Tania Lombrozo keynote speaker

Tania Lombrozo is the Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. Her research investigates the human mind, asking how and why we think and believe the way we do. As a cognitive scientist, she takes an interdisciplinary approach, tackling these big questions with the tools of both psychology and philosophy.

At Princeton, Dr. Lombrozo directs the Concepts & Cognition Lab, where one line of research focuses on why children and adults are so driven to explain the social and physical world around them. What drives our curiosity? When and how does it make us better learners, and how might it lead us astray? Another line of research focuses on the nature of belief: Why do people believe what they do? Are people ever justified in forming beliefs that go beyond the evidence? Are scientific beliefs and religious beliefs merely beliefs about different topics, or do they differ in more fundamental ways? How do people understand the relationship between science and religion?

Prof. Lombrozo is the recipient of numerous honors for her scientific contributions, including awards from the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the National Science Foundation, among others. She holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and a B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford University, as well as a Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University. Before joining the faculty at Princeton, she was a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.