I am currently an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. My primary research interests are in moral judgment (one of the most exciting areas of psychology, in my humble opinion; you can now find a bunch of us talking about the topic at a recent seminar on the topic here at the edge.org website), the effects of emotion on judgment, and on the overlap between these two. In my lab in the psychology department at Cornell, we also study a wide range of topics involving emotion, judgment, and behavior. Below are descriptions of some of our ongoing projects (divided fairly arbitrarily given the overlap in topics; most papers cited are available for download here).
Moral Judgment
Moral Responsibility
One of my primary interests is in how people arrive at judgments about moral responsibility. Most people seem to have intuitions about what sorts of things matter when determining whether a person deserves blame (or praise) for any given act. For instance, people seem to believe that in order to be held responsible for something a person should have (among other things) intended and caused the event in question, and that unintended or accidental actions usually receive less blame. Some of our work has documented just how sophisticated these lay intuitions can actually be (e.g., Pizarro, Uhlmann & Bloom, 2003; Pizarro, Uhlmann & Salovey, 2003).
But these judgments can also be influenced by biases people may not be aware they possess (e.g., attributing a greater degree of intentionality for an act to someone simply because the act or individual is particularly disliked; e.g., Tannenbaum, Ditto, & Pizarro, in prep). In our lab we have investigated both the nature of the underlying intuitions about responsibility (intuitions that they endorse as “correct”), as well as the biases that can affect these judgments . Lately we have also been investigating the nature of beliefs about free will and judgments of responsibility.
Motivated reasoning and the use of moral principles
In another ongoing set of studies, we have demonstrated that moral reasoning can be influenced by motivations that may have nothing to do with moral concerns (Ditto, Pizarro & Tannenbaum, 2009). For instance, using traditional moral dilemmas in order to determine whether people endorse consequentialism (i.e., the belief that whether an act is morally right should be determined solely by the consequences of the act) or deontology (the belief that some acts are wrong in-and-of themselves), we have found that individuals endorse the general principle that is most consistent with their pre-existing political motivations. Rather than use the general principle to make judgments about specific cases, individuals seem to make judgments about specific cases and endorse whichever principle suits their arguments (e.g., Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum & Ditto, under review).
Emotion and Judgment
Disgust
Disgust has been keeping us particularly busy, as it has been implicated by many as an emotion that plays a large role in many moral judgments). In our lab, we have shown that an increased tendency to experience disgust (as measured using the Disgust Sensitivity Scale, developed by Jon Haidt and colleagues), is related to political orientation (Inbar, Pizarro, & Bloom, 2009). The more likely people report that they are easily disgusted, the more likely they are to report that they are politically conservative (or, just as accurately, the less disgust individuals report the more likely they are to be politically liberal). Such disgust sensitivity seems to only predict attitudes in the “sociomoral” domain, such as attitudes toward gay marriage and abortion, rather than other features associated with conservative belief (such as fiscal attitudes or beliefs about foreign policy).
In a follow-up paper, we show that even for people who may not be willing (or aware) of their attitudes toward homosexuality, the degree of disgust sensitivity predicts so-called “implicit” attitudes toward homosexuality (Inbar, Pizarro, Knobe & Bloom, 2009). Finally, in ongoing work we have shown that manipulating disgust with a noxious odor leads to greater antipathy toward gays and lesbians, but does not shift attitudes that might be associated with liberal or conservative beliefs (Inbar, Pizarro, & Bloom, under review).
(Here are some media reactions to this research, first reported by the Cornell Chronicle, but also by other outlets including the Washington Times, Washington Post, and FoxNews.com)
Our lab is now currently collaborating with the group of psychologists at yourmorals.org, investigating the role of disgust in moral judgment on a much larger sample of respondents from around the world.
“Visceral” States
I also have a general interest in the influence of emotional states on thinking and deciding. I am particularly interested in specific emotions (anger, disgust, fear, etc.), and on “visceral” affective states (e.g., thirst, hunger, sexual arousal) and their impact on how we process information, how we remember events, and how these emotions impact our moral judgments. We have shown, for instance, that people become insensitive to the risks of a gamble taken to win chocolate chip cookies when the smell of freshly-baked cookies permeates the lab, and that men report a greater willingness to engage in risky sexual behavior when sexually aroused (Ditto et al., 2006). And that people are more likely to lie to researchers in order to receive a bottle of water when feeling thirsty after a workout, but not before (Williams, Pizarro, Ariely & Weinberg, in prep).