Lawrence Hirschfeld

Professor of Anthropology and Psychology

Email:

lawrence.hirschfeld@newschool.edu

Office Location:

80 Fifth Avenue

Profile:

Lawrence Hirschfield is Professor of Anthropology and Psychology at the New School for Social Research.

My research explores the psychological aspects of cultural life and the cultural dimension of mental life. I am especially interested in how young children come to understand and use social categories like race, gender, age, etc., particularly how children’s culture shapes the meaning of these categories for both the child and the adult.
 

Hirschfeld Infant Lab

Center for Research with Infants and Toddlers
 

Degrees Held:

PhD 1984, Columbia University

Recent Publications:

• "The myth of mentalizing and primacy of folk sociology."  In M. R. Banaji & S. A. Gelman (eds.) Navigating the Social World: What infants, children, and other species can teach us. Oxford University Press. Pp. 101-106. (2013)
• "Seven myths of race and the young child." Du Bois Review 9 (1): 17-39 (2012).
• “Children’s developing conceptions of race” in The Handbook of Race, Racism, and the Developing Child, eds. C. McKown & S. Quintana (2008)
• “Can autistic children predict behavior by social stereotypes?” (with E. Bartmess, S. White & U. Frith), Current Biology (2007)
• “Folksociology and the cognitive foundations of culture” Intellectica (2007)
• “Culture, categorization and reasoning” (with D.  Medin, S. Unsworth), in Handbook of Cultural Psychology, eds. Shinobu Kityama & Dov Cohen (2007)
• "Culture and modularity" (with Dan Sperber), In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, & S. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind. Volume 2: Culture and Cognition.  New York: Oxford U. Press. Pp.149-164. (2006)
• Biological and Cultural Bases of Human Inference (with R. Viale & D. Andler) (2006).
• "The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity" (with Dan Sperber), Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (1), 42-46. (2004)

Portfolio