CEL Alumni: Graduate Students

Fiery Cushman (BA, Harvard College, 2003)

(email): cushman@wjh.harvard.edu

I studied cooperative and moral behavior in humans and nonhuman primates. I am interested in the adaptive history of moral behavior as well as the cognitive mechanisms that currently underly the 'moral sense' in humans and nonhuman primates. I employed an ethological approach to these questions in humans and non-humans alike. I am less interested in formal philosophy and lab-conditioned behaviors than in the natural use of moral intuitions in everyday social interaction. To learn about my research in humans and participate in an online study, please visit the Moral Sense Test website.

Rebecca Coughlin, Department of Psychology (BA, Princeton University, 1999)
email: coughlin@fas.harvard.edu

My interests are in the origins of human culture: where does human culture depart from biology and other animal cultures; how are human thought, behavior, and culture still biologically motivated; and how are we biological creatures that seem to have gone so far beyond the constraints of biology? To examine where human culture might depart from animal cultures, I am interested in comparisons of the developments of specific behaviors and cognitive abilities in humans and nonhumans. These comparisons may allow us to consider how and why such behaviors and abilities evolved in humans, and how they contribute to our capacity for culture. I am also interested in the similarities and differences between human and primate social behavior, and how they affect human behavior and culture. Currently, my attention is focused on elements of observational learning and innovation.

Brian Wood, Biological Anthropology
email: bmwood@fas.harvard.edu

Through my research, I hoped to gain a greater understanding of the evolutionary processes that shaped human origins and continue to influence how we live today. Toward this goal, I am interested in testing hypotheses about the social and reproductive goals which guide economic decisions. My dissertation research focused on food production and food distribution among the Hadza hunter-gatherers of northern Tanzania. Having previously worked with the Ache forargers of
Paraguay, I feel that living and working with some of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies is an amazing privilege and opportunity to address exciting behavioral ecology problems within a
socio-ecological setting that is most relevant to our species' history. Some of my other interests include the evolution and behavioral ecology of primates, spatial analysis, computer modeling, and ethnoarchaeology. I was advised by Frank Marlowe, Richard Wrangham, and Marc Hauser.

Coren Apicella, Graduate Student in Biological Anthropology
email: apicella@fas.harvard.edu
Website

My research focused on human mating and parenting strategies. While completing my master’s degree in Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Liverpool, I examined how both paternity confidence and self-perceived mate value affects men’s investment in their children. For my PhD, I studied mate choice and attractiveness and their relationship to health and reproductive success in the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer population in Northern Tanzania. My advisors were Frank Marlowe, Marc Hauser and Richard Wrangham.

Felix Warneken, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Visiting Graduate Student
email: warneken@eva.mpg.de

My research focused on the ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins of cooperation
and altruism. I investigated this by comparing the behavior of young children (1
to 2 years of age) with that of chimpanzees. Such comparisons enable us to
distinguish aspects of social behaviors which were already present in the
common ancestor to chimpanzees and humans from aspects which have evolved only in the human lineage. These studies were done as part of my dissertation at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany
(www.eva.mpg.de). I was a visiting researcher at the Cognitive
Evolution Laboratory, working on a version of the Moral Sense Test for children.

Ricardo Gil-da-Costa, PhD

Graduate Student

Current Affiliation: National Institutes of Health

Email: rcosta@helix.nih.gov

M. Keith Chen, PhD
Graduate Student
Current Affiliation: Assistant Professor, Economics, Yale University

Email: keith.chen@yale.edu

Website.