Marianne Leonore Simmel (3 January 1923 – 24 March 2010) was a German-American psychologist with a special interest in cognitive neuropsychology.
[1] She immigrated to the United States in March 1940 with her family as a stateless refugee and applied for citizenship later that year.
[2] The family was initially divided across New York City; the parents stayed at a lodging house while their children lived at various friends' homes.
[4] With Fritz Heider, Simmel co-authored "An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior," which explored the experience of animacy.
[6] This result has been taken to establish "the human instinct for storytelling" and to serve as important data in the study of theory of mind.