Cushman's father was a Washington, D.C. correspondent for The New York Times, and his mother taught psychology at American University.
[1] Cushman graduated from Harvard University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in biology.
From 2008 to 2011, Cushman was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard, working with Joshua Greene.
[1] From 2011 to 2014, Cushman worked as an associate professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University.
His research focuses on morality, social neuroscience, reinforcement learning, decision making, theory of mind, and experimental philosophy.