All photography provided by Jared Chambers

Morality and Ethics

One of the most fundamental dimensions by which humans evaluate and organize their social world is based on moral qualities. Morality is frequently defined as the social norms, customs, and cognitions that facilitate self-control and sustain social relationships in order to promote cooperation among group members (e.g., Curry, 2016; Greene, 2015; Haidt, 2008; Haidt & Kesebir, 2010; Janoff-Bulman & Carnes, 2013; Joyce, 2006; Rai & Fiske, 2011; Sterelny & Fraser, 2016; Tomasello & Vaish, 2013). To accomplish these functions, our moral systems employ a variety of tools, including affectively-intense prescriptive rules and norms about how people should and should not behave, emotions (e.g., guilt and gratitude) to motivate behavior , and social judgments of responsibility (e.g., blame and praise) to regulate behavior.

Morality seeps into a great deal of our thinking and our interactions. People care deeply about what they see as the “right” choice, and ethical decisions are ubiquitous in both our personal and professional lives. Ethics likely has its strongest force when considered at the organizational or group level (e.g., business, politics, social movements), but such forces are built upwards from the decisions and behaviors of single individuals and small groups.

In my research, I frequently focus on understanding how our moral systems allow us to make sense of each other and the world around us. I am particularly interested in issues related to social cognition and person perception. How do individuals determine who to trust? How do we predict how someone will behave in the future? I am also interested in moral norms—particularly in how we learn about those norms and how those norms are communicated to others—and the process of giving and receiving moral feedback.

Politics

By politics, I really mean the host of ideological beliefs, emotions, and attitudes relating to social and economic policies that affect large groups of people. In this way, we can think of a person’s “politics” as relating to how they think the social world is, how it should be, and how groups of people relate to each other. When partisans disagree about what policy to support, their disagreement can stem both from what they want to happen but also even in how they categorize and evaluate what is actually happening.

I am especially interested in the causes and consequences of these beliefs. What determines whether someone identifies as and holds a liberal/left position vs. a conservative/right position? Assuming a person does hold such a stance, how does that then impact other cognitions and behaviors? More specifically, my research has focused on the intersection of politics and social groups: how do political beliefs predict how people evaluate (and prioritize) the interests of different groups? Does liberalism/conservatism predict the extent to which people express ingroup bias? Such questions perhaps lie at the heart of politics and political disagreement, in terms of evaluating who should be the beneficiaries of governmental support and rights. In addition, many organizations are increasing efforts regarding DEI: understanding the role of politics in shaping beliefs about groups can ideally help increase support for such diversity-promoting efforts.

Recently, a number of my projects examine political polarization, whereby people on opposite ends of the political spectrum hold sharply contrasting views from each other (sometimes called “attitude polarization”) and express hostility towards the other side (sometimes called “affective polarization”). Understanding the causes of polarization can shed light on the potentially myriad domains that it shows up in, and hopefully provide guidance on how to reduce it. Looking forward, I am especially interested in understanding how polarization interfaces with these other domains, including in the workplace: How do psychological processes regarding polarization influence workplace culture and climate? How can workplaces serve as an effective environment for reducing external polarization?