2012-2013 - Research projects:

Moral Foundation Personality Inventory
The psycho-social function of meta-ethical pluralism
The role of pretend play in young children's moral development
A "motivated cognition" model of moral foundation theory
A developing understanding of moral humility in children

2011-2012 - Research projects:

Motivated moral perception: Do our moral judgments influence where we look? (cont'd)
Hemispheric processing of morally relevant cues: Does it matter if the man you're about to kill is on the left or the right? (cont'd)
Exploring the physiological and cognitive mechanisms underlying people's moral foundations (cont'd)
Young children's early moral lives: Evidence from parent-child conversations (cont'd)
Effects of moral conviction and social norm perception on health and sustainability-related behaviors
The development of moral character and feelings of self-worth in at-risk youth: A study of the WINGS program
Neural-network modeling of moral cognition

2010-2011 - Research projects:

Moral Foundations -- Individualizing vs. Binding Foundations
Moral Perception Bias
Exploration of Moral Foundations
Meta-Ethical Pluralism
Pretend Play as a Medium for Moral Exploration
Perception of Social Cues in Preschoolers' Interpretations of Social Interactions

2009-2010 - Research projects:

The Influence of Imaginative Role-Playing on Young Adults' Moral Development: We are exploring the the influence of imaginative role-playing (a simplified, structured version of Dungeons & Dragons) on moral reasoning, imagination, empathy, perspective taking, and creative thinking in young adults.
 

Pretend Play as a Medium for Early Moral Development: We are investigating pretend play as a medium for moral exploration in young children (ages 2-6 years old).
 

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Do No Evil: We are using eye-tracking technology to study the relationship between people's visual attention to (and avoidance of) morally relevant stimuli and their moral judgments/attitudes about a variety of scenarios. Specifically, we are interested in if what people attend to predicts the sorts of moral judgments they form, as well as whether they will avoid attending to morally relevant information that is inconsistent with their extant moral attitudes.

Other ongoing studies:

Perceptions of Social Status research: Do people's perception of social status influence their moral judgments -- their judgments of fairness, blameworthiness, etc.? We are currently investigating this question in adults and adolescents.

In particular, we are conducting research on how adolescents think about a variety of social relationships and interactions. Our goal is to develop a better understanding of how adolescents of different ages perceive differences in social status and how those perceptions influence their interpretation of a range of social relationships and their judgments about positive and negative social interactions.

Mechanisms of Intolerance: Our past research indicates that viewing an issue as moral is strongly predictive of intolerance and negative interpersonal behaviors towards dissimilar others. But what are the mechanisms behind this intolerance? We are currently exploring the extent to which such intolerance is driven by people’s meta-ethical commitments (viewing moral norms as either objectively or subjectively grounded) and strength of attitude.

We are also exploring the contextual and cognitive specifics underlying people’s meta-ethical commitments.

Young Children's Use of Moral Evaluatives: What sorts of moral concepts do young children use to talk about moral issues with their parents? Past research suggest that while they employ "good" and "bad" to discuss moral issues frequently, they rarely (if ever) employ "right" and "wrong". We are currently exploring this finding in greater depth in samples of both American and British children.

The Moral Suspiciousness of the Atheist: We are studying how people's moral judgments about a person's good and bad actions vary on the basis of that person's religious or non-religious beliefs.