A shout out to the original Moral Lab team (Piper, Christin, Ross, & Jed) -- I hope you are thriving wherever you are!
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To meet our current lab members, click here.

2020-2021 Research Plans

Diversity, Deviance, & Virtue Within Imperfect Moral Communities
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  • What is acceptable (even desirable) diversity – and when does that diversity become deviance? This question is critical for creating and maintaining healthy socio-cultural normative systems (i.e., socially “normed” shared beliefs, values, attitudes, practices, commitments, rituals, etc.) that allow individuals within a community to function well (and ideally thrive). It also bears on the question of how virtues develop, and which ones will be prioritized – i.e., those necessary for protecting existing normative systems, and those needed for corrective purposes, when normative systems become dysfunctional and change is required. This introduces space for variation, both within and between cultures. It also highlights a problem – the imperfection of our moral knowledge and the vulnerability of our normative systems to error and corruption. The challenge we face is having an understanding of ourselves as moral beings oriented towards “the good” that is stable enough to be meaningfully shared and passed down (as a set of normative systems) to future generations, yet flexible enough to adapt and change as our cumulative experiences bring that understanding into question.

Verticalization of Social Concepts

Last year, my lab will begin exploring the consequences of what I am calling the "verticalization" of social concepts.
  • There has been a host of different research studies that show that people think hierarchically -- in vertical space. “Good” is often depicted as up, rather than down (Meier, Robinson, & Clore, 2004). We tend to place that which we value, view as good, aspire to, etc. above us, and that which we disvalue, view as bad, and wish to avoid below us. And we naturally treat someone standing above us with more deference than someone standing below us. Taller men are perceived as better leaders, more intelligent, and as having higher levels of self-confidence than their shorter counterparts (Hamstra, 2014). When one says a person is ‘looked up to’, it does not literally mean that person is tall, but rather more likely refers to an eminent figure in a particular aspect. In contrast to this, people who are inferior in social status are said to be ‘looked down on’. So, for example if you see the words "employer" and "employee" set up to where the former is above the latter, this feels natural to us - but if you show the opposite (the latter above the former), this creates dissonance and takes longer to process. Same with dyadic pairs such as "man/woman", "father/son", "master/servant", "god/devil", etc. But to date, there has been no research (that I can find) on the effect this has on social evaluation concepts that our students encounter, and have to navigate, on a daily basis -- such as body type concepts, beauty concepts, intelligence concepts, and so on.
  • Take, for example, the body type continuum "thin vs. fat". If we ask people to place themselves along this continuum, treating it as a "horizontal" line -- i.e., both ends of the continuum are on the same level, equal to one another my hypothesis is that they will not only distribute themselves (and other) more widely on this line (there will be greater variability), but that also people will feel more comfortable doing so. If, on the other hand, we ask people to place themselves (or others) along this continuum, treating it as a "vertical" line (with skinny on top and fat on the bottom), not only will this reduce the amount of variability in people's attribution along the line, it will (more importantly) generate a high degree of anxiety, negative self-thoughts, negative social judgements, etc. in doing so -- even for people who place themselves at the top of the line. Not only this, but viewing the continuum as vertical by itself (I believe) will generate more anxiety, more negative self and other judgment -- because if the line is vertical, it means staying at the top takes *effort* (gravity can always pull you down). In other words, there is an increased sense of insecurity – you have to work hard to stay at the top and can lose your position at any moment. Whereas, when the line is horizontal, movement along the line, in either direction, is much more effortless and doesn't involve the stress of a sense of "gravity" pulling you down. This could be true also for descriptive continuums such as: poor - wealthy, attractive - unattractive, and so on. I also hypothesize that people will view the concepts themselves (thin vs. fat, rich vs. poor, etc.) as carrying more normative (and less descriptive) weight when they are presented vertically – and the opposite when they are presented horizontally. 

WE WILL ALSO CONTINUE WITH OUR RESEARCH IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS:

​Meta-Ethical Pluralism -- to learn more about this, you can read my blog post here or read a few of our published articles
Humility as a Foundational Virtue -- to learn more about this, you can watch one of our talks on humility here or read drafts of a few of our papers (currently in press or under review)
If you are interested in an RA position, please contact: [email protected].