Leda Cosmides

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Leda Cosmides

Biographical information

Leda Cosmides, (born May 7, 1957 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American psychologist, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology.

Cosmides originally studied biology at Harvard University, receiving her A.B. in 1979. While an undergraduate she was influenced by the pioneering evolutionary biologist Robert L. Trivers who was her advisor. In 1985 Cosmides received a Ph.D in cognitive psychology (also from Harvard). After completing postdoctoral work under Roger Shepard at Stanford University, Cosmides joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1991, becoming a full professor in 2000.

In 1992, together with John Tooby and Jerome Barkow, Cosmides edited the immensely influential book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. She and Tooby also co-founded and co-direct the Center for Evolutionary Psychology.

Honors

Cosmides was awarded the 1988 American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research, the 1993 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2005 National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award.

Publications

Books

• Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., (1992) (ed)s.. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195101073

• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000). Universal Minds: Explaining the New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. New Haven: Yale University Press.

• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2000). Evolutionary Psychology: Foundational Papers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Book Chapters

• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1987). From evolution to behavior: Evolutionary psychology as the missing link. In J. Dupre (Ed.), The latest on the best: Essays on evolution and optimality. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Full text
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1991). Reasoning and natural selection. In Encyclopedia of Human Biology, vol. 6. San Diego: Academic Press.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.Full text]
• Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. & Barkow, J. (1992). Evolutionary psychology and conceptual integration. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation` of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1994). Origins of domain-specificity: The evolution of functional organization. In L. Hirschfeld & S. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the Mind: Domain-specificity in cognition and culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1995). Mapping the evolved functional organization of mind and brain. In M. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1995). From function to structure: The role of evolutionary biology and computational theories in cognitive neuroscience. In M. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Full text
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1995). From evolution to adaptations to behavior: Toward an integrated evolutionary psychology. In R. Wong (Ed.), Biological perspectives on motivated activities. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
• Tooby, J, & Cosmides, L. (1995). The language of the eyes as an evolved language of mind. Forward to: Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. By Simon Baron-Cohen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1996). Friendship and the Banker's Paradox: Other pathways to the evolution of adaptations for altruism. In W. G. Runciman, J. Maynard Smith, & R. I. M. Dunbar (Eds.), Evolution of Social Behaviour Patterns in Primates and Man. Proceedings of the British Academy, 88, 119-143.
• Cosmides, L.& Tooby, J. (1996). Think again. In: Betzig, L. (Ed.) Human Nature: A Critical Reader (pp. 292-294). NY: Oxford University Press [ Full text]
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1997). The multimodular nature of human intelligence. In A. Schiebel & J. W. Schopf (Eds.), Origin and evolution of intelligence. Center for the Study of the Evolution and Origin of Life, UCLA. (pp. 71-101).
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1997). Dissecting the computational architecture of social inference mechanisms.In: Characterizing human psychological adaptations (Ciba Foundation Symposium #208). Chichester: Wiley. (pp. 132-156).
• Thornhill, N., Cosmides, L., Maryanski, A., Meyer, P., Tooby, J., & Turner, J. (1997). Evolutionary theory and human social institutions: Psychological foundations. In P. Weingart, P. Richerson, S. Mitchell, & S Maasen (Eds.), Human by nature: Between biology and the social sciences. (pp. 201-252). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Turner, J., Borgerhoff Mulder, M., Cosmides, L., Giesen, B., Hodgson, G., Maryanski, A., Shennan, S., Tooby, J., & Velichkovsky, B. (1997). Looking back: Historical and theoretical context of present practice. In P. Weingart, P. Richerson, S. Mitchell, & S Maasen (Eds.), Human by nature: Between biology and the social sciences. (pp. 17-64). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Stone, V. E., Baron-Cohen, S., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. and Knight, R. T., (1997). Selective impairment of social inference abilities following orbitofrontal cortex damage. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, M. G. Shafto and P. Langley (Eds.), London: Larwrence Erlbaum, p. 1062.
• Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1998). Start with Darwin… In M. S. Gazzaniga & J. Altman (Eds.), Brain and Mind: Evolutionary Perspectives. Vol. 5, pp.10-15. Strasbourg, France: Human Frontier Science Program.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1999). Evolutionary psychology. MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. (pp. 294-297). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000). The cognitive neuroscience of social reasoning. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The New Cognitive Neurosciences, Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Chapter 87, pp. 1259-1270.)

• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2000). Toward mapping the evolved functional organization of mind and brain. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The New Cognitive Neurosciences, Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Chapter 80, pp. 1167-1178.)
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000). Introduction. Evolution, Section X (Chapters 80-87). In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The New Cognitive Neurosciences, Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (pp. 1163-1166.)
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000). Evolutionary psychology and the emotions In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of Emotions, 2nd Edition. (pp. 91-115.) NY: Guilford. HTML click here
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000). Consider the source: The evolution of adaptations for decoupling and metarepresentation. In D. Sperber (Ed.), Metarepresentations: A multidisciplinary perspective. (pp. 53-115.) Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science. NY: Oxford University Press.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2001). Unraveling the enigma of human intelligence: Evolutionary psychology and the multimodular mind. In R. J. Sternberg & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The evolution of intelligence. (pp. 145-198). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2003). Evolutionary psychology: Theoretical Foundations. In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. (pp. 54-64). London: Macmillan.
• Sell, A., Hagen, E., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2003). Evolutionary Psychology: Applications and Criticisms. In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. (pp. 47-53). London: Macmillan.
• Lieberman, D., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (in press). The evolution of human incest avoidance mechanisms: An evolutionary psychological approach. In A. Wolf & J. P. Takala (eds.), Evolution and the Moral Emotions: Appreciating Edward Westermarck. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2004). Knowing thyself: The evolutionary psychology of moral reasoning and moral sentiments. In R. E. Freeman and P. Werhane (Eds.), Business, Science, and Ethics. The Ruffin Series No. 4. (pp. 91-127). Charlottesville, VA: Society for Business Ethics.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2005). Social exchange: The evolutionary design of a neurocognitive system. In Michael S. Gazzaniga, (Ed.), The New Cognitive Neurosciences, III (pp. 1295-1308). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Tooby, J., Cosmides, L. & Barrett, H. C. (2005). Resolving the debate on innate ideas: Learnability constraints and the evolved interpenetration of motivational and conceptual functions. In Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S. (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Content. NY: Oxford University Press. *Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2005). Neurocognitive adaptations designed for social exchange. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 584-627). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2005). Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5-67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Papers

• Cosmides, L. (1983). Invariances in the acoustic expression of emotion during speech. Journal of Experimental Psychology:Human Perception and Performance, 9, 864-881. Full text
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1989). Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, Part I. Theoretical considerations. Ethology & Sociobiology, 10, 29-49. Full text
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1989). Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, Part II. Case study: A computational theory of social exchange. Ethology & Sociobiology, 10, 51-97.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1989). The innate versus the manifest: How universal does universal have to be? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 36-37.
• Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31, 187-276. Full text
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1989). Kin selection, genic selection, and information-dependent strategies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 542-544.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1989). Adaptation versus phylogeny: The role of animal psychology in the study of human behavior.International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2, 105-118.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1989). Evolutionary psychologists need to distinguish between the evolutionary process, ancestral selection pressures, and psychological mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12(4), 724-725.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1990). On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: The role of genetics and adaptation. Journal of Personality, 58, 17-67.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1990). The past explains the present: Emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethology and Sociobiology, 11, 375-424.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1990). Toward an adaptationist psycholinguistics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 760-762.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1994). Beyond intuition and instinct blindness: The case for an evolutionarily rigorous cognitive science.Cognition, 50, 41-77.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1994). Better than rational: Evolutionary psychology and the invisible hand. American Economic Review, 84 (2), 327-332.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1996). Are humans good intuitive statisticians after all?: Rethinking some conclusions of the literature on judgment under uncertainty. [[Cognition], 58, 1-73.
• Brase, G., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1998). Individuation, Counting, and Statistical Inference: The role of frequency and whole object representations in judgment under uncertainty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 3-21.
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1999). Towards an evolutionary taxonomy of treatable conditions.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 453-464.
• Rode, C., Cosmides, L., Hell, W., & Tooby, J. (1999). When and why do people avoid unknown probabilities in decisions under uncertainty? Testing some predictions from optimal foraging theory.Cognition, 72, 269-304.
• Fiddick, L., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2000). No interpretation without representation: The role of domain-specific representations and inferences in the Wason selection task. Cognition, 77, 1-79.
• Duchaine, B., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2001). Evolutionary psychology and the brain. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 11(2), 225-230.
• Klein, S. B., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. & Chance, S. (2001). Priming exceptions: A test of the scope hypothesis in naturalistic trait judgments. Social Cognition, 19, 443-468.
• Kurzban, R., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased?: Coalitional computation and social categorization.[ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences]], 98(26), 15387-15392.
• Klein, S., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., & Chance, S. (2002). Decisions and the evolution of memory: Multiple systems, multiple functions. Psychological Review, 109, 306-329.
• Price, M. E., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2002). Punitive sentiment as an anti-free rider psychological device. Evolution and Human Behavior, 23, 203-231.
• Klein, S., Rozendahl, K., & Cosmides, L. (2002). A social-cognitive neuroscience analysis of the Self. Social Cognition, 20, 105-135.
• Klein, S., Cosmides, L., Costabile, K., & Mei, L. (2002). Is there something special about the self? A neuropsychological case study. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 490-506.
• Sugiyama, L., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2002). Cross-cultural evidence of cognitive adaptations for social exchange among the Shiwiar of Ecuadorian Amazonia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(17), 11537-11542.
• Stone, V., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Kroll, N. & Knight, R. (2002). Selective Impairment of Reasoning About Social Exchange in a Patient with Bilateral Limbic System Damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(17), 11531-11536.
• Lieberman, D., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2003). Does morality have a biological basis? An empirical test of the factors governing moral sentiments relating to incest. Proceedings of the Royal Society London (Biological Sciences), 270(1517), 819-826.
• Klein, S., Cosmides, L. & Costabile, K. (2003). Preserved knowledge of self in a case of Alzheimer's dementia. Social Cognition, 21(2), 157-165
• Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. & Kurzban, R. (2003). Perceptions of race. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(4), 173-179 .
• Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2003). Review of Religion Explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought (by Pascal Boyer). Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(1), pp. 109-113.
• Tooby, J., Cosmides, L. & Barrett, H. C. (2003). The second law of thermodynamics is the first law of psychology: Evolutionary developmental psychology and the theory of tandem, coordinated inheritances. Psychological Bulletin, 129(6), 858-865.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2004). The design of the maternal motivation system.. Current Anthropology, 44, S45-46.
• Klein, S., Cosmides, L., Murray, E. & Tooby, J. (2004) On the acquisition of knowledge about personality traits: Does learning about the self engage different mechanisms than learning about others? Social Cognition, 22(4), 367-390.

Klein, S., German, T., Cosmides, L. & Gabriel, R. (2004). A theory of autobiolographical memory: Necessary components and disorders resulting from their loss. Social Cognition, 22(5), 460-490.

• Cosmides, L, Tooby, J., Fiddick, L. & Bryant, G. (2005). Detecting cheaters. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(11), 505-506.
• Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., & Price, M. (2006). Cognitive adaptations for n-person exchange: The evolutionary roots of organizational behavior. Managerial and Decision Economics, 27, 103-129.
• Ermer, E., Guerin, S., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., & Miller, M. (2006) Theory of mind broad and narrow: Reasoning about social exchange engages ToM areas, precautionary reasoning does not. Social Neuroscience, 1 (3-4), 196-219.

External links

• List of publications