Lawrence A. Hirschfeld

Lawrence A. Hirschfeld is an American anthropologist, cognitive scientist, academic, and author. He is a professor in the Departments of Psychology and Anthropology at the New School for Social Research as well as a professor emeritus in the Departments of Psychology and Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Hirschfeld is most known for his work on cognitive development, social reasoning and categorization, particularly the conceptual development of race and ethnicity. Among his authored works are publications in academic journals, including Cognition, Cognitive Psychology, Current Biology, and American Anthropologist as well as books such as Race in the Making: Culture and the Child's Construction of Human Kinds, Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture (co-edited with S. A. Gelman) and Biological and Cultural Bases of Human Inference (co-edited with R. Viale & D Andler).