Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, & Justice

In the Social & Cognitive Origins group, we strive to create a culture of inclusion and to support the research, careers, and personal thriving of a diverse team. Science is an inherently collaborative endeavor, and one in which many of the greatest achievements are born from the marriage of diverse ideas and approaches. Diversifying academia and amplifying underrepresented voices is imperative for equity and justice but also for catalyzing innovation and discovery. We are dedicated to this effort, to mentorship, and to replacing bastions of privilege with spaces in which everyone can thrive. 

Improving Science

We are also committed to the improvement of science, through increased collaboration, transparency, and efforts to enhance robustness and reproducibility. We have worked to build large cross-institutional teams that collectively have access to uniquely large samples of great apes (e.g., for eye-tracking). These efforts enable sufficient power to address longstanding questions that could not be answered with smaller samples available at a single institution. We are also committed to transparency: we endeavor to always publish our data and code and to clearly and honestly articulate confirmatory versus exploratory analyses. We are increasingly pre-registering our work and pursuing replications where they are feasible. We also do our best to provide support to other labs developing nonhuman eye-tracking setups.