Dr. Steven Hitlin is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa. He has written numerous articles and book chapters on the sociology of morality, and has written and co-edited four books, including the Handbook of Sociology of Morality, as well as a second volume of the handbook to be published in 2021. His work has been supported by multiple grants, including funding from the MINERVA initiative to study “Moral Schemas, Cultural Conflict, and Socio-Political Action.” In this episode,...

Dr. Gregg Henriques is a Professor of Psychology at James Madison University. Over many years, he has been working to develop an integrated way of understanding how psychological sciences are related to other physical and social sciences, and how to coherently approach the study of psychology. He is the author of A New Unified Theory of Psychology, and is a leader of the Unified Psychotherapy Movement and the Theory of Knowledge Society. In this podcast, we discuss his nested model of...

Dr. Christian Miller is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. His research focuses on the philosophy of religion and contemporary ethics. He has co-directed the $3.9 million Beacon Project to examine moral exemplars and, more recently, the $5.6 million Character Project which funded 28 scholars to examine the existence and nature of character and virtue. He has published two academic books, as well as one trade book titled The Character Gap: How Good Are We? In this...

Dr. Daniel Batson has a PhD in Social Psychology and Theology, and is an emeritus professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Tennessee and the University of Kansas. His distinguished career began in graduate school, in which he and his adviser, John Darley, designed and conducted what is now famously known as the Good Samaritan Study. This study subsequently fueled the so-called “situationist challenge.” He is also renown for defending “empathy-induced altruism” against...

Dr. Bradford Cokelet is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas. He has written and coedited three books, including the Moral Psychology of Guilt, which is to be published this month. He is also the recipient of two Templeton Foundation grants to study character, virtue, and motivation. His work concerns Eastern philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and applied ethics. In this podcast, Brad and I talk about ethical traditions of the East and West, and begin to...

Dr. Owen Flanagan is the James B Duke professor of philosophy and Neurobiology at Duke University, where he co-directs the Center for Comparative Philosophy. Recently, he was also a Rockefeller Fellow at National Humanities Center, as well as a Berggruen Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Dr. Flanagan has written and edited 13 books, including The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World published in 2007, and The Geography of...

Dr. Anne Colby is a consulting professor at Stanford University’s Center on Adolescence. Prior to her appointment at Stanford, she directed the Henry Murray Research Center at Harvard, and was a Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She has authored and co-authored eleven books, including Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession, which received the 2013 Frederic W. Ness Book Award. Dr. Colby’s research has focused on...

Dr. William Damon is a Professor of Education at Stanford University, where he directs the Center on Adolescence and is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His research has received numerous grants and awards from several Foundations and trusts, including the John Templeton, Andrew Mellon, and Spencer Foundations. He has authored and co-authored fifteen books on the topics of child development, education, morality, and purpose, including Greater Expectations which received the Parent’s...

Dr. Gustavo Carlo is the Millsap Endowed Professor of Diversity and Multicultural Studies in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Missouri. He is also the director and co-director of two centers there: The Center for Family Policy and Research and the Center for Children and Families Across Cultures. In 2017, he was named a University of Missouri Top Achiever and he has received numerous awards for his excellence in mentorship. Dr. Carlo’s research...

Dr. Richard Shweder is the Harold H Swift Distinguished service professor of Human Development in the University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development. Dr. Shweder’s anthropological work has received numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Association for the Advancement Socio-Psychological Prize for his essay, “Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally?” and, in 2016, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for...

Dr. Kurt Gray is an associate professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. There, he directs the Mind Perception and Morality Lab—a research lab dedicated to understanding who we interpret to have minds, and why it matters. Specifically, Dr. Gray and his research team examine how mind perception influences moral judgments. In this podcast, we discuss his research, his new Center for the Science of Moral Understanding which aims to reduce social and political...

Dr. Darcia Narvaez is a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame. There, she directs the Evolved Developmental Morality Lab, where her program of research concerns how provision of physical, emotional, and social resources early in life bear upon the development of ethical behavior. This early physical and social environment, the so-called “evolved nest,” and it’s effects are the topic of our conversation today. Her recent work and book, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First...

Dr. Mark Sheskin is an assistant professor of social sciences at Minerva Schools at KGI and an instructor in the cognitive science department at Yale university. He’s also the co-leader of the Child Lab, where he’s working to harness the power of the internet to conduct studies with children online. In this podcast, we discuss his research focus on the origins of fairness motivations, how studies of prosociality are affected by research framing, as well as his involvements at Minerva, Yale,...

Dr. Blaine Fowers is a professor at the University of Miami’s Department of Education and Psychological Studies, and is the founder of the Network for Research on Morality. His research focuses on Aristotelian Virtue Ethics and character development, with an emphasis on application of the rich theory that sets Aristotelian ethics apart from other ethical traditions. He is the author and coauthor of five books, including Frailty, Suffering, and Vice: Flourishing in the face of human...

Dr. Brent Slife is an Emeritus professor of Psychology at Brigham Young University and is the Editor-in-chief of the APA’s Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. He has been honored with numerous awards for his outstanding research and teaching career and in addition to these many achievements, he’s authored and co-authored 9 books. Today, we discuss his most recent book, co-edited with Stephen Yanchar, titled Hermeneutic Moral Realism: Theory and Practice. Notes: Dr....

Dr. Jesse Graham is the George S Eccles chair in business ethics, and an associate professor of management at the University of Utah. He’s most known for his work with Jonathan Haidt in developing Moral Foundations Theory—a theory that basic moral foundations guide a wide-array of behaviors and ideological preferences, political ones. In this podcast, Jesse and I talk about his experience in developing the theory, what theoretical challenges it faces, and his work to apply MFT to behavioral...

Dr. Larry Nucci is an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley, an emeritus professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the editor-in-chief of the journal Human Development. His research pertains to the social and moral development of children, and he’s worked to apply social domain theory to moral education programs. In this podcast, Larry and I discuss his work with Elliot Turiel to flesh out Social Domain Theory against the backdrop of...

Dr. Sam Hardy, an associate professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, describes the branches of moral psychology that emerged in the wake of Lawrence Kholberg's theory of cognitive moral development. Notes:  Video about Kholberg's theory of moral stages Richard Shweder's three ethics Moral foundations theory website Jonathan Haidt's "The emotional dog and it's rational tail: A social-intuitionist approach to moral judgement" Moral identity approaches: Blasi's moral...