Graduate Student - Ph.D.

Psychology

Anthropology

University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA)

Keith J Holyoak, Alan P. Fiske

I study moral psychology, particularly with regard to how ideas about what is right and fair emerge within the context of our social interactions.

Our program of research shows that moral intuitions—including perceived obligations, motives, and emotions—and moral actions depend on the type of social relationship that people implicilty perceive themselves to be engaged in. Further, we show that perceptions of relationships are often influenced by cues that people are not fully aware of, and that therefore influence moral intuitions without reflectively awareness. Hence what people feel is right or wrong, and what they do, sometimes does not correspond with their own reasoning or that of moral philosophers and psychologists. But moral intuitions and actions do systematically correspond to types of social relationships and the cues that evoke those relationships.

2007-2009 NSF IGERT Fellowship