No one can play a symphony, build a city, or carry a couch down a flight of stairs entirely on their own. How do humans combine their limited knowledge and resources into something greater than the sum of its parts? Our lab studies the cognitive capacities and community dynamics that make human collaboration possible. Our work combines behavioral studies of children and adults, Bayesian cognitive models, fMRI, and analyses of large datasets.
Research Themes
Mechanisms of Social Cognition
The great strength—and challenge—of collaborations is that they combine the efforts of people with different minds. How do we learn about our collaborators and anticipate what they will do, given the limited time and cognitive resources available to us?
Competence & Division of Labor
Successful collaboration requires that we understand what we can do, what others can do, and how we complement each other. How do we learn about our own and other people’s competence, and how do we use this understanding to divide labor?
Collaboration in Communities
In order to understand collaboration, it’s important to understand not just individual intelligences, but also how communities create conditions where that intelligence can shine. How do community structures shape the outcome of collaborations?
Lab News
