Amanda Woodward

Amanda Woodward is the William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and serves as Deputy Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Division of the Social Sciences. She holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College (1987) and a Ph.D. from Stanford University (1992). Her research focuses on infant social cognition, including how infants understand social structure, learn from cultural contexts, and develop neural processes underlying early social-cognitive abilities. She pioneered experimental methods to study infant social understanding, emphasizing imitation, theory of mind, and cross-cultural influences.

Woodward has received prestigious awards such as the APA Boyd McCandless Award and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her lab, the Infant Learning and Development Laboratory, investigates infants' understanding of social intentions, perceptions, and emotions. Notable students include Tess Fulcher, Natalie Brezack, and Haerin Chung. She teaches courses like Cognitive Development and From Action to Abstraction.

Her work bridges developmental psychology with neuroscience, emphasizing how early experiences shape social cognition. Recent research explores racial categorization, cross-cultural learning strategies, and neural correlates of social perception.