Research Topics
Individuals don’t develop in a bubble; they develop in the contexts of families, communities, and cultures. We study how variation in experience shapes cognition and behavior, and are particularly interested in how children adapt to their particular environment. We use methods from developmental and social psychology, behavioral endocrinology, and behavioral ecology to examine how the environment that an individual grows up in shapes their perceptions, beliefs, and biases about the world around them.
Child Development
Our research in human development focuses on normative social cognitive development. We examine how parents and communities shape how children begin to think about others in terms of their gender, race, or social status. Understanding how children come to view certain social categories as special and salient can help us understand the developmental origins of problematic social phenomena, such as stereotyping, prejudice, and inequality. It can also help us understand how children develop identities and beliefs that can protect and empower them!
Nonhuman primates
In nonhuman primates, we study individuals across the lifespan, to explore how cognitive variation helps individuals thrive, even under less than ideal circumstances. Dr. Mandalaywala's previous research used a mix of behavioral observations and cognitive assessments to study the long-term consequences of early life adversity in the rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. The CAD Lab is not actively doing research with nonhuman primates.
Publications
Mandalaywala, T.M. & Coyne, S.P. (2025). Threat perception and behavioral reactivity in response to an acute stressor in infant rhesus macaques. Acta Psychologica, 252, 104647. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104647
*Gonzalez, G., Mandalaywala, T.M., & McAuliffe, K.A.(2024). The power of prompts: encouraging children to think about fairness promotes the costly rejection of unfairness. Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001883
Davoodi, T., Shahbazi, G.+,Samani, H.+, Borhani, K., & Mandalaywala, T.M. (2024, Stage 1 Registered Report). The role of generic language in essentialist
reasoning in Iran. Infant and Child Development, special issue on “Cross-CulturalReplicability and Generalizability in Developmental Science”Yang, X.+, Schulz, J.+,Schmidt, K., Kenny, A. R., Pfuhl, G., Gjoneska B., Dalgar, I.,Exner, A., Psychological Science Accelerator Collaborators , Dunham, Y.(accepted, Stage 1 Registered Report). Large-scale cross-societal examinationof real- and minimal-group biases. Nature Human Behavior.
Tian, Y., Gonzalez, G., & Mandalaywala, T.M. (2024). Beliefs about social mobility in young American children. Developmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13527
Shahbazi, G., Samani, H., Mandalaywala, T.M., Borhani, K., & Davoodi, T. (in press). The development of social essentialist reasoning in Iran: insight into biological perception, cultural input, and motivational factors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Advance Online Publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001616
Mandalaywala, T.M., & Legaspi, J.K. (2023). Automatic encoding across social categories in American children and adults. Developmental Psychology, 59(12), 2296 - 2303. doi: 10.1037/dev0001578.
Rucinski, C.L., Mandalaywala, T.M.,& Tropp, L.R. (2023). Escalation Effects in Teacher Perceptions of Classroom Behavior: The Intersecting Roles of Student Race, Gender, and Behavior Severity. Social Psychology of Education, 27, 813 - 832.
Legaspi, J.K., Pareto, H.G., Korroch, S.L., Tian, Y., & Mandalaywala, T.M. (2023). Do children automatically encode cues to wealth? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 234, 105706.
Alto, A.T. & Mandalaywala, T.M. (2023). Boys and girls, men and women: Do children take stimulus age into account when expressing gender stereotypes? Developmental Psychology, 59(4),637–643.
Mandalaywala, T.M., Gonzalez, G., & Tropp, L.R. (2023). Early perceptions of COVID-19 intensity and anti-Asian prejudice among White Americans. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 26(1), 48 - 70.
Mandalaywala,T.M. (2022). Do nonhuman animals reason about prestige-based status? Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 16( 4), e12660. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12660
Marshall, J.,Gollwitzer, A., Mermin-Bunnell, N., & Mandalaywala, T. M. (2022). The role of status in the early emergence of pro-White bias in rural Uganda. Developmental Science., 25, e13240.
Mandalaywala, T. M., Benitez, J., Sagar, K., & Rhodes, M. (2021). Why do children show racial biases in their resource allocation decisions? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Power, S.A., Mandalaywala, T.M., & Kay, A.C. (2021). A multi-method investigation of perceptions of (un)just systems: Tests of rationalization in the context of Irish austerity measures. Peace & Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 27(1), 49–57. https://doi.org/10.1037/pac0000540
Higham, J.P., Kimock, C.M., Mandalaywala, T.M., Heistermann, M., Cascio, J., Petersdorf, M., Winters, S., Allen, W.L., & Dubuc, C. (2021). Female ornamentation: Is red skin coloration attractive to males and related to condition in female rhesus macaques? Behavioral Ecology, 32(2), 236–247, https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/araa121.
Mandalaywala, T. M. (2020). Does essentialism lead to racial prejudice?: It’s not so black and white. In M. Rhodes (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior: The development of social essentialism (pp. 195–245). Elsevier Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2020.05.007
Mandalaywala, T.M., Tai, C., & Rhodes, M. (2020). Children's use of race and gender as cues to social status. PLoS ONE, 15(6): e0234398.
Lee, S.D., Mandalaywala, T.M., Dubuc, C., Widdig, A., & Higham, J.P. (2020). Higher early life mortality associated with lower infant body mass in a free-ranging primate. Journal of Animal Ecology, 89, 2300–2310. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13291
Mandalaywala T.M. (2019) Emergence of Social Reasoning About Hierarchies. In: Shackelford T., Weekes-Shackelford V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham
Mandalaywala, T.M., Ranger-Murdock, G., Amodio, D.M., & Rhodes, M. (2019). The nature and consequences of essentialist beliefs about race in early childhood. Child Development, 90: e437-e453. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13008
Madrid, J. E., Mandalaywala, T.M., Coyne, S.P., Garner, J.P., Barr, C.S., Maestripieri, D., & Parker, K.J. (2018). Adaptive developmental plasticity in rhesus macaques: 5-HTTLPR interacts with early maternal care to affect juvenile social behavior. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 285(1881), https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0541
Mandalaywala, T.M., Petrullo, L.A., Parker, K.J., Maestripieri, D. & Higham, J.P. (2017). Vigilance for threat accounts for inter-individual variation in physiological responses to adversity in rhesus macaques: A Cognition x Environment approach. Developmental Psychobiology, 59(8), 1031–1038. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21572
Mandalaywala, T.M., Amodio, D.M. & Rhodes, M. (2017). Essentialism promotes racial prejudice by increasing endorsement of social hierarchies. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(4), 461-469. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617707020
Rhodes, M. & Mandalaywala, T.M. (2017). The development and developmental consequences of social essentialism. WIREs Cognitive Science, 8: e1437. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1437
Petrullo, L.A., Mandalaywala, T.M., Parker, K.J., Maestripieri, D., & Higham, J.P. (2016). Effects of early life experience on cortisol/salivary alpha-amylase asymmetry in free-ranging juvenile rhesus monkeys. Hormones and Behavior. 86, 78–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2016.05.004
Mandalaywala, T.M. & Rhodes, M. (2016). Racial essentialism is associated with prejudice towards Blacks in 5- and 6-year old White children. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Georgiev, A.V., Emery Thompson, M., Mandalaywala, T.M., & Maestripieri, D. (2015). Oxidative stress as an indicator of the costs of reproduction among free-ranging rhesus macaques. Journal of Experimental Biology, 218, 1981-1985.
Mandalaywala, T. M., Fleener, C. E., & Maestripieri, D. (2015). Intelligence in nonhuman primates. In S. Goldstein & J. Naglieri (Eds.), Handbook of Intelligence: Evolutionary Theory, Historical Perspective, and Current Concepts (27-46). New York: Springer Books.
Mandalaywala, T.M., Higham, J.P., Heistermann, M., Parker, K.J., & Maestripieri, D. (2014). Physiological and behavioural stress responses to weaning conflict in free-ranging primate infants. Animal Behaviour, 97, 241-247.
Mandalaywala, T.M., Parker, K.J., & Maestripieri, D (2014). Early experience affects the strength of vigilance for threat in rhesus monkey infants. Psychological Science, 25, 1893-1902.
Maclean, E.L., Mandalaywala, T.M., & Brannon, E.M. (2012). Variance-sensitive choice in lemurs: constancy trumps quantity. Animal Cognition, 15, 15-25.
Mandalaywala, T.M., Higham, J.P., Heistermann, M. & Maestripieri, D. (2011). Infant bystanders modulate the influence of ovarian hormones on female socio-sexual behavior in free-ranging rhesus macaques. Behaviour, 148, 1137-1155.
Higham, J.P., Barr, C.S., Hoffman, C.L., Mandalaywala, T.M., Parker, K.J., & Maestripieri, D. (2011). Mu-opiod receptor (OPRM1) variation, oxytocin levels and maternal attachment in free-ranging rhesus macaques. Behavioral Neuroscience, 152, 131-136.
