I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Social Cognitive Science Lab at Harvard University advised by Fiery Cushman and funded by the NSF. I completed my PhD in the Behavioural Science Group at Warwick Business School advised by Nick Chater and Hossam Zeitoun and funded by the ESRC.
I use a combination of behavioral experiments and computational modeling to study the cognitive processes involved in social decision making. This includes how people make moral and fairness judgments, decide and negotiate when interests conflict, and coordinate their behavior to achieve shared goals. My approach is interdisciplinary, drawing primarily upon psychology, economics, and philosophy, as well as other disciplines.
Peer-reviewed journal publications and invited revisions
Le Pargneux, A., Levine, S, Chater, N., Zeitoun, H., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Cushman, F. A. (2026). Balancing precedent and mutual benefit in human coordination. (Revise & Resubmit, Nature Communications).
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/t5pn2_v1
Le Pargneux, A., Cushman, F. A., Zeitoun, H., & Chater, N. (2025). From team rationality to morality: Implicit joint plans carry moral force. (Revise & Resubmit, Cognition). https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/rm5fc_v5
Le Pargneux, A. (2025). Contractualist moral cognition: From the normative to the descriptive at three levels of analysis. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science.
https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.70011
Le Pargneux, A., & Cushman, F. (2025). Moral judgment is sensitive to bargaining power. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 154(1), 263–278. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001678
Le Pargneux, A., Chater, N., & Zeitoun, H. (2024). Contractualist tendencies and reasoning in moral judgment and decision making. Cognition, 249, 105838. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105838
Le Pargneux, A., & Zeitoun, H. (2022). Patience and subjective well-being. Applied Economics Letters, 30(14), 1923–1929.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2022.2083566
Peer-reviewed conference papers
Le Pargneux, A., Lie-Panis, J., Cashman, M., & Cushman, F. A. (2026). Modeling fairness judgments of splits between multiple parties. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 48. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8bj2z4h9
Le Pargneux, A., Kleiman-Weiner, M., Maier, M., Lie-Panis, J. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2026). Computational frameworks for modeling moral cognition and cooperation. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 48. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9hr3v3pq
Le Pargneux, A., Levine, S., Tenenbaum, J. B., Cushman, F. A. (2025). The trade-off between rule-based thinking and mutual benefit in tacit coordination. Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47. (full paper accepted: PDF)
Le Pargneux, A., Zeitoun, H., Konstantinidis, E., & Chater, N. (2024). Coordination in dynamic interactions by converging on tacitly agreed joint plans. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 46. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5tg7135f
Le Pargneux, A., Cushman, F. A. (2024). Bargaining power, outside options, and moral judgment. Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 46.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/08s278pt (full paper accepted: PDF)
Le Pargneux, A., Chater, N., & Zeitoun, H. (2022). Contractualist concerns shape moral decisions and moral judgments. Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 44. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sw8750n (full paper accepted: PDF)
Commentaries
Calcott, R., Le Pargneux, A. & Cushman, F. A. (In press). Normative commitments constrain the scope of cultural tinkering. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. [Commentary on Chater & Christiansen]
Le Pargneux, A. (2026). Contractarian partiality, contractualist impartiality, and the question of falsifiability. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 49, e147. doi:10.1017/S0140525X25101702 [Commentary on Levine et al.]
Preprints and working papers
Le Pargneux, A.*, Roberts-Gaal, X.*, Woodley, L., Greene, J. D. & Cushman, F. A. (2025). Hard bargains and even splits: Fairness judgments track bargaining power across diverse cultures. (Under review). PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/3uqks_v3
Woodley, L.*, Le Pargneux, A.*, & Cushman, F. A. (2026). Simple heuristics structure and bias fairness judgments about climate change. PsyArXiv.
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qg5vs_v1
Calcott, R., Braga, A., Cushman, F. A., & Le Pargneux, A. (2026). Mutual observability determines when precedent is moralized in multi-agent coordination games. PsyArXiv.
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/b94np_v1
Braga, A., Le Pargneux, A., Chater, N., & Cushman, F. A. (2026). Abstraction facilitates coordination in repeated social interactions. (PDF)