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Article
The Role of Structure-Seeking in Moral Punishment
Four studies (total N = 1586) test the notion that people are motivated to punish moral rule violators because punishment offers a way to obtain structure and order in the world. First, in a correlational study, ...
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Article
Prior exposure increases judged truth even during periods of mind wandering
Much of our day is spent mind-wandering—periods of inattention characterized by a lack of awareness of external stimuli and information. Whether we are paying attention or not, information surrounds us constan...
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Article
Making moral principles suit yourself
Normative ethical theories and religious traditions offer general moral principles for people to follow. These moral principles are typically meant to be fixed and rigid, offering reliable guides for moral jud...
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Article
Imagining a personalized scenario selectively increases perceived risk of viral transmission for older adults
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a serious and prolonged public health emergency. Older adults have been at substantially greater risk of hospitalization, intensive care unit admission and death due to COVID-...
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Article
Cheaters claim they knew the answers all along
Cheating has become commonplace in academia and beyond. Yet, almost everyone views themselves favorably, believing that they are honest, trustworthy, and of high integrity. We investigate one possible explanat...
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Article
Closed-minded cognition: Right-wing authoritarianism is negatively related to belief updating following prediction error
When confronted with information that challenges our beliefs, we must often learn from error in order to successfully navigate the world. Past studies in reinforcement learning and educational psychology have ...
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Article
Resistance to Position Change, Motivated Reasoning, and Polarization
People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief...
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Article
The phenomenology of remembering our moral transgressions
People tend to believe that they truly are morally good, and yet they commit moral transgressions with surprising frequency in their everyday lives. To explain this phenomenon, some theorists have suggested th...
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Article
Remembering moral and immoral actions in constructing the self
Having positive moral traits is central to one’s sense of self, and people generally are motivated to maintain a positive view of the self in the present. But it remains unclear how people foster a positive, mora...
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Article
No evidence for unethical amnesia for imagined actions: A failed replication and extension
In a recent study, Kouchaki and Gino (2016) suggest that memory for unethical actions is impaired, regardless of whether such actions are real or imagined. However, as we argue in the current study, their claim t...
