Professor
Cognitive Science, Informatics, and Psychology
812) 855-3914
pmtodd@indiana.edu

• Ph.D., Psychology, Stanford University, 1992
• MA, Psychology, UC San Diego, 1987
• MPhil, Computer Speech and Language Processing, Cambridge University, 1986
• BA, Mathematics, Oberlin College, 1985

• Simple heuristics for decision making, and how they capitalize on the structure of information in environments
• Evolution of behavior (experimental approaches to evolutionary psychology and computer simulations of simple organisms adapting to different environmental structures, both physical and social)
• Emergence of environment structure through interactions of populations of agents following simple behavioral rules
• How people and other animals search for resources in time and space, from sequential search for mates or jobs to foraging for prey or parking spaces
• Artificial life approaches to music
• Making decisions about food and eating, and cognition of consumption

A full, searchable listing is available at: http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/pubs/pmtodd.

Todd, P.M., Billari, F.C., and Simão, J. (2005). Aggregate age-at-marriage patterns from individual mate-search heuristics.
Demography, 42(3), 559-574.

Todd, P.M. (2005). How much information do we need?
European Journal of Operational Research.

Hertwig, R., and Todd, P.M. (2003). More is not always better: The benefits of cognitive limits.
In D. Hardman and L. Macchi (Eds.), Thinking: Psychological perspectives on reasoning, judgment and decision making (pp. 213-231). Chichester, UK: Wiley.

Noble, J., and Todd, P.M., Tuci, E. (2001). Explaining social learning of food preferences without aversions: An evolutionary simulation model of Norway rats. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 268(1463), 141-149.

Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P.M., and the ABC Research Group (1999).
Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press.

Miller, G. F., & Todd, P. M. (1998). Mate choice turns cognitive.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 190-198.

Todd, P.M., and Loy, D.G. (Eds.) (1991).
Music and connectionism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Our (Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P.M., and the ABC Research Group) book on fast and frugal decision making, Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart, is available in paperback. You can see a short description of the book along with back-cover blurbs, the table of contents, and a long precis for Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS). Our next book, focusing on ecological rationality, is currently underway.

Editor of the Journal Adaptive Behavior

I am currently the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Adaptive Behavior, which covers models of adaptive behavior in animals and autonomous artificial systems studied via simulations and robotic implementations. Potential authors are encouraged to contact me about article ideas.

I received a BA in mathematics from Oberlin College, an MPhil in computer speech and language processing from Cambridge University, and an MA in psychology from the University of California at San Diego.  I completed my PhD in psychology at Stanford University in 1992, working with David Rumelhart on connectionist simulations of the evolution of learning.  After this I worked as a research scientist at the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and as an assistant professor in the psychology department of the University of Denver.  In September 1995 I moved to Munich to help establish the new Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Insitute for Psychological Research under the direction of Gerd Gigerenzer.  In October 1997 our center moved to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where I became senior research scientist in 2001.  My research interests cover the simple cognitive mechanisms that exploit information structures in the environment to generate adaptive behavior, how such mechanisms evolve, and the ways in which evolution, cognition, and other adaptive processes (including learning and culture) can interact with each other.  Research projects currently underway include studies of sequential choice (including the search for jobs, mates, or parking spaces), simple heuristics for decision making and how they can be learned, the benefits of cognitive limits, heuristics for food choice, judging animate intentions from motion trajectories (by children and adults), evolution of rhythmic and other musical behavior, and the evolution of learning.  I explore questions in these areas primarily by modeling empirical results with individual-based simulations of adaptive agents behaving in structured environments (whose structure in turn can be affected by the agents' own behavior).