Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
Anja Reimann
phone: +49 (0)341 3550 - 400
e-mail: info_ccp@eva.mpg.de
Johanna Eckert

Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
Germany
phone: +49 (0) 341 3550 406
email: johanna_eckert@[>>> Please remove the brackets! <<<]eva.mpg.de
Thesis title: The evolutionary roots of intuitive statistics
Research Interests
Curriculum Vitae
Publications
Presentations
Research Awards & Funding
Research Interests
- Comparative psychology
- Animal cognition
- Primates (great apes and monkeys)
- Early cognitive development
- Physical and social cognition
- Statistical reasoning, probabilities and quantities
- Zoo and Sanctuary
- Psychophysiological methods
Curriculum Vitae
Career & Education
Since 11/2019 | Postdoctoral Researcher Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig |
03/2019 - 11/2019 | Postdoctoral Researcher Department of Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles |
10/2018 - 03/2019 | Visiting Scholar Department of Behavioral Physiology & Sociobiology University of Würzburg |
10/2014 - 09/2018 | PhD Biology University of Göttingen; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Thesis: “The evolutionary roots of intuitive statistics” Advisors: Hannes Rakoczy, Josep Call |
10/2012 - 09/2014 | M.Sc. Biology University of Würzburg; German Primate Center, Göttingen Thesis: “Social comparison in long-tailed macaques” Advisors: Julia Fischer, Johannes Spaethe |
10/2009 - 09/2012 | B.Sc. Biology University of Würzburg Thesis: “Visual learning in stingless bees” Advisor: Johannes Spaethe |
Practical Experience
09/2019 - 10/2019 | Research stay at Kumamoto Sanctuary, WRC, Kyoto University, Japan |
01/2019 - 02/2019 03/2012 - 06/2012 | Research stays at Tropical Field Station La Gamba, Costa Rica |
01/2018 - 02/2018 04/2017 - 06/2017 10/2016 - 11/2016 | Research stays at Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Uganda |
08/2013 - 10/2013 | Research stay at African Elephant Sanctuary in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa (collaboration with University of Vienna) |
02/2013 - 04/2013 | Internship: “Cognitive Research with long-tailed macaques”, Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center in Göttingen |
Organizer
Since 2019 | Committee member of the MPI EVA Institute Seminar |
10/2016 - 12/2017 | “Animal Cognition Reading Group” Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany |
Lecturer
04/2016 | Seminar “Comparative Psychology/Primate Cognition” Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany |
Languages
- German (native)
- English (fluent)
- Spanish (basic)
Publications
Ebel, S. J., Zeidler, H., Duguid, S., Eckert, J., Völter, C., Call, J., & Herrmann, E. (submitted). Food or tool - does social experience modulate object knowledge in children and chimpanzees? | |
Eckert, J., Rakoczy, H., Duguid, S., Herrmann, E., & Call, J. (in press). The ape lottery: Chimpanzees fail to consider spatial information when drawing statistical inferences. Animal Behavior and Cognition. ![]() |
Eckert, J., Winkler, S. L., & Cartmill, E. A. (2020). Just kidding: The evolutionary roots of playful teasing. Biology Letters,16(9): 20200370. ![]() |
Eckert, J., Call, J., Hermes, J., Herrmann, E., & Rakoczy, H. (2018). Intuitive statistical inferences in chimpanzees and humans follow Weber’s law. Cognition,180, 99-107. DOI BibTeX Endnote | |
Placì, S., Eckert, J., Rakoczy, H., & Fischer, J. (2018). Long-tailed macaques (Maraca fascicularis) can use simple heuristics but fail at drawing statistical inferences from populations to samples. Royal Society Open Science,5(9): 181025. ![]() | |
Eckert, J., Rakoczy, H., Call, J., Herrmann, E., & Hanus, D. (2018). Chimpanzees consider humans' psychological states when drawing statistical inferences. Current Biology,28(12): e3, pp. 1959-1963. DOI BibTeX Endnote |
Eckert, J., Rakoczy, H., & Call, J. (2017). Are great apes able to reason from multi-item samples to populations of food items? American Journal of Primatology,79(10): e22693. DOI BibTeX Endnote |
Schmitt, V., Federspiel, I., Eckert, J., Keupp, S., Tschernek, L., Faraut, L., Schuster, R., Michels, C., Bugnyar, T., Mussweiler, T., & Fischer, J. (2015). Do monkeys compare themselves to others? Animal Cognition. doi: 10.1007/s10071-015-0943-4
Spaethe, J., Streinzer, M., Eckert, J., May, S., & Dyer, A. (2014). Behavioural evidence of colour vision in free flying stingless bees. Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 200(6), 485-496. doi: 10.1007/s00359-014-0886-2
Presentations
Invited talk at LFE workshop “Methoden der Erfassung sozialer Interaktion”, University of Leipzig, Germany, 2020
Invited talk at the Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA, 2019
Invited talk at Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK, 2017
Talk at Behaviour Conference Estoril, Portugal, 2017
Talk at International Primatological Conference (IPS), Chicago, USA, 2016
Poster at 5th Rovereto Workshop on Cognition and Evolution (CogEvo), Rovereto, Italy, 2016
Poster at Behaviour Conference Cairns, Australia, 2015
Talk at Second European Student Conference on Behaviour and Cognition, Zurich, Switzerland, 2015
Poster at CRC Symposium Evolution of Social Behaviour, Göttingen, Germany, 2014
Research Awards & Funding
10/2019: Outstanding dissertation award of the Universitätsbund Göttingen e.V.
01/2019: Ulrike Goldschmid-Grant for research work at the tropical field station La Gamba, Costa Rica
10/2016: Outgoing-Grant of Leibniz-ScienceCampus Primate Cognition
07/2016: Abstract award of the Rovereto Workshop on Cognition and Evolution
03/2012: DAAD promos scholarship (German Academic Exchange Service)