Lead Research Assistant in the Social Origins Lab (Cooperation and Social Reasoning in Children)
Jan Engelmann, Professor
Psychology
Open. Apprentices needed for the spring semester. Enter your application online beginning January 16th. The deadline to apply is Monday, January 26th, 4pm.
To apply, please fill out this google form: https://forms.gle/3JBREzYm2rGJoALy7
By thinking together, human beings achieve things that are impossible for our primate relatives. In the long term, this is facilitated by cumulative culture: our capacity to absorb and transmit information through subsequent generations. Within each generation, this iterative progress is also facilitated through pooling mental resources and developing specific expertise. You don’t need to know how to fix a car – you need to know someone who can. This intuition has spawned recent theoretical perspectives in psychological research expressing minds as
interdependent nodes in a computational network (e.g. Henrich & Muthukrishna,2023; Velez et al., 2023).
How does our ability cooperate on cognitive tasks emerge in early childhood?
How does our cultural context and environment shape what it means to think
together?
Role: We are currently investigating these questions through a cooperative memory card game for 4-5 and 7-8yos across China, Kenya, and the US. We are currently looking for a competent and highly motivated research assistant to take on a major role in data collection and recruitment over the next 1.5-2 years. After the next half a year of training, we intend to have this applicant take a team lead role and manage their own set of research assistants in continuing the project through Spring 2027. Duties will include data collection, communication with collaborators, management of research assistants, and data entry.
Candidates who will benefit from this position the most:
-Be genuinely interested in and curious about social cognition, child
development, or collective intelligence
-Be interested in pursuing graduate research in cognitive science or child
development (note: does not mean you should have your entire future figured
out, but this position would put you in a strong position to apply for PhD
programs in related areas)
-Be kind and capable of leading others
A few reference papers for the topic:
Vélez, N., Christian, B., Hardy, M., Thompson, B. D., & Griffiths, T. L. (2023). How do humans overcome individual computational limitations by working together?. Cognitive science, 47(1), e13232.
Henrich, J., & Muthukrishna, M. (2024). What makes us smart?. Topics in Cognitive Science, 16(2), 322-342.
Mejía-Arauz, R., Rogoff, B., Dayton, A., & Henne-Ochoa, R. (2018). Collaboration or negotiation: Two ways of interacting suggest how shared thinking develops. Current opinion in psychology, 23, 117-123.
Qualifications: Candidates must:
-Be willing to commit to a long term, large project (1.5 - 2 years)
-Be able to manage their time without direct supervision
-Be independently motivated, reliable, and responsible
-Have experience working with children in some way (does not have to be
professional or research based)
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Harriet Caplin, Staff Researcher
Hours: 9-11 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: This project will take place both on and off campus. The Social Origins Lab is based in Berkeley Way West, but data collection will take place at local schools. Ability to drive is preferred.
Related website: https://forms.gle/tDrB5NSnNcgUmSki6
Related website: https://forms.gle/tDrB5NSnNcgUmSki6