Roman Stengelin

I am an experimental psychologist interested in childhood social learning and social cognition. My research combines cross-cultural and developmental approaches to learn how children come to engage in and benefit from social interactions and how these processes are shaped culturally. My recent work focuses on how children come to understand and predict others’ behaviors in the light of their mental states (i.e., Theory of Mind) and how they learn to cooperate with others for mutual benefit (i.e., collaboration).

I conduct fieldwork in rural and urban Namibia to shed light on variation in childhood social cognition with cultural emphases on child autonomy, relatedness, and pedagogy. I also study urban German children, maintaining this cultural lense to understand and affirm the role of culture in child development in this context. Doing so, I aim to raise an awareness of current cultural blindspots in developmental theory and research methods to support a more ecologically-valid and inclusive study of childhood social cognition and learning.

Career & Education 

Fieldwork