Researching how people make moral and ethical decisions will be the goal of the Penn State Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, a new, interdisciplinary network that will advance the social scientific study of moral decision-making.
Directed by Daryl Cameron, associate professor of psychology and senior research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State, the consortium will continue the work Cameron began 5 ½ years ago when he established the Moral Agency and Moral Development Initiative.
“Morality is a core problem, and the basic questions of how to get along with others, and what are we responsible for, cross many disciplines. Our goal is to further establish a transdisciplinary network of researchers to find new paths of conversation and establish Penn State as a recognized name in moral decision-making research,” said Cameron.
The new consortium will establish working groups with faculty from various disciplines to encourage collaborations, support seminar series, workshops, and conferences, and develop a seed funding program. “We want to help faculty secure new grants and assist them in getting their work published. Eventually, we will work to establish additional points of collaborative connections outside of Penn State,” Cameron said.
The new consortium furthers the work of the Moral Agency and Moral Development Initiative, which has included the Moral Agency Workshop, an interdisciplinary working group of faculty and students ranging across disciplines as diverse as political science, psychology, philosophy, engineering, applied linguistics, media studies, communications, history and religious studies, marketing, and bioethics, among other fields.
Additionally, the initiative supported the Expanding Empathy Speaker Series annually from 2019-2023 and conferences (e.g., Moral Psychology Research Group in 2017) with the aim of cultivating collaborations and research networks.
Last year, Cameron piloted a seed grant program in which faculty and students from across disciplines could apply for funding to support projects. This seed grant program supported five projects ranging across criminology to political science to psychology.
In the future, the new consortium will host a series of meetings to talk about collaborative ideas and a launching pad for a seed grant program. The official kick-off for the new consortium will be during the 2023-2024 academic year.
In addition to being sponsored by the Rock Ethics Institute, the consortium is being jointly co-sponsored by the Social Science Research Institute and the College of Liberal Arts. The McCourtney Institute for Democracy and the Philosophy Department within Liberal Arts are also supporting the work.