The CoCoCo Lab (Cornell Computational Cognition Lab) studies how intelligence, creativity, and culture emerge from interactions among individuals, technologies, and societies. We combine behavioral experiments, machine learning, large-scale online studies, computational modeling, and global fieldwork to uncover the principles governing perception, learning, coordination, and cultural evolution, with the goal of developing unified theories that connect individual cognition to collective behavior across cultures, contexts, and developmental timescales.

Our research spans levels of organization—from neural and cognitive representations to collective behavior and population-level cultural dynamics—linking individual minds to emergent social systems, including rapidly evolving human–AI hybrid societies. Through scalable experimental platforms and integrative theory, we aim to reveal how collective intelligence forms and adapts.

We also develop open scientific infrastructure, including PsyNet, a scalable framework for designing and deploying high-powered online behavioral experiments across cultures and populations. Our work appears in leading journals and conferences including Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS, Science Advances, Nature Communications, NeurIPS, and ICML.

Research Pillars

Collective Intelligence

How groups coordinate, divide labor, solve problems, and build shared systems for decision-making and discovery.

Examples: Popularity Feedback and Niche Construction, Gibbs Sampling with People, Virtual Worlds

Human–AI

How humans and AI systems co-adapt in shared environments, and when collaboration becomes robust, creative, aligned, and socially beneficial.

Examples: Dynamics of Collective Creativity, Human–AI Collaboration via Vibe Coding, Collective Creative Search with Humans and AI

Cultural Evolution

How ideas, rhythms, languages, and creative products spread, stabilize, diversify, and transform across individuals, groups, and generations.

Examples: Cultural Evolution Mechanisms, Cross-Cultural Perception, Iterated Learning, Cultural Evolution of Power

Research Infrastructure & Methods

Scalable tools for measuring behavior, language, timing, development, and perception across diverse populations and online environments.

Examples: PsyNet, GlobalTap, One Test Many Tongues, Scaling Developmental Science with PsyNet, Online Sensorimotor Synchronization

Interested in joining or collaborating?
Email: cococo@cornell.edu.