Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 19, 2007|Volume 36, Number 7

Laurie Santos

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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Campus Notes