Projects in Moral Psychology Supervised by Rebecca Dyer
Professor Dyer will supervise one-semester research projects in either the fall or spring semester. Depending on students’ interest and demonstrated preparation, thesis students in Professor Dyer’s lab can be involved with: (1) data collection for new empirical research with college students and/or online samples (likely in groups or two or three students); or (2) a literature review and research proposal in an area of moral psychology.
Projects will relate to one of the following topics:
Blame and Moral Character
In my primary line of research, I investigate how people attribute blame to both perpetrators and victims of crime. Though one might think that people should be judged based only on their own actions, my research shows that perpetrator blame and victim blame are often intricately tied together. For instance, there are plenty of real-world examples, from police brutality to domestic violence, where the defense of a perpetrator focuses on what the victim should have done differently. New studies could aim to advance research on this topic.
I am also interested in studying how blame is driven by perceptions of moral character. According to the person-centered account of moral judgment, a person’s actions are meaningful to the extent that they serve as a signal of moral character. How do we decide whether someone is fundamentally “good” or “bad,” and how does this judgment shape our perception of their behavior? Two different people, committing the exact same crime, may be viewed very differently depending on perceptions of their moral character. Projects in this area could explore the relationship between blame and various indirect signals of character (e.g., previous behavior, political attitudes, whether or not someone expresses remorse).
Construal and Moral Decision-Making
Do you tend to think about things in terms of the big picture, or in terms of specific, concrete details? Construal Level Theory (CLT) considers how psychological distance influences cognition; the further away a topic or event feels, the more abstract it will seem, with closer events seeming more concrete. I am interested in the ways that abstract thinking can facilitate two seemingly misaligned motives—justifying your own morally questionable behavior while also maintaining a strong sense of your moral values. There are several different ways to prime abstract and concrete thinking, and this project would explore the role of construal and motivation in moral reasoning/decision-making.
The Moral Foreign Language Effect (FLE)
Research has previously shown that when thinking or reading in a foreign (as opposed to native) language, people tend to be more morally lenient in their judgment of others. Previous research on the moral FLE, however, has tended to use improbable life-or-death scenarios. In my own research, I have examined how language can influence perceptions of discrimination and tried to tease apart two possible explanations for the FLE. Further studies could continue to investigate the moral FLE in terms of possible mechanisms and everyday moral norm violations.