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Psychology

D-Index
82
Citations
58850
World Ranking
1293
National Ranking
779

Research.com Recognitions

  • 2020 - Jean Nicod Prize, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
  • 2005 - National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award
  • 1999 - Fellow of John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Overview

Leda Cosmides is affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara in the United States. Their research spans multiple areas in the social sciences and psychology, with a focus on evolutionary game theory, cooperation, and the psychology of moral and emotional judgment.

The primary fields of study for this scientist include:

  • Social Sciences
  • Psychology

Their subfields of study are:

  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Safety Research
  • Social Psychology

Key topics addressed in their work are:

  • Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
  • Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
  • Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
  • Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
  • Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Cultural Differences and Values
  • Social and Cultural Dynamics

Recent publications include:

  • "A moral trade-off system produces intuitive judgments that are rational and coherent and strike a balance between conflicting moral values," 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • "The evolution of war and its cognitive foundations," 2025, Evolution and Human Behavior
  • "Cognitive foundations for helping and harming others: Making welfare tradeoffs in industrialized and small-scale societies," 2023, Evolution and Human Behavior
  • "Rational inferences about social valuation," 2023, Cognition
  • "Partisans use emotions as social pressure: Feeling anger and gratitude at exiters and recruits in political groups," 2021, Party Politics

Frequently publishing venues include:

  • Evolution and Human Behavior
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Cognition
  • Party Politics
  • PLoS ONE

Their most frequent coauthors are:

  • John Tooby
  • Daniel Sznycer
  • Sakura Arai
  • Ricardo Andrés Guzmán
  • María Teresa Barbato

Leda Cosmides has been recognized with several awards, including:

  • Jean Nicod Prize, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), 2020
  • National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award, 2005
  • Fellow of John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1999

Best Publications

  • The psychological foundations of culture.

    John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • The Adapted mind : evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture

    Jerome H. Barkow;Leda Cosmides;John Tooby

  • The logic of social exchange: has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task.

    Leda Cosmides

  • The past explains the present: Emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments

    John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • Cognitive adaptations for social exchange.

    Leda Cosmides;John Tooby

  • Are humans good intuitive statisticians after all? Rethinking some conclusions from the literature on judgment under uncertainty.

    Leda Cosmides;John Tooby

  • On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: the role of genetics and adaptation.

    John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • The Adapted Mind

    Leda Cosmides;Jerome H. Barkow

  • Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization

    Robert Kurzban;John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • From evolution to behavior: Evolutionary psychology as the missing link.

    Leda Cosmides;John Tooby

  • Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology

    John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, part II: Case study: A computational theory of social exchange

    Leda Cosmides;John Tooby

  • Formidability and the logic of human anger

    Aaron Nathaniel Sell;John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • Friendship and the Banker's Paradox: Other Pathways to the Evolution of Adaptations for Altruism

    John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • The architecture of human kin detection

    Debra Lieberman;Debra Lieberman;John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • Mapping the mind: Origins of domain specificity: The evolution of functional organization

    Leda Cosmides;John Tooby

  • Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, part I: Theoretical considerations

    John Tooby;Leda Cosmides

  • Better than rational: Evolutionary psychology and the invisible hand

    Leda Cosmides;John Tooby

  • Evolutionary psychology: A Primer

    Leda Cosmides;John Tooby

  • Cytoplasmic inheritance and intragenomic conflict

    Leda Murlas Cosmides;John Tooby

Frequent Co-Authors

John Tooby
John Tooby University of California, Santa Barbara
Stanley B. Klein
Stanley B. Klein University of California, Santa Barbara
Michael Bang Petersen
Michael Bang Petersen Aarhus University
Debra Lieberman
Debra Lieberman University of Miami
Shaul Shalvi
Shaul Shalvi University of Amsterdam
Robert Kurzban
Robert Kurzban University of Pennsylvania
Kenneth R. Hammond
Kenneth R. Hammond University of Colorado Boulder
Andrew M. Colman
Andrew M. Colman University of Leicester
Jerry A. Coyne
Jerry A. Coyne University of Chicago
Nancy Tyler Burley
Nancy Tyler Burley University of California, Irvine

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