Staff Profile

I received my Ph.D. in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, with a focus on Anthropology, from the University Sapienza of Rome, Italy, where I compared economic decision-making strategies across adults, young children, and non-human primate species to shed light on the evolutionary origins and developmental trajectories of human decision-making. I then completed two postdoctoral fellowships, first at Harvard University and the University of Michigan, and then at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France. During this period, I compared decision-making and cognitive control across multiple primate species, including rhesus macaques, Barbary macaques, and lemurs, to test how socioecology shapes cognition. 

My research seeks to elucidate how different species acquire and process information from the physical and the social world and whether variation in cognitive abilities, including decision strategies, relates to differences in life history, ecology, and social structure. I address these questions by studying the cognitive abilities supporting decision-making and executive control of different primate populations, including captive brown capuchin monkeys, free-ranging populations of macaques, and different species of lemurs. Other aspects of my research examine the origins of monetary systems, specifically whether the ability to categorize money can be traced back to non-human primates. To do so, I analyse the exchange behaviour of brown tufted capuchin monkeys. 

I am the module leader for PSY2020: Evolution, behaviour and comparative cognition and for PSY1006: Instinct, Learning, and Motivation. 

• Articles

  • Molho C, De Petrillo F, Garfield ZH, Slewe S. Cross-societal variation in norm enforcement systems. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society B 2024, 379(1897), 20230034.
  • Ciacci F, Mayerhoff S, De Petrillo F, Gastaldi S, Brosnan SF, Addessi E. State-dependent risky choices in primates: Variation in energy budget does not affect tufted capuchin monkeys' (Sapajus spp.) risky choices. American Journal of Primatology 2023, 85(10), e23542.
  • De Petrillo F, Rossi F, Gastaldi S, Addessi E. Do tufted capuchin monkeys, Sapajus spp., experience regret in decision making under risk?. Animal Behaviour 2023, 202, 73-86.
  • De Petrillo F, Nair P, Cantwell A, Rosati AG. The Evolution of Cognitive Control in Lemurs. Psychological Science 2022, 33(9), 1408-1422.
  • De Petrillo F, Bettle R, Rosati AG. Insights from matched species comparisons for understanding cognition in the wild. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2022, 45, 101134.
  • De Petrillo F, Rosati AG. Variation in primate decision-making under uncertainty and the roots of human economic behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 2021, 376(1819).
  • De Petrillo F, Rosati AG. Logical inferences from visual and auditory information in ruffed lemurs and sifakas. Animal Behaviour 2020, 164, 193-204.
  • De Petrillo F, Paoletti M, Bellagamba F, Manzi G, Paglieri F, Addessi E. Contextual factors modulate risk preferences in adult humans. Behavioural Processes 2020, 176, 104137.
  • De Petrillo F, Rosati AG. Rhesus macaques use probabilities to predict future events. Evolution and Human Behavior 2019, 40(5), 436-446.
  • De Petrillo F, Caroli M, Gori E, Micucci A, Gastaldi S, Bourgeois-Gironde S, Addessi E. Evolutionary origins of money categorization and exchange: an experimental investigation in tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.). Animal Cognition 2019, 22, 169-186.
  • De Petrillo F, Rosati AG. Ecological rationality: convergent decision-making in apes and capuchins. Behavioural Processes 2019, 164, 201-213.
  • Zoratto F, Oddi G, Gori E, Micucci A, De Petrillo F, Paglieri F, Adriani W, Laviola G, Addessi E. Social modulation of risky decision-making in rats (Rattus norvegicus) and tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.). Behavioural Brain Research 2018, 347, 37-48.
  • De Petrillo F, Tonachella G, Addessi E. Emotional correlates of probabilistic decision making in tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.). Animal Behaviour 2017, 129, 249-256.
  • De Petrillo F, Gori E, Micucci A, Ponsi G, Paglieri F, Addessi E. When is it worth waiting for? Food quantity, but not food quality, affects delay tolerance in tufted capuchin monkeys. Animal Cognition 2015, 18, 1019–1029.
  • De Petrillo F, Micucci A, Gori E, Truppa V, Ariely D, Addessi E. Self-control depletion in tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.): does delay of gratification rely on a limited resource?. Frontiers in Psychology 2015, 6, 1193.
  • De Petrillo F, Ventricelli M, Ponsi G, Addessi E. Do tufted capuchin monkeys play the odds? Flexible risk preferences in Sapajus spp. Animal Cognition 2015, 18, 119–130.