Samuel Mehr is a New Zealand cognitive scientist specialising in auditory perception, developmental psychology, cross-cultural research, and data science.

[2] Mehr was the recipient of the New Zealand Prime Minister's MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize in 2023,[3] and the US National Institutes of Health Director's Early Independence Award in 2017,[4] both for his work on the psychology of music.

One area of his research involved assembling archival recordings from 319 societies from around the world to create a database titled The Natural History of Song.

Mehr and colleagues also experimentally showed that individual listeners carry assess these songs along similar dimensions in both WEIRD and non-WEIRD societies.

[7][8] Mehr also showed that vocal signatures of infant-directed care, such as lullabies and baby talk are expressed cross-culturally across the globe in both industrialized and non-industrialized societies and carry similar properties regardless of location.