Events

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.

We will be joined by Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota, Philosophy) and Simone Shamay-Tsoory (University of Haifa, Psychology). They will each give talks on empathy, learning, and wisdom, and then talk with each other, and take questions from the webinar audience.

Sara Konrath (Indiana University, Psychology) and Fritz Breithaupt (Indiana University, Germanic Studies) will each give talks and then talk with each other about the positive and negative aspects of empathy in social life, and take questions from the webinar audience.

We will be joined by Phillip Kanske (TU Dresden; Psychology and Neuroscience) and Leda Berio (Ruhr University Bochum; Philosophy). They will discuss the nature of empathy, each presenting talks on their work and then discussing interdisciplinary considerations about empathy with each other and the webinar audience.

This event will bring together researchers in psychology, political science, communication, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology to discuss political divisions and moral decision-making. The event will be in person at Foster Auditorium on campus, with live-streaming on Zoom as well. The aim of the conference is to cultivate cross-disciplinary dialogues about this topic and generate new research collaborations.

A roundtable discussion with Joshua Rottman after his talk earlier in the day. Part of the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making.

Abstract: Altruism often falters. People can fail to care deeply enough, and they can also fail to care broadly enough. These two moral dimensions—deep concern for the plight of those in need and broad concern for equitable treatment of disparate others—have long been noted to be separable. However, there has been very little attention paid to how a person’s “moral depth” (i.e., their prosocial and empathic dispositions to care for others) relates to their “moral breadth” (i.e., their impartial dispositions to distribute such concern equitably). Are highly caring people likely to focus their concern on close others or distant others? Come to the talk to find out!

Biography: Joshua Rottman is associate professor and chair of psychology at Franklin & Marshall College, where he directs the Developing Moral Values Lab. His interdisciplinary research investigates the cognitive science of moral boundaries, the development of disgust, and children’s trust in testimony. He has published in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals such as Psychological Science and Cognition, and he has written popular pieces for Scientific American and Psychology Today.

The weekly meeting of the Empathy and Moral Psychology (EMP) Lab, directed by Daryl Cameron in the Department of Psychology. We will discuss research articles and in progress projects. Email Professor Cameron (cdc49@psu.edu) if you’d like a Zoom link to attend virtually.

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.