What are the psychological origins of ethical behavior? Why is there both agreement and conflict around what constitutes right and wrong? From its start, the field of moral psychology has reached across disciplines to pursue answers to big questions like these. The transformative scholarship of the field aims to reveal the personal, cultural, institutional, and social factors that determine the nature of human behavior and that help us understand the roots of human conflict and well-being. This relatively new field has already become one of the most intensely interdisciplinary and radically collaborative fields in the academy. This is because moral psychology has a rich history, a vibrant present, and an enormously exciting future.
Founded by a small group of philosophers over a grey New Jersey weekend in April 2003, The Moral Psychology Research Group (MPRG) was created to foster collaborative interdisciplinary research on morality in the mind, brain, and behavior. The group now includes 40 humanists and scientists from universities across the United States and Canada (see here). Since its inception, MPRG members have made significant contributions to the ever-growing literature on moral psychology (see here and here). Starting in Spring 2023, we will host an online conference that will be aimed at bringing together leading junior and senior philosophers and psychologists to share their research with MPRG group members and with the public more generally (see here).
*The photograph used for the homepage of this website is by Micheal Paul Cole.