Katherine McAuliffe, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience whose research examines the development of human sociality—including such aspects as inequity aversion, fairness, and third-party punishment—has been selected for the Human Behavior & Evolution Society Early Career Award, which recognizes excellent young scientists who have made distinguished contributions to the field.
Katherine McAuliffe
McAuliffe, who joined BC in 2016, is director of the Cooperation Lab, which explores the psychological mechanisms that support cooperation among humans and lead to the development of cooperative abilities in children. She also co-directs the Boston College Virtue Project, which supports innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship, and teaching on the evolution, sustainability, and promotion of virtue.
In 2017, McAuliffe was one of 15 scholars to be selected for the the Azrieli Global Scholars program, which helps exceptional early-career researchers build research networks and develop leadership skills. She was among a team of psychologists, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists that devised a pioneering experiment to study how fairness develops in seven different societies; their research was published in Nature.
HBES was formed in 1988 to promote the exchange of ideas and research findings using evolutionary theory, including studies of animal behavior, to better understand human nature. The society hosts an annual conference and publishes the interdisciplinary journal Evolution and Human Behavior, which presents research reports and theory in which evolutionary perspectives are brought to bear on the study of human behavior.
—University Communications | January 2021