Katherine McAuliffe

Last updated
Katherine Jane McAuliffe
Alma mater University of King's College
University of Cambridge
Harvard University
Scientific career
Institutions Yale University
Boston College
Thesis The Evolution and Development of Inequity Aversion.  (2013)

Katherine Jane McAuliffe is a Canadian psychologist who is a professor of psychology at Boston College, studying evolutionary anthropology and how children develop a sense of fairness. McAuliffe has conducted studies with children at a range of international sites in an effort to characterize cross-cultural similarities and variations.

Contents

Early life and education

McAuliffe was born in Italy and grew up in Toronto. [1] She earned her undergraduate degree at Dalhousie University and the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she studied marine biology, working with Hal Whitehead and Janet Mann on cetacean research. [2] She was awarded the David Durward Memorial Prize. [3] She then moved to the University of Cambridge, where she earned a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Biological Anthropology. Her Master's research looked at cooperation amongst primates and the evolution of babysitting. [2] She found that humans were considerably more likely than primates to leave their children in the care of a non-family member. [2] Following completion of her M.Phil. at Cambridge she worked with Alex Thornton (now at the University of Exeter - Falmouth Campus) at the Kalahari Meerkat Project in the Kalahari Desert studying teaching in meerkats. [4] After completing her MPhil, McAuliffe moved to Harvard University for her doctoral research in what is now the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. [5] Her doctorate was supervised by Richard Wrangham. [5] She studied the evolution and development of inequity aversion, and how children become sensitive to the fair distribution of resources. [6]

Research and career

McAuliffe moved to Yale University where she worked as a post-doc with Laurie R. Santos and Yarrow Dunham. [7] After two years at Yale, McAuliffe was hired as an assistant professor at Boston College in the Department of Psychology [8] and became a tenured Associate Professor in 2021. Her research considers cooperation in humans and how the ability to cooperate develops in children. [9] Unlike typical psychologists, McAuliffe investigates global communities, not just the western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic (WEIRD) population. [2]

At Boston College, McAuliffe is director of the Cooperation Lab and co-directs the Virtue Project with Liane Young, where an "interdisciplinary team applies rigorous scientific methods to the question of how virtue is gradually constructed in the developing mind, how it is sustained in adulthood, and how it can be promoted." [10] [11] Her work has studied how fairness develops in children around the world, with study sites in Canada, India, Peru, Senegal, Uganda, the United States and Mexico. [12] [13] [14] Her work has explored how children react to both advantageous and disadvantageous inequity, largely through economic game experiments. [15] She found that an aversion to disadvantageous inequity was common amongst all societies, but of the eight study sites only children in Canada, Uganda and the USA rejected advantageous inequity. [15]

Awards and honors

Selected publications

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References

  1. ↑ "Personnel". The Virtue Project. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "The Big Questions". Magazine. 2020-01-27. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  3. ↑ "Scholarships and Awards". Dalhousie University. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  4. ↑ "Meerkat pups go to eating school". 2006-07-13. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  5. 1 2 McAuliffe, Katherine Jane (2013). The Evolution and Development of Inequity Aversion (Thesis). OCLC   864908412.
  6. ↑ McAuliffe, Katherine Jane (2013). The Evolution and Development of Inequity Aversion (Thesis). OCLC   864908412.
  7. ↑ "Katherine McAuliffe Post Doctoral site". yale.academia.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  8. ↑ "Katherine McAuliffe in BC Faculty Directory". www.bc.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  9. ↑ "PEOPLE". COOPERATION LAB. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  10. ↑ "The Virtue Project". The Virtue Project. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  11. ↑ "Personnel". The Virtue Project. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  12. ↑ Warneken, Katherine McAuliffe,Peter R. Blake,Felix. "Do Kids Have a Fundamental Sense of Fairness?". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  13. ↑ "Fighting unfairness". Harvard Gazette. 2014-08-18. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  14. ↑ Yong, Ed (2015-11-18). "How Fairness Develops in Kids Around the World". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  15. 1 2 "How children learn fairness". www.bc.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  16. ↑ "APS Rising Stars 2016" (PDF). www.bc.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  17. ↑ "CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar 2017-2019". CIFAR. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  18. ↑ "2017 SRCD Biennial Awardees". www.srcd.org. March 2017. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  19. ↑ "2020 HBES Early Career Award". www.hbes.com. 5 December 2020. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
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