Daniel Haun

Daniel Haun is interested in cross-cultural variability of cognition, comparative and developmental social psychology and comparative great ape cognition. He studied experimental psychology in Germany, the United States and England. In 2007 he completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics investigating cross-cultural variability of spatial cognition under the supervision of Stephen Levinson. He then studied spatial and social cognition in non-human great apes and children as a post-doctoral researcher for Josep Call at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. In the same year, he accepted a position as lecturer in Developmental Psychology at the University of Portsmouth. He is currently directing the Research Group for Comparative Cognitive Anthropology, a joint project of the Max Planck Institutes for Psycholinguistics and Evolutionary Anthropology. Ongoing projects include research on cross-cultural variability of the cognition of space and time and the expression and comprehension of emotions. He is also involved in projects on analogy, the social role of imitation, sharing and prosociality and conformity to peer pressure. He regularly conducts field research in the Kalahari Desert and in Kalimantan.