On the Morality of Torture & Utilitarianism
I personally do not believe in torture, but I have to admit that when I think of it, my mind prototypically thinks of the potential harm that might befall an innocent person caught by an unscrupulous policeman who is all too sure of his moral superiority. What would I do if I knew with 100% [...]
Armando Galarraga demonstrates the relationship between happiness and forgiveness
Watching baseball can be a frivolous pursuit and a distraction from psychology research, but last night something happened which demonstrated a psychological finding far more effectively than any study or paper.
Armando Galarraga, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, was very close to pitching a perfect game. For non-baseball fans, its a very rare occurrence, comparable [...]
Wanted: Motivated Academic Writers to Help Publish Our Data
Thanks to the publicity which moral psychology (and specifically Jon Haidt’s work) has begun to receive, along with the average person’s insatiable appetite for knowledge about themselves, facilitated by the internet, we have collected a truly unique dataset at yourmorals.org. It is a large community sample and includes some reaction time data. It is non-representative [...]
What is more Immorral? Distracted Driving or Smoking Marijuana?
The answer is that it depends on whom you ask. Below is a graph based on yourmorals data where participants were randomly assigned to answer whether they agreed that “XXX is immoral” about one of seven health behaviors.
As you can see, conservatives feel that ingesting all types of substances (cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine) are [...]
How to publish a Replication of Disgust & Big Five Personality Trait Correlations
I have recently been following a discussion in my discipline about the peer review process, which led me to this very interesting paper about the history of and alternatives to the peer review process in psychology.
At the same time, I’ve been working with colleagues on a paper about experiential vs. material purchasing styles, for which [...]
Sam Harris’ TED video and the danger of liberal atheist moral absolutism
A fellow graduate student recently shared the below Sam Harris TED video with me and I was quite surprised at the premise of the talk. In it, Sam Harris gives a spirited defense of moral absolutism, the idea that there are objective truths about what we should and should not value. Below is the video.
Harris [...]
Does trait anxiety make your more or less likely to support war & aggression?
Recently, one of the grad students in my department gave a brownbag talk about the relationship between fear and aggression. On the one hand, one might expect fear to lead to aggression as one perceives threat to a greater extent and responds accordingly. On the other hand, fear is associated with withdrawal and so we [...]
Democrats and Republicans agree that Justice & Fairness are about Equity, not Equality or Impartiality
I was browsing CNN today and I decided to expand my moral imagination by watching Glenn Beck Speak at the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting. I was surprised how reasonable his message sounded to me, as I my previous impression of him was not good.
I believe that people should be able to get what they deserve [...]
The Psychology of the JournoList “Scandal”: Mirror Image Stereotypes
As a regular reader of political blogs, I could not help but notice that a number of my favorite sites were writing about the same thing, specifically, their participation in a discussion group called JournoList, which included numerous media members such as Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight and Politico writer Ben Smith, both of whom I [...]