About
Katherine McAuliffe studies co-operation in humans and nonhuman animals, asking how co-operative behaviour evolved, develops and is sustained across human societies.
Her work combines theory and methodology from psychology, anthropology and evolutionary biology. McAuliffe directs the Cooperation Lab at Boston College. Work in the lab addresses big questions about the origins of co-operation. For instance, one line of research focuses on how children acquire norms of co-operation across societies, when they begin to comply with these norms and when they begin to enforce them in others. The lab also looks at whether children and adults are more co-operative with members of their own groups (and, if so, when). McAuliffe believes that a better understanding of the psychology that underlies co-operative norms can allow us to harness the power of those norms, to promote co-operation in children and adults alike.
Awards
Association for Psychological Science Rising Star, 2017
Society for Research in Child Development, Early Career Research Contributions
award, 2017
Relevant Publications
McAuliffe, K. et al. "The developmental foundations of human fairness." Nature Human Behaviour 1 (2017).
Blake, P.R.,* and K. McAuliffe* et al. "The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies." Nature 528 (2015): 258–61. *Indicates joint first authorship.
McAuliffe, K., and Y. Dunham. "Fairness overrides group bias in children’s second-party punishment." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 146 (2017): 485–94.
McAuliffe, K., N.J. Raihani, and Y. Dunham. "Children are sensitive to norms of giving." Cognition 167 (2017): 151–59.
McAuliffe, K., J. Jordan, and F. Warneken. "Costly third-party punishment in young children." Cognition 134 (2015): 1–10.