Week 1: Defining and measuring morality

Day 1

Topic: Introduction to moral psychology
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Course syllabus

Optional:

  • Pinker (2008). The Moral Instinct.
  • Haidt (2008). Morality.
  • Ellemers et al. (2019). The Psychology of Morality: A Review and Analysis of Empirical Studies Published From 1940 Through 2017.
  • CrashCourse. (2016). Utilitarianism: Crash Course Philosophy #36.
  • Gert (2020). The Definition of Morality.


Day 2

Topic: Defining and measuring morality
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Graham et al. (2013). Moral Foundations Theory: The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism.
  • Janoff-Bulman & Carnes (2013). Surveying the Moral Landscape: Moral Motives and Group-Based Moralities.

Optional:

  • Gray, Waytz, & Young (2012). The Moral Dyad: A Fundamental Template Unifying Moral Judgment.
  • Rai & Fiske (2011). Moral Psychology Is Relationship Regulation: Moral Motives for Unity, Hierarchy, Equality, and Proportionality


Sunday

Assignment: Homework 1
Instructions:
Description: For this assignment, you will complete two questionnaires that will assess your moral values, the Moral Foundations Questionnaire and the Moral Motives Scale, and answer some questions about your answers.

Week 2: Evolution and development

Day 1

Topic: Evolution of morality
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • de Waal (2013). Moral behavior in animals.
  • Brosnan & de Waal (2014). Evolution of responses to (un)fairness.

Optional:

  • Rice & Gainer (1962). “Altruism” in the albino rat.
  • Masserman (1964). “Altruistic” behavior in rhesus monkeys.
  • Horner et al. (2011). Spontaneous prosocial choice by chimpanzees.
  • de Waal et al. (2008). Giving is self-rewarding for monkeys.
  • de Waal & Berger (2000). Payment for labour in monkeys.


Day 2

Topic: Moral development
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Kohlberg (1968). The Child as a Moral Philosopher.
  • Bloom (2010). The moral life of babies.

Optional:

  • Warneken & Tomasello (2006). Altruistic Helping in Human Infants and Young Chimpanzees.
  • Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants.
  • Schmidt & Sommerville (2011). Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants.
  • Sloane, Baillargeon, & Premack (2012). Do Infants Have a Sense of Fairness?
  • Smetana (2013). Moral development: The social domain theory view.

Sunday

Assignment: Quiz 1
Description: This quiz will contain 10 multiple choice questions and will cover material from the first two weeks of class. You will have 20 minutes to complete the quiz, which allocates about 2 minutes per question. You can access the quiz through the Canvas page.

Week 3: Moral reasoning

Day 1

Topic: Conscious reasoning
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Greene et al. (2009). Pushing moral buttons: The interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment.
  • Cushman, Young, & Hauser (2006). The Role of Conscious Reasoning and Intuition in Moral Judgment.

Optional:

  • Aktas, Yilmaz, & Bahçekapili (2017). Moral pluralism on the trolley tracks: Different normative principles are used for different reasons in justifying moral judgments.
  • Bruers & Braeckman (2014). A Review and Systematization of the Trolley Problem.
  • Greene et al. (2001). An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment.
  • Bartels & Pizarro (2011). The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas.

Day 2

Topic: Intuitionism
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Haidt (2001). The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment.
  • Uhlmann et al. (2009). The motivated use of moral principles.

Optional:

  • Haidt, Koller, & Dias (1993). Affect, Culture, and Morality, or Is It Wrong to Eat Your Dog?
  • Pizarro & Bloom (2003). The Intelligence of the Moral Intuitions: Comment on Haidt (2001).
  • Monin, Pizarro, & Beer (2007). Deciding Versus Reacting:Conceptions of Moral Judgment and the Reason-Affect Debate.
  • Uhlmann, Pizarro, & Diermeier (2015). A Person-Centered Approach to Moral Judgment.
  • Royzman, Kim, & Leeman (2015). The curious tale of Julie and Mark: Unraveling the moral dumbfounding effect.


Sunday

Assignment: Homework 2
Instructions:
Description: For this homework assignment, you are going to read a recent paper that found that hypothetical decision making in a trolley dilemma did not match actual decision making in a trolley dilemma.

Week 4: Character judgment & attribution

Day 1

Topic: Character judgment
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Helzer & Critcher (2018). What Do We Evaluate When We Evaluate Moral Character?
  • Uhlmann, Zhu, & Tannenbaum (2013). When it takes a bad person to do the right thing.

Optional:

  • Todorov et al. (2008). Understanding evaluation of faces on social dimensions
  • Critcher, Inbar, & Pizarro (2012). How Quick Decisions Illuminate Moral Character
  • Goodwin (2015). Moral Character in Person Perception.
  • Tannenbaum, Uhlmann, & Diermeier (2011). Moral signals, public outrage, and immaterial harms.


Day 2

Topic: Attribution of blame and praise
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Alicke (2000). Culpable Control and the Psychology of Blame.
  • Anderson, Crockett, & Pizarro (2020). A Theory of Moral Praise.

Optional:

  • Alicke (1992). Culpable Causation.
  • Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Bloom (2003). Causal deviance and the attribution of moral responsibility.
  • Alicke (2008). Blaming Badly.
  • Malle, Guglielmo, & Monroe (2014). A theory of blame.
  • Knobe (2003). Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language.
  • Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Salovey (2003). Asymmetry in judgments of moral blame and praise: The Role of Perceived Metadesires.
  • Alicke, Rogers, & Taylor (2018). What Is Blame and Why Do We Love It?

Sunday

Assignment: Homework 3
Instructions:
Description: For this homework assignment, you will choose a research topic for your term paper and begin to outline your ideas.

Week 5: Moral behavior

Day 1

Topic: Cooperation - social dilemma games
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Dunning et al. (2014). Trust at Zero Acquaintance: More a Matter of Respect Than Expectation of Reward.
  • Fehr & Gaechter (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans.

Optional:

  • Hardin (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons.
  • TedEd. (2017). What is the tragedy of the commons? - Nicholas Amendolare
  • Thielmann, Spadaro, & Balliet (2020). Personality and Prosocial Behavior: A Theoretical Framework and Meta-Analysis.
  • Jensen, Call, & Tomasello (2007). Chimpanzees Are Rational Maximizers in an Ultimatum Game.
  • Butler, Burbank, & Chisholm (2010). The frames behind the games: Player’s perceptions of prisoners dilemma, chicken, dictator, and ultimatum games.

Day 2

Topic: Altruism and reputation
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Vonasch et al. (2018). Death Before Dishonor: Incurring Costs to Protect Moral Reputation.
  • Dana, Cain, & Dawes (2006). What you dont know wont hurt me: Costly (but quiet) exit in dictator games.

Optional:

  • Cohn et al. (2019). Civic honesty around the globe.
  • Batson & Shaw (1991). Evidence for Altruism: Toward a Pluralism of Prosocial Motives.
  • Cheng et al. (2010). Love hurts: An fMRI study.
  • Monin & Miller (2001). Moral Credentials and the Expression of Prejudice.


Sunday

Assignment: Quiz 2
Description: This quiz will contain 10 multiple choice questions and will cover material from weeks three to five. You will have 20 minutes to complete the quiz, which allocates about 2 minutes per question. You can access the quiz through the Canvas page.

Week 6: Unethical behavior

Day 1

Topic: Determinants of dishonesty
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Markowitz & Levine (2021). It’s the Situation and Your Disposition: A Test of Two Honesty Hypotheses.
  • Gino, Ayal, & Ariely (2009). Contagion and Differentiation in Unethical Behavior: The Effect of One Bad Apple on the Barrel.

Optional:

  • Lee & Gino (2018). In Search of Moral Equilibrium: Person, Situation, and Their Interplay in Behavioral Ethics.
  • Kouchaki & Smith (2014). The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior.
  • Amir, Kogut, & Bereby-Meyer (2016). Careful Cheating: People Cheat Groups Rather than Individuals.
  • Zhong, Bohns, & Gino (2010). Good Lamps Are the Best Police: Darkness Increases Dishonesty and Self-Interested Behavior.
  • Jones & Paulhus (2017). Duplicity Among the Dark Triad: Three Faces of Deceit.
  • Gino & Wiltermuth (2014). Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity.
  • Kouchaki & Desai (2014). Anxious, Threatened, and Also Unethical: How Anxiety Makes Individuals Feel Threatened and Commit Unethical Acts.

Day 2

Topic: Midterm
Description: The in-class midterm will contain 5 matching, 5 fill-in-the-blank, 30 multiple choice, and 5 short answer questions. It will cover material from weeks one to six. You will have the entire class period to complete the midterm.
Required readings:

  • Midterm review study guide

Week 7: The moral self

Day 1

Topic: Moral identity
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Strohminger & Nichols (2014). The essential moral self.
  • Aquino & Reed (2002). The Self-Importance of Moral Identity.

Optional:

  • Strohminger & Nichols (2015). Neurodegeneration and Identity.
  • Strohminger (2018). Identity Is Essentially Moral.
  • Aquino et al. (2009). Testing a Social-Cognitive Model of Moral Behavior: The Interactive Influence of Situations and Moral Identity Centrality.
  • Strohminger, Knobe, & Newman (2017). The True Self: A Psychological Concept Distinct From the Self.

Day 2

Topic: Self-concept maintenance
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Shalvi et al. (2015). Self-Serving Justifications: Doing Wrong and Feeling Moral.
  • Bandura (1999). Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities.

Optional:

  • Bryan, Adams, & Monin (2013). When Cheating Would Make You a Cheater: Implicating the Self Prevents Unethical Behavior.
  • Mazar, Amir, & Ariely (2008). The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of Self-Concept Maintenance.
  • Valdesolo & DeSteno (2007). Moral Hypocrisy: Social Groups and the Flexibility of Virtue.
  • Conrads et al. (2013). Lying and team incentives.

Week 8: Moral emotions

Day 1

Topic: Condemning and praising emotions
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Haidt (2003). The Moral Emotions.
  • Lai, Haidt, & Nosek (2014). Moral elevation reduces prejudice against gay men.

Optional:

  • Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park (1997). The “Big Three” of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the “Big Three” Explanations of Suffering.
  • Giner-Sorolla & Chapman (2017). Beyond Purity: Moral Disgust Toward Bad Character.
  • Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt (1999). The CAD Triad Hypothesis: A Mapping Between Three Moral Emotions (Contempt, Anger, Disgust) and Three Moral Codes (Community, Autonomy, Divinity).
  • Chapman (2018). A Component Process Model of Disgust, Anger, and Moral Judgment.

Day 2

Topic: Self-conscious and suffering emotions
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Inbar, Pizarro, Gilovich, & Ariely (2013). Moral Masochism: On the Connection Between Guilt and Self-Punishment.
  • Bloom (2013). The Baby in the Well: The Case Against Empathy.

Optional:

  • Tracy & Robins (2004). Putting the Self Into Self-Conscious Emotions: A Theoretical Model.
  • Giner-Sorolla & Espinosa (2011). Social Cuing of Guilt by Anger and of Shame by Disgust.
  • Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic (2007). Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims.


Sunday

Assignment: Homework 4
Instructions:
Description: For this homework assignment, you will submit a rough draft of your term paper. Your rough draft doesn’t need to be the full length of your final draft, or pass all of the grading criteria. However, you will be able to get better feedback on your draft if it is complete.

Week 9: Religious and otherwise moral convictions

Day 1

Topic: Moral convictions and sacred values
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Cazzell & Skitka (2020). The Subborness of Convictions with Linda Skitka.
  • Tetlock (2003). Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values and taboo cognitions.

Optional:

  • Skitka (2021). The Psychology of Moral Conviction.
  • Aramovich, Lytle, & Skitka (2012). Opposing torture: Moral conviction and resistance to majority influence.
  • Skitka & Houston (2001). When Due Process Is of No Consequence: Moral Mandates and Presumed Defendant Guilt or Innocence.
  • Feinberg et al. (2019). Understanding the Process of Moralization: How Eating Meat Becomes a Moral Issue.
  • Tetlok et al. (2000). The Psychology of the Unthinkable: Taboo Trade-Offs, Forbidden Base Rates, and Heretical Counterfactuals.
  • Hanselmann & Tanner (2008). Taboos and conflicts in decision making: Sacred values, decision difficulty, and emotions.

Day 2

Topic: Morality and religion
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Brown-Iannuzzi, McKee, & Gervais (2018). Atheist Horns and Religious Halos: Mental Representations of Atheists and Theists.
  • Shariff & Norenzayan (2007). God Is Watching You: Priming God Concepts Increases Prosocial Behavior in an Anonymous Economic Game.

Optional:

  • Gervais (2014). Everything Is Permitted? People Intuitively Judge Immorality as Representative of Atheists.
  • Shariff & Norenzayan (2011). Mean Gods Make Good People: Different Views of God Predict Cheating Behavior.
  • Bloom (2012). Religion, Morality, Evolution.
  • Graham & Haidt (2010). Beyond Beliefs: Religions Bind Individuals Into Moral Communities.
  • Ginges, Hansen, & Norenzayan (2009). Religion and Support for Suicide Attacks.

Sunday

Assignment: Homework 5
Instructions:
Description: An important part of research is getting and giving feedback. For this assignment, you will read a classmate’s term paper and give them constructive feedback.

Week 10: Morality and politics

Day 1

Topic: Morality of liberals and conservatives
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Graham, Haidt, & Nosek (2009). Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations.
  • Waytz et al. (2019). Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle.

Optional:

  • Haidt (2008). The moral roots of liberals and conservatives.
  • Pizarro (2012). The strange politics of disgust.
  • Inbar & Pizarro (2009). Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals.
  • Janoff-Bulman (2009). To Provide or Protect: Motivational Bases of Political Liberalism and Conservatism.
  • Lakoff (1995). Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust.

Day 2

Topic: Political polarization and persuasion
Lecture:
Required readings:

  • Feinberg & Willer (2019). Moral reframing: A technique for effective and persuasive communication across political divides.
  • Schein & Gray (2015). The Unifying Moral Dyad: Liberals and Conservatives Share the Same Harm-Based Moral Template.

Optional:

  • Schkade, Sunstein, & Hastie (2007). What Happened on Deliberation Day?
  • Frimer, Skitka, & Motyl (2017). Liberals and conservatives are similarly motivated to avoid exposure to one another’s opinions.
  • Feinberg & Willer (2013). The Moral Roots of Environmental Attitudes.
  • Feinberg & Willer (2015). From Gulf to Bridge: When Do Moral Arguments Facilitate Political Influence?
  • Kubin, Puryear, Schein, & Gray (2021). Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts.

Sunday

Assignment: Quiz 3
Description: This quiz will contain 20 multiple choice questions and will cover material from after the midterm (weeks 7 through 10). You will have 40 minutes to complete the quiz, which allocates about 2 minutes per question. You can access the quiz through the Canvas page.

Week 11: Finals week

Day 1

Assignment: Term paper
Instructions:
Description: The purpose of the term paper is to learn about a moral psychology research topic that interests you but we were not able to fully explore in class. For this assignment, you will choose a research question, find and read research pertaining to the question, and write up a report about what you find. You will be working on this paper over the course of the term through your homework assignments.




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