The Institute

Dates: June 24 – July 19, 2024
Location: Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Topic: NEH Summer Institute in Moral Psychology

The field of moral psychology has venerable origins: philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Hume and Kant have been captivated by the distinctly human capacity for making moral judgments and engaging in moral behavior. However, the current orientation of the field – an intensive interdisciplinary methodology integrating work in the humanities and the social sciences – is new. At the dawn of the 21st Century, moral philosophers began to seriously engage the psychological sciences, and psychologists began to seriously engage moral philosophy, to an extent that hadn’t been seen before. The result is a field transformed. From 1900 to 1999, Google Scholar reveals, in nearly any given year, fewer than 500 publications containing the term “moral psychology.” By 2005, annual references to “moral psychology” almost doubled the best year of the century before; by 2011 there was a fivefold increase; and by 2020 there was nearly a tenfold increase.

The field’s rapid growth is attributable to several circumstances. First is the manifest importance of the topic. The study of how humans make moral judgments and behave in morally charged situations is not only theoretically interesting but also has important practical implications. Understanding the kind of creatures we are informs questions about how we might come to think and act better: in an increasingly perilous world, applied moral psychology supports scientifically informed and ethically appropriate interventions. Second, the collaborative nature of work in moral psychology, which is among the most interdisciplinary fields in the academy, draws established academics to the field and nurtures the work of younger scholars. This collaborative ethos contributes to the third reason for the contemporary growth of moral psychology: its remarkable advances. The integration of moral philosophy and scientific psychology has generated surprising discoveries about venerable issues in philosophy and opened up entirely new questions for psychology, on such socially consequential areas as the determinants of prejudice, the nature of moral judgment, the causes of military and police misconduct, the effects of poverty, and the facilitators of charitable donation.

While the field has consolidated remarkable gains, it faces difficult and exciting new challenges. If it is to continue to prosper, interdisciplinary moral psychology must engage the latest empirical and theoretical developments, as new discoveries are made and established discoveries are overturned. The way forward lies in supporting the work of younger moral psychologists who will be entrusted with the future of the field, and facilitating their interaction and collaboration with the diverse community of more senior scholars who contributed to establishing the discipline and continue to support its development.

The NEH Summer Institute in Moral Psychology at Cornell was conceived with exactly this aim in mind. The Institute will be four weeks long and consist of 3.5-hour seminar-style sessions, four mornings a week. There will be 14 visiting faculty presenters, including many of the most distinguished figures in moral psychology, as well as presentations from the co-directors. Faculty will preside over one session, leading discussions of their research. Additionally, a portion of each session will be devoted to pedagogy, and the integration of moral psychology research into classroom teaching. Each week, the 5th morning session will be participant-directed, providing participants the opportunity to present and discuss their own work. In addition to the morning sessions, participants will be offered four afternoon workshops on methods, covering (1) experimental design, (2) statistical analysis, (3) research ethics, and (4) philosophical methods. The co-directors will also hold regular office hours and organize social events to provide an occasion for the informal exchange of ideas.