Leda Cosmides

Leda Cosmides is an American psychologist, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, pioneered the field of evolutionary psychology.

Biography

Cosmides was born into a Greek family. Her parents, George Cosmides and Nasia Cosmides, founded the St George Greek Orthodox Church in Bethesda, Maryland.
Cosmides originally studied biology at Radcliffe College/Harvard University, receiving her BA in 1979. While an undergraduate, she was influenced by the renowned evolutionary biologist Robert L. Trivers, who was her advisor. In 1985, Cosmides received a PhD in cognitive psychology from Harvard. After completing postdoctoral work under Roger Shepard at Stanford University, she joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1991, becoming a full professor in 2000.
In 1992, together with Tooby and Jerome Barkow, Cosmides edited The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. She and Tooby also co-founded and co-direct the Center for Evolutionary Psychology.
Cosmides was awarded the 1988 AAAS Prize for [Behavioral Science Research|American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research], the 1993 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2005 National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award, and the 2020 Jean Nicod Prize. In 2023, she was elected to the American [Academy of Arts and Sciences].

Books

Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture.
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. Evolutionary psychology: Foundational papers.
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. Universal Minds: Explaining the new science of evolutionary psychology .

Papers

Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. Cytoplasmic inheritance and intragenomic conflict. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 89, 83-129.
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. "From evolution to behavior: Evolutionary psychology as the missing link" in J. Dupre, The latest on the best: Essays on evolution and optimality.
Cosmides, L. "The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task," Cognition, 31, 187–276.
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. "Cognitive adaptations for social exchange," in Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture.
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. "Evolutionary psychology: Theoretical Foundations," in Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. "Evolutionary psychology: Conceptual foundations," in D. M. Buss, Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology.