The Max Planck Research Group for Comparative Cognitive Anthropology was established in 2008 and is hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. It is comprised of an interdisciplinary team of psychologists, biologists and anthropologists.

The research group aims to explore how patterns of human cultural variation are related to variable cognitive function and to determine the underlying uniquely human set of psychological mechanisms that allow and stabilize cross-cultural behavioural variability. To achieve these aims we combine cross-species, cross-cultural, and developmental experimentation.