UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The Social Science Research Institute’s Consortium on Moral Decision-Making workgroup will host a hybrid workshop on Monday, March 23 from 1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the 124 Sparks Building at the University Park campus and on Zoom. The workshop will bring together scholars on topics in methodology and assessment of moral emotions, moral reasoning, and moral judgments. Topics for presentations will include measurement invariance and generalizations in moral psychology, prosocial discounting, and discussing the advantages of using self and informant reports to study a person’s moral characteristics from multiple perspectives. Attendees must register for the event.
During this event, we will bring together several speakers to discuss measurement and methodology questions in the study of moral decision-making. Speakers will deliver short talks, along with roundtable discussions. Speakers include:
Nick Byrd, Ph.D. (Geisinger Health Systems): https://byrdnick.com/
Paige Amormino, PhD. (Penn State, Prevention Research Center): https://www.paigeamormino.com/
Raluca Szekely, Ph.D. (Romanian Academy): https://sites.google.com/view/ralucaszekely/
Faruk Yalcin, M.S. (Penn State, Psychology): https://emplab.la.psu.edu/people/faruk-yalcin/
Becca Ruger, M.S. (Penn State, Psychology and Social Data Analytics): https://psych.la.psu.edu/people/rebecca-ruger/
Jillian Meyer, B.A. (Indiana University, Psychology and Cognitive Science): https://psych.indiana.edu/directory/graduate-students/meyer-jillian.html
Ben Hardin, B.A. (Washington University in St. Louis, Psychology): https://psych.wustl.edu/people/benjamin-hardin
Vlad Chituc, Ph.D. (Yale University): https://vladchituc.com/
Becca Ruger:
Although it's good to investigate the cognition behind extreme acts of villainry and heroism, most of the moral or immoral actions in our everyday lives are much more modest. Our science should cover both ends of the spectrum: the flashy acts and the mundane ones.
Raluca Szekely:
Beyond transparency and reproducibility, I think moral psychology would benefit from greater conceptual clarity and stronger psychometric foundations. As an interdisciplinary field, we should work toward clearer definitions of core constructs and more systematic attention to construct validity in study design. Many paradigms still rely on measures with limited validation and single-occasion designs. Strengthening measurement—through rigorous instrument development grounded in theory, the use of other types of designs such as intensive longitudinal ones, multimethod approaches, and broader collaboration via Big Team Science to increase sample diversity—would help us build a more cumulative science of moral judgment and behavior.”
Nick Byrd:
We may be at a tipping point. This decade's agent-ification of artificial intelligence could be more disruptive to behavioral and cognitive scientists than the 'mTurk-ification' of the prior decade. Just as agentic chatbots can now complete complex tasks for researchers, bots can now generate passive income for research participants by automatically completing paid survey experiments. So, insofar as our online research programs aim to study humans, we must continually test, refine, and disseminate methods to reliably distinguish humans from machines. Otherwise, we may have to revert back to less scalable, in-person, offline lab experiments.”
Jillian Meyer:
Moral psychology has often relied on abstract surveys that simplify the lived complexity of moral decision-making. If we want rigor, we need tools that are theoretically grounded, empirically validated, and ecologically realistic. My work integrates interdisciplinary theories of morality into behavior-based methods that capture how people navigate relevant, real-world moral trade-offs. Importantly, advancing the field requires learning from the methodological strengths of other disciplines that study morality in order to build a more complete picture of this complex decision-making process.
The Consortium, which is funded by philosophy and psychology departments in the College of the Liberal Arts, Social Science Research Institute, Rock Ethics Institute, and McCourtney Institute for Democracy, cultivates new, interdisciplinary projects. The Consortium was previously supported through an SSRI Level 4 Interdisciplinary Research Initiative grant to facilitate the long-term growth of the network and the training of early career researchers.