Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Psychology

219 Peretsman Scully Hall

lombrozo@princeton.edu

Ph.D., Harvard University

Curriculum Vit? (270.01 KB)

Lab Website: http://cognition.princeton.edu

Summary My research aims to address basic questions about learning, reasoning, and decision-making using the?empirical tools of experimental psychology and the conceptual tools of analytic philosophy. Accordingly, much of my work is informed by philosophy of science, epistemology, and moral philosophy alongside cognitive, social, and?developmental psychology. To illustrate, one strand of?research?in my laboratory has focused on the human?drive to explain. Why are we so compelled to explain some aspects of our social and?physical environment, but not others? How does the process of seeking explanations affect learning, and how does the quality of an explanation affect our judgments and decisions? Do these features of explanation help us achieve particular epistemic goals? Or do they sometimes lead us astray, leading to errors in our reasoning and decision-making? Other projects target different topics?— including our intuitive beliefs about causation, moral responsibility, and the nature of knowledge?— but involve a similar interplay between descriptive questions about human thought and behavior and normative and?conceptual issues?that arise within philosophy and psychological theory.






Representative Publications
Gottlieb, S. & Lombrozo, T. (forthcoming). Can science explain the human mind? Intuitive judgments about the limits of science.?Psychological Science.


Lombrozo, T., & Vasilyeva, N. (2017). Causal explanation. In M. Waldmann (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning (pp. 415-432). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Lombrozo, T. (2016).? Explanatory preferences shape learning and inference. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20, 748-759.

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