Dr. Felix Warneken is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Trained as a developmental and comparative psychologist, he conducts research with a focus on cooperation and social-cognitive development in children and great apes. He studied in Germany and the United States, and worked at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, both for his PhD and as a postdoctral researcher. He received several awards and fellowships, including an Outstanding Dissertation Award by the Society for Research in Child Development in 2009 and a Novartis Fellowship in 2006. A study demonstrating altruistic helping in children and chimpanzees was named one of the 100 most important publications in 2007 by Discover magazine.
Research Projects
- Science of Generosity: Causes, Manifestations and Consequences of Generous Behaviors
- The Social Contagion of Generosity
- The Family Cycle of Kindness and Generosity
- Religious Institutions and Generosity: Catholicism and Islam
- The Inherent Sociality of Giving and Altruism
- Attachment Formation, Compassion and Generosity
- Does Microfinancing Promote Generosity?
- The Foundations of Marital Generosity
- The Neural Circuitry Underlying Altruistic Behavior
- Generosity from an Intercultural Perspective
- The Causes and Effects of Workplace Generosity
- The Causes of Intergenerational Generosity
- The Development of Prosocial Behavior
- The Socioeconomic Basis of Generosity in Britain