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 | Laurie Santos
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Laurie Santos is named a ‘Brilliant Ten’ scientist
Laurie Santos, associate professor of psychology, has been named one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant
Ten” scientists for the year.
“These 10 are the most creative, the most groundbreaking, the most brilliant … they
have the gall to ask the big questions, even if those happen to be outside the
traditional areas of inquiry,” the magazine said in describing those scientists
selected in its sixth annual competition.
Since her undergraduate days at Harvard University in 1993, Santos has been
studying monkeys on Cayo Santiago, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico.
Her experiments measure the primates’ cognitive abilities and compare
their thinking with that of humans. In particular, Santos is testing for “theory
of mind,” the idea that an individual can infer the beliefs or perceptions
of others. This ability is believed by many to be unique to humans.
Santos also conducts research studies in the field of primate economics. She
and colleagues in the neuroscience department and the Yale School of Management
conduct tests with laboratory capuchin monkeys to see if they commit the same
flaws in reasoning as humans do.
“For the most part, people who work with animals look at how they do or
do not replicate the smart aspects of human cognition,” Santos explained
in the Popular Science article on her work. “Nobody had thought about looking
at the dumb part — our errors and biases. Examining whether primates make
the same stupid mistakes we do can actually tell us more than some of the successes.”
To date the monkeys have consistently demonstrated economic errors in decision-making
identical to that of humans. “It makes you think about human behavior
from an evolutionary perspective,” Santos told Popular Science. “The
idea that some of our irrationality might be evolved: That’s philosophically
cool.”
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