Women in Science and Engineering at Yale (2020 Edition)

Laurie Santos, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology

Laurie Santos’s research tries to address the broad question of what makes human cognition unique. What are the origins of the capacities that make our species so interestingly smart, and so different from the other organisms around us? And how is it that a species as smart as us can at times be so biased and irrational? In short, what cognitive capacities give rise to both the good and bad aspects of human nature, and how did such cognitive capacities emerge over evolution? To examine these big questions, she studies the origins of human cognition from an evolutionary perspective. Most of her work to date has examined cognition in our closest relatives, non-human primates. Her goal is not only to gain insight into the kinds of abilities that are unique to the human species, but also into the capacities that are shared broadly across the primate order. She teaches the most popular course ever in Yale’s history “Psychology and the Good Life." In the Fall of 2019, she started a podcast titled “The Happiness Lab” which has proven to be widely successful and enjoyed by many, in and out of academia.

Professor Santos's lab has shown that dogs are more rational at solving problems than humans. Photo credit: Laurie Santos