Welcome from Lab Director, Prof. Patricia Greenfield

Our research explores how values, behavior and cognition are shaped by social change. Our current studies in Mexico, China, and Israel investigate human development within a changing social ecology that include variables such as urbanization, education and commercialization.

For information on our studies of the implications of technology for human development, please go to cdmc.ucla.edu. For information on our work on the implications of social change for cognitive development, learning, and textile design in a Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico, please go to weaving-generations.psych.ucla.edu

For earlier research on evolution and primate studies, language acquisition, cultural studies, grammars of action, and neuroscience, please go to the publication page.

Ethiopian immigrants to Israel: The persistence and transformation of African values and practices in art and life

This article was published in December 2019 in Psychology in Africa.

Read the article >>

Scientific American article about COVID studies

READ MORE

Greenfield receives
2019 OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY AWARD

LEARN MORE

CHILDRENS DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER @ LOS ANGELES

LEARN MORE »

WEAVING GENERATIONS TOGETHER: EVOLVING CREATIVITY IN THE MAYA OF CHIAPAS

LEARN MORE »

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

Cross-cultural value mismatch: A byproduct of migration and population diversity around the world, Special issue of International Journal of Psychology, December, 2018, edited by Patricia Greenfield

Introduction to the Special Issue by Patricia Greenfield

Madsen Marble Pull Exercise

Greenfield demonstrating the Madsen marble pull. A research study in collaboration with Dr. Camilo Garcia and students at Veracruz University, Mexico, used this apparatus to document an historical reduction in Mexican children’s cooperative behavior over many decades.

LEARN MORE:

The decline of cooperation, the rise of competition: developmental effects of long-term social change in Mexico