Katherine McAuliffe (PI) studies the forces that shape and sustain cooperative societies. Work in her lab—the Cooperation Lab at Boston College—combines approaches from psychology, anthropology and evolutionary biology to address big questions about the origins of cooperation. For instance, how do children acquire norms of cooperation across societies, when do they begin to comply with these norms and when do they begin to enforce them in others? She believes that a better understanding of the psychology that underlies cooperative norms can allow us to harness the power of those norms, to promote cooperation in children and adults alike.