Lawrence Hirschfeld
Professor of Anthropology and Psychology (CSD)
Email
lawrence.hirschfeld@newschool.edu
Office Location
G - 80 Fifth Avenue
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Profile
**On leave Fall 2025-Spring 2026**
Concentrations: Cognitive development; cultural psychology; social cognition; the anthropology and history of childhood.
Degrees Held
PhD 1984, Columbia University
Recent Publications
Books
R. Viale, D. Andler, L. Hirschfeld, Biological and Cultural Bases of Human Inference. Lawrence Erlbaum Publ., 2006.
L. Hirschfeld, Race in the making: Cognition, culture and the child's construction of human kinds. M.I.T. Press. 1996.
L. Hirschfeld & S. Gelman (eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture. Cambridge University Press. 1994. Translated in Spanish: Cartografia de la mente: La especificidad de dominio en la cognicion y en la cultura. Barcelona: Gedisa. 2002
Articles
"Collections, collectives, and individuals: Preschoolers’ attributions of intentionality." (Sheikh, H.). Cognition, 190, 99-104. (2019)
"The Rutherford Atom of Culture". Journal of Cognition and Culture, 18(3-4), 231-261. (2018)
"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)
Media
Research cited in "How White Families Can Start to Reverse Racism," OZY (June 16, 2020)
Research cited in "If You Think Your Kids (or Babies!) Are Too Young to Talk About Race, Here's Proof They Already Do," PopSugar (June 14, 2020)