Overview
(bethany ojalehto mays is on leave 2021-2022)
bethany ojalehto mays is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Her research explores how people conceptualize agency and ecologies, with a focus on cultural variation in social cognition and human-environment relationships. She has been privileged to develop these research perspectives through partnership with Indigenous Ngöbe communities of Panama, where she has participated in research and collaboration since 2010. She received her B.Sc. in psychology and human rights from Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology in 2008, and her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University in 2016.
Research Focus
My ongoing research explores diversity in human cognition of the natural world. One line of research comprises basic experimental psychology addressing the cognitive development and conceptual mechanisms involved in people's concepts of nonhuman agency and the natural world across cultures. Another line of research addresses the implications of conceptual diversity in understandings of nature for environmental decision-making and stewardship. It includes children's developing moral reasoning about proper relationships with nonhuman natural kinds. Both strands of research use varied samples of individuals across cultures (US, Panama, Switzerland), ages (childhood to adulthood), and levels of ecological expertise and experience (e.g., urban, rural).
This work is currently funded by a grant from the Institute for Social Sciences at Cornell.
Publications
- ojalehto mays, b., Sachdeva, S., Narby, J., & Chappuis, C. (submitted). The rights of nature: A cognitive investigation in two Western industrialized nations.
- ojalehto, b., Seligman, R., & Medin, D. (in press). Cognition beyond the human: cognitive psychology on the new animism. Ethos.
- ojalehto, b., Medin, D., & García, S. (2017). Grounding principles for inferring agency: Two cultural perspectives. Cognitive Psychology, 95, 50-78.
- Medin, D., ojalehto, b., Marin, A., & Bang, M. (2017). Systems of (non-)diversity. Nature Human Behaviour, 1, 0088. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0088.
- ojalehto, b., Medin, D., & García, S. (2017). Conceptualizing agency: Folkpsychological and folkcommunicative perspectives on plants. Cognition, 162, 103-123.
- ojalehto, b., Medin, D., Horton, W., García, S., & Kays, E. (2015). Seeing cooperation or competition: Ecological interactions in cultural perspectives. TopiCS: Exploring cognitive diversity: Anthropological perspectives on cognition, pp. 1-22. DOI: 10.1111/tops.12156.
- ojalehto, b., & Medin, D. (2015). Perspectives on culture and concepts. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 249-275. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015120.
- ojalehto, b., Waxman, S., & Medin, D. (2013). Teleological reasoning about nature: intentional design or relational perspectives? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(4): 166–171.
- ojalehto, b., & Wang, Q. (2008). Children’s spiritual development in forced displacement: a human rights perspective. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 13(2),129-143.
