Blog Category

Humans blame, and perhaps only humans do, but what is blame for? Is blame about meting out retribution and revenge? Or is blame a tool for managing others’ behavior? I argue that while the former answer is dominant in social psychology, it predicts a dysfunctional system of blame that explains only...

Morality colors the way we view the world, but how it influences our judgments of others is a controversial debate. One popular view is that morality biases people’s perceptions of others—specifically others’ intentions. I suggest that this view is incorrect. Instead, valence, not morality, guides...

Due to moral, religious and cultural sensibilities, the topic of abortion still gives rise to controversy in many countries. In this post, I will discuss our research showing how language used in abortion discourse can affect people’s attitudes by changing their attributions of humanity to unborn...

Free will is big news these days. It is turning up in the New York Times, NPR, Slate, car commercials, and in two excellent 2009 pieces in this very blog (found here and here). Yet, despite the resurgence of interest in free will, there remains confusion and disagreement regarding free will’s role...

How do we make moral judgments? Are people cold, calculating Vulcans? Or are they affectively hot hedonists? Researchers often present morality as a war between vying ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ processes, but in this two-part blog post I argue that the distinction is a false choice. Morality is both hot and...

In this post, I describe how two core motives of human social behavior—the need for understanding and the need for control—shape people’s responses to disaster. Using the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 as an example, I describe how people seek to maintain meaning (related to...

This blog examines the search for meaning in life and gives an explanation for why people seek meaning. Briefly, modern life (relative to our hunter-gatherer past) places people in an uncertain position, and meaning in life can give us a sense that difficulties in life will pay-off. Is there a...