Tara Mandalaywala

Tara Mandalaywala is Assistant Professor and Director of the Cognition Across Development Lab at Boston University's Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago and conducted postdoctoral research at New York University. Previously, she was Assistant Professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst (2018-2024).

Research examines developmental psychology with focus areas including social essentialism, status perception, automatic social categorization, and cross-cultural differences in reasoning. Her work investigates how children and adults perceive social groups, economic mobility, and status markers.

Publications primarily focus on social cognition development from childhood through adulthood, exploring how cognitive biases emerge across cultures. Recent work examines wealth perception, fairness development, and teacher bias in educational settings.