Jan Engelmann

Set-up of experiment 2. The tool giver was placed in enclosure 3 (middle), whereas the tool recipient was placed in enclosure 4 (right). The illustration depicts the configuration in which the social and nonsocial apparatuses for both individuals were baited with high-value rewards.

Far too long in the making.. but finally out in #AnimalBehaviour @asab.org:
Orang-utans and chimpanzees #cooperate strategically based on the partner’s incentives.
doi.org/10.1016/j.an...
w/ @elisafelsche.bsky.social , Josep Call & @federicorossano.bsky.social

Do Great Apes Know Each Other's Names? Probing Great Ape Comprehension of Social Vocal Labels — Animal Behavior and Cognition

New article out exploring great ape name recognition! We find partial evidence that zoo-living chimps & bonobos know each other's names 👀 Huge thanks to Animal Behavior and Cognition (a great open-access journal) & co-authors for your collaboration!🎉🐵

unsvr1.com/web/abc/work...

Group membership biases children’s evaluation of evidence - Nature Communications People often form beliefs and reason about evidence as members of social groups. Here, the authors show that group membership biases even young children’s evaluation of evidence, leading them to adopt...

🚨From Joshua Confer, Allison Champ, Dorsa Amir, Hanna Schleihauf & Jan Engelmann:

Group membership biases children’s evaluation of evidence

People form beliefs not only as individual agents, but as members of social groups.

Children (4-6 years old) who belonged to a group were more convinced by evidence that supported their ingroup’s belief (and were less convinced by evidence that opposed their ingroup): www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled to share our latest paper, out now in Science Advances! We explored the development of cooperative behaviors — fairness, trustworthiness, forgiveness, & honesty —  across five societies, culturally contextualizing them & seeing how they correlate. (1/5) www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Why do otherwise rational people disagree about the same evidence? Our new paper finds that group membership is a deeply rooted influence on how we form beliefs, leading even preschoolers to bias their evidential standards and form inaccurate beliefs.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

YouTube video by Johns Hopkins University Apes Share Human Ability to Imagine

Imagination in bonobos!

I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org

We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative

youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko

YouTube video by Evolution Soup The Chimpanzee Metacognition Experiment ~ with PROFESSOR JAN ENGELMANN

Thank you so much @evolutionsoup.bsky.social for talking to me about our recent research on chimpanzee belief revision and metacognition!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-li...

Excited to share this work done with @alex-primate.bsky.social and Daniel Haun @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social (the first publication from my PhD!), where we found that chimpanzees sustained a collective resource for longer in groups of four compared to dyads rdcu.be/e0qPR

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, pioneering elephant conservationist, dies aged 83 His groundbreaking field research was instrumental in banning the international ivory trade and protecting elephants from poachers.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton was a champion for elephants 🐘 & one of the inspirations for my own research. He was among the 1st to study ele social behaviour & it was his life's work to protect them

Sending my condolences to all the friends & family during this sad time

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Social evaluation of skill and competence in primates Social life is a continuous interplay of observing and interacting with conspecifics, predicting their behavior, and responding to their actions. This…

🔔 New paper out on Social evaluation of skill and competence in primates

@mariehirel.bsky.social, @williamohearn.bsky.social and @julxf.bsky.social made this happen

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Come work with me on cognitive diversity, development & dynamics in beautiful Amherst, Massachusetts! Graduate student applications are due a week from today. cognitiveconstructionlab.com

Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Fully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social.
We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures.

All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...
Please share / apply!🙏

Are humans the only rational animals?

For thousands of years, we’ve thought so.

Our new paper, out today in Science, suggests otherwise!
We present evidence that chimpanzees possess several core capacities for rational thought.

Check out Emily's thread: bsky.app/profile/emil...

We also showed that chimpanzees respond appropriately to so-called “second-order evidence”—that is, evidence about evidence.

This indicates that chimpanzees explicitly represent what has been called the *evidential relation*: the causal connection between evidence and hypothesis. (6/8)

Our study also suggests that chimpanzees *explicitly* represented the evidence for their beliefs.

When we showed them evidence, and then showed them that *same* piece of evidence again later, they disregarded it. When they instead saw a *new* piece of evidence, they changed their minds. (5/8)

Chimpanzees responded to the counterevidence in line with the rational predictions of a mathematical model of rational belief revision.

That is: they revised their prior belief when the counterevidence was stronger than the initial evidence, but maintained their belief otherwise (4/8)

Chimpanzees participated in a foraging task. We first gave them evidence that food was in one location, and let them make a first choice. Then we presented them with *counterevidence*: evidence for the other location. (3/8)

Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

Dr. Jane made an indelible mark on our understanding of chimpanzees and other species, and also of humankind and the environments we all share.

She inspired curiosity, hope, and compassion in countless people, and paved the way for many others.

#ThankYouJane #RememberingJane

Photo: Marko Zlousic

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/u...

A signaling theory of self-handicapping People use various strategies to bolster the perception of their competence. One strategy is self-handicapping, by which people deliberately impede th…

"A signaling theory of self-handicapping"

📢New from: @yangxiang.bsky.social @gershbrain.bsky.social @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Research Coordinator, Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab in Graduate School of Education, Stanford, California, United States The Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) seeks a full-time Research Coordinator (acting lab manager) to help launch and coordinate the Minds,.....

I’m hiring!! 🎉 Looking for a full-time Lab Manager to help launch the Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab at Stanford. We’ll use all-day language recording, eye tracking, & neuroimaging to study how kids & families navigate unequal structural constraints. Please share:
phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDWcqUYo

Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms—such as vertical, horizontal, and obli

💙New paper!💙

How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society?

With @danielredhead.bsky.social
we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Update: the deadline for the Biological Basis of Behavior has been extended to Sept 18th! ✨

aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05054

Please reach out to Linda Wilbrecht if you have any questions about the position.

Congratulations!!! Let's celebrate together in Berlin :)

Disanalogies between causal learning in animals vs. machines: Comment on “disentangled representations for causal cognition” by F. Torresan & M. Baltieri None.

My comment on Fillipo Torresan & @manuelbaltieri.bsky.social's "Disentangled representations for causal cognition" in Physics of Life Reviews:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I argue that there is little meaningful analogy between learning from "pixels" vs "experience," but I praise

This paper really is developmental science at its best. Empirically convincing and theoretically rich. Shows once again that we cannot assume that the adult state is the default state.

The self-reference memory bias is preceded by an other-reference bias in infancy - Nature Communications A classic feature of human memory is that we remember information better when it refers to ourselves. Here, the authors show that before the emergence of self-concept, infants instead remember informa...

Sharing our new paper published today in Nature Communications. In my view, this is our clearest demonstration to date that something profoundly changes in how infants encode the world around them before and after the emergence of self-representation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...