Events

Regular meeting of the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making. Internal and external faculty and student affiliates will discuss works in progress, articles, and upcoming and recent public events.

In November 2024, the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making will be hosting a cross-over event with the Moral Psychology Research Group, an interdisciplinary group of philosophers and psychologists. The aim of the conference is to bring together scholars from across the social sciences and humanities to have interdisciplinary conversations and build collaborations that advance the study of ethical and moral decisions.

Here is the press release about the event:

https://ssri.psu.edu/news/conference-focus-moral-decision-making-research

This conference is a crossover event, hosted by the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making and with the Moral Psychology Research Group. Taya Cohen (Professor of Organizational Behavior and Business Ethics, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University) will be giving a talk starting at 3:00 p.m. EST on “Guilt Proneness, Moral Awareness, and the Use of AI-Powered Tools”. Larisa Heiphetz Solomon (Associate Professor of Psychology, Columbia University) will subsequently be giving a talk at 4:15pm EST on “The Psychology of Redemption”. To learn more about the conference, view the press release here.

Abstract: As nations across the world grapple with the implications of the invasion of Ukraine by choosing to sever sporting and other cultural, political, and economic ties with Russia, my project offers a timely and important ethics-based examination of a related case, that of the international anti-apartheid sport boycott. African allies in the anti-apartheid struggle wrestled with the ethics of non-participation, the study of which contributes an interdisciplinary intervention to extant historiographies of sport, ethics, power, politics, race and global issues.

In this talk, I focus on Kenyan efforts to censure South Africa by boycotting major international para sport competitions. I argue that Kenyan leaders made no exception for para sport. They held athletes with disabilities to the same commitment to total disengagement with South African teams as was demanded of athletes in other realms.

A fall welcome event for the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making. We also have a Zoom: https://psu.zoom.us/j/92915677256

This is the third and final panel of the Expanding Empathy 2024 Speaker Series, hosted by the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making. We will be joined by three speakers: Stephanie Preston (Psychology, University of Michigan), Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Philosophy, Duke University), and Aleksandra Cichocka (University of Kent). The theme of this session is conceptualization compassion and concern. Each speaker will give short talks and there will be much time for interdisciplinary conversation and questions from the audience.

In this meeting, we will devote about ninety minutes to developing action-able ideas on topics related to political polarization and moral decision-making. We will use the time as a “hack-a-thon” to work together to coordinate and structure novel empirical and conceptual projects. The aim will be to walk away from the meeting with several abstracts for projects that would then serve as the basis for continued conversation into the fall of 2024.

During this special event, recipients of the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making seed grants will give short flash talks about their proposed or ongoing work that is supported. The event is open to members of the Consortium, as well as the broader Penn State academic community and interested public.

This special event will bring together psychologists and philosophers who study empathy, morality, and their interface with artificial intelligence. More details about the speakers will be announced soon. The event is free and open to the public, it will also be streamed via Zoom (see Event Registration link).

Speakers will include:

Michael Inzlicht (University of Toronto)

Anat Perry (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Jason D’Cruz (University at Albany)

Angelica Lim (Simon Fraser University)

Alan Wagner (Penn State University)

Jana Schaich Borg (Duke University)

Brett Karlan (Purdue University)

Gus Skorburg (University of Guelph)

Jim A. C. Everett (University of Kent)

Madeline Reinecke (Oxford University)

Yochanan Bigman (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Ali Ladak (University of Edinburgh, Sentience Institute)

Danica Dillion (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Agnieszka Wykowska (Istituto Italiano di Technologia)

This is the second panel of the Expanding Empathy 2024 Speaker Series, hosted by the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making. We will be joined by three speakers: Linda Skitka (Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago), Evan Westra (Philosophy, Purdue University), and Matti Wilks (University of Edinburgh). The theme of this session is moral convictions, norms, and the moral circle. Each speaker will give short talks and there will be much time for interdisciplinary conversation and questions from the audience.

This is the first panel of the Expanding Empathy 2024 Speaker Series, hosted by the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making. We will be joined by three speakers: Sa-kiera Hudson (Psychology, University of California, Berkeley), Felipe De Brigard (Philosophy, Duke University), and Eran Halperin (Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem). The theme will be empathy, forgiveness, and conflict. Each speaker will give short talks and there will be much time for interdisciplinary conversation and questions from the audience.