Research · Aaron Baker

Roles

Social roles are powerful representations that allow us to quickly deploy expectations for social interactions. Instead of learning about every person we meet individually, we can learn about a collection of social roles and identify when someone occupies one.

Cooperation

One of our great strengths is the ability to work together and look out for one another. By sharing resources and combining our efforts, we secure more stable and prosperous lives, but we also put ourselves at risk of those who exploit these systems.

2026

🔗 Baker, A., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J. "People use roles to quickly predict how others will act, what they know, and when they can be replaced." Communications Psychology.
🔗 Baker, A. "Cognitive tools for the transition to anonymous societies." Theory and Society.

2025

🔗 Baker, A., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J. "People use mixed strategies to make efficient but structured inferences about agents in roles." Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
🔗 McLaughlin, A., Gollwitzer, A., Baker, A., Bangayan, S., Marshall, J., Otali, E., Riddick, S., Tusiime, P., & McAuliffe, K. "The Developmental Emergence of Religious Parochialism in Peru and Uganda." Social Science Research Network.

2024

🔗 Baker, A., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J. "Roles guide rapid inferences about agent knowledge and behavior." Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

2023

🔗 Ahl, R., Hannan, K., Amir, D., Baker, A., & McAuliffe, K. "Tokens of virtue: Replicating incentivized measures of children's prosocial behavior with online methods and virtual resources." Cognitive Development.