Katherine McAuliffe

Katherine McAuliffe is an Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Boston College, leading the Cooperation Lab since joining the faculty in 2006. Her research integrates psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology to investigate the forces sustaining cooperative societies across human development and species.

Her educational background includes:

• Bachelor of Science (2003)
• Master's degree from Cambridge University
• PhD from Harvard University

McAuliffe's research employs a virtue lens—examining honesty, fairness, trustworthiness, and forgiveness—to understand cooperative development in children (ages 4-12) and adults. She conducts extensive cross-cultural work across Uganda, Peru, India, Vanuatu, Tanzania, Ecuador, and Bolivia, while also studying cooperative behavior in non-human species like dingoes, meerkats, and fish. Her lab addresses societal challenges including political polarization and inequality by identifying shared values and intergroup cooperation strategies.

She co-leads The Virtue Project with Liane Young's Morality Lab, exploring how moral mechanisms bridge behavioral gaps between ideals and actions. Her work reveals that despite political divides, core virtues like fairness remain universally valued, offering pathways to bridge societal conflicts through accessible cooperation strategies.

McAuliffe mentors students and postdocs in the Cooperation Lab on projects spanning intergroup conflict, forgiveness, and children's responses to inequality. The lab's global fieldwork—with ongoing studies across six continents—examines how cultural contexts shape cooperative abilities, while non-human animal research investigates evolutionary roots of cooperation in diverse species like cleaner wrasse fish.