Bertram Malle

Professor
Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences
Brown University
190 Thayer Street
Providence, RI 02912
E-mail: bfmalle at brown dot edu

Links:

CLPS Department Profile
Brown University Research Profile
Publications

Short Bio:

Bertram F. Malle was born in Graz, Austria, and studied psychology, philosophy, and linguistics at the University of Graz. After receiving his Masters degrees in psychology and philosophy, he entered graduate school in psychology in the United States in 1990. Malle received his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1995 and joined the faculty of the University of Oregon that year. During his tenure at the University of Oregon, Dr. Malle also served as the Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences (2001-2007). He became Professor of Psychology in 2007, and in 2008 he joined Brown University.

Malle’s research, which has been funded by the AFOSR, Army, CDAO, DARPA, Deloitte Inc., NSF, ONR, and Templeton Foundation, focuses on moral psychology (blame, guilt, norms), social cognition (intentionality, mental state inferences, explanations), and human-machine interaction (moral competence in robots, human-machine trust). He received the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) Outstanding Dissertation award, an NSF CAREER award, and is co-recipient of the 2019 SESP Scientific Impact Award. He is past president of the Society of Philosophy and Psychology and a Fellow of SESP, APS, SPSP, and the Cognitive Science Society.

Malle’s publications comprise over 180 scientific papers as well as several books: Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition (with L. J. Moses and D. A. Baldwin, eds., MIT Press, 2001); The Evolution of Language Out of Pre-language (with T. Givón, eds., Benjamins, 2002); How the Mind Explains Behavior: Folk Explanations, Meaning, and Social Interaction (MIT Press, 2004); and Other minds: How humans bridge the divide between self and other (with S. D. Hodges, eds., Guilford, 2005), and Cambrdige Handbook of Moral Psychology (with P. Robbins, eds.), Cambridge University Press (2025).