The Consortium on Moral Decision-Making at Penn State recently awarded Ember Grants to fund 16 projects supporting interdisciplinary research related to the conceptual and empirical study of human morality and ethical decision-making.
According to consortium director Daryl Cameron, Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and associate professor of psychology at Penn State, understanding human morality and ethics requires drawing upon insights from a diverse range of disciplines. “The goal of the grants program is to motivate scholars to find such connections in exploring the nature of human morality.”
The grant recipients are:
- Natalie Rae, assistant professor of Learning, Design, and Technology; and Dylan Paré, assistant professor of education - Moral and Ethical Reasoning in Community Resistance to AI Infrastructure
- Christina Taheri, assistant teaching professor of English - Ethics and Etiquette: Undisclosed Generative AI Use in Interpersonal Communication
- Tiffany Petricini, associate teaching professor in communication studies; and Sarah Zipf, research project manager in Teaching and Learning with Technology - Moral Decision-Making in AI-Mediated Education: Extending the Student Confessions Research Program
- Timothy Kwiatek, assistant teaching professor of philosophy; Tim Elmo Feiten, assistant teaching professor in philosophy; and Wiktoria Pedryc, doctoral student in psychology - Interdisciplinary Investigation of Praise & Blame Judgements of & by Humans and AI
- Ben Jones, assistant professor of ethics and public policy; and Nick Goldrosen, postdoctoral scholar with the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing and the Criminal Justice Research Center - The Illocutionary Meaning of ‘Defund the Police’
- Sean Laurent, assistant professor of psychology; Becca Ruger, doctoral student in psychology; and Wiktoria Pedryc, doctoral student in psychology - The Role of Histories in Moral Judgment (Travel to Interdisciplinary Conference to Present Graduate Student Research
- Faruk Yalcin, doctoral student in psychology- Do Subjective Harm Perceptions Align with the Dyadic Model?
- Brian Xu, doctoral student in psychology; and Reg Adams, professor of psychology - Idiosyncratic nature of morality differentially affects attractiveness perception
- Ronnie Riley, doctoral student in psychology; and Reg Adams, professor of psychology - Moral character judgments and perceived authenticity in emotion expression
- Paige Amormino, postdoctoral fellow in the Prevention and Methodology Training program; and Daryl Cameron, Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute - Mapping the Measurement Space of Humility: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Integration Across Moral Psychology Traditions
- Peter Forster, associate teaching professor emeritus, IST - Digital Nihilism and the Silicon Off-Ramp: Evaluating Ethical Decision-Making in Human-AI Extremist Engagements
- Mary Katherine Shenk, professor of anthropology; and Sojung Baek, doctoral student in anthropology - From Empathy to Social Capital: Longitudinal Insights into Social Networks, Life Satisfaction, and Belonging in a Patrilocal Society
- Jolie Kretzschmar, doctoral student in social psychology; and Daryl Cameron, Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute - Understanding Schadenfreude Through Motivated Emotion Regulation
- Ian Rowe-Nicholls, doctoral student in sociology; and Gary Adler, associate professor of sociology - Divided We Keep?: Local Socioeconomic Segregation and the Structural Production of the “Philanthropic Poor”
- Louisa Holmes, associate professor of geography and demography; Emily Rosenman, associate professor of geography; and Thabo Sebobi, doctoral student geography and demography - The ability to enjoy the experience of JUUL throughout daily life seamlessly with fewer restrictions and social concerns: How e-cigarette marketing strategies leverage moral judgement and personal guilt
The Consortium, which is funded by the College of the Liberal Arts, Social Science Research Institute, Rock Ethics Institute, McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the Philosophy Department, and the Psychology Department, cultivates new, interdisciplinary projects. The Consortium was also supported through an additional SSRI Level 4 Interdisciplinary Research Initiative grant to facilitate the long-term growth of the network and the training of early career researchers.