entrepreneur in the wellness sector.
Mikey Bogese
Former lab coordinator
Mikey was a lab coordinator from January 2019 to August 2019. He is now a graduate student at Hunter College, studying animal behavior.
Gorana Gonzalez
Former lab coordinator
Gorana was a lab coordinator from May 2016 to May 2019. She is now a graduate student at UMass Amherst, studying children’s racial social cognition.
Lily Tsoi
FORMER graduate student
Lily was a graduate student from Summer 2016 to Spring 2018. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University.
