I study the interplay of psychology, anthropology, morality, religion, politics and artificial intelligence. My research interests take into consideration insights from evolutionary psychology, moral psychology, public health, political science, cognitive science of religion, identity development, inter-group conflict, computer science, and both cultural and biological anthropology.
Much of my recent work focuses on how our psychological mechanisms perform in and adapt to our hyper-socialized, hyper-accelerated modern world of social media, smartphones, and cultural digitization. I find it vitally important to examine how this extensive digital new reality plays a role in the concurrent cultural polarization and youth mental health crises facing the US (and beyond).
Attempting to balance mundane and uncanny questions, my current research centers on the following projects:
Research Interests
The Digitization of Culture and Polarization
How does social media, smartphones, streaming services, data mining, artificial intelligence and the overall digitization of culture play a role in our growing polarization?
As we move from connected to hyperconnected, is the polarization and mental health crises a manifestation of an adolescent phase of a cultural revolution?
Where there is a technological problem is there a technological solution? How can we get the public to pretweet before they retweet and other strategies to combat the ill effects of modern tech? What is the role of tech companies vs the government?
Political Humility
Moral Bandwidth : Apparent Hypocrisy or Cognitive Limitation?
Is there a limit to how much of the world's immorality we can focus on at certain moment? Do we have a moral bandwidth?
If so, how do we measure such a bandwidth? Can we broaden our moral scope? If we can, are we morally obliged to increase our ethical bandwidth?
How is the concept of moral bandwidth impacted by the digitization of culture? Considering globalization and the shrinking digital divide, are we overloaded with moral content?
The evolutionary psychology of intergroup conflict and cooperation
Within digitization and polarization, why does so much of the political and cultural debate online exemplify the worst of our tribal tendencies? How can so much of this content be so contagious yet so logically inaccurate (#fakenews)?
What can insights from evolutionary psychology (and its critics) tell us about the nature of social conflict in the novel environment of modern information technology?
What are the dynamics concerning the common present-day triggers of our coalitional psychology? (i.e. politics, religion, race, culture, etc.)
The role of disgust in the transgression of social/conventional norms
What is the relationship between disgust and the breaking of traditional norms?
While disgust via rotten food or sexual acts may have obvious motivations, why do some often feel a sense of disgust merely from someone they care about participating in a traditional taboo?
A current project on the subject (in collaboration with Nina Christie at USC) is assessing the role of moralization in attitudes towards needle exchange programs.
The ontogeny and phylogeny of disgust in relation to intergroup conflict
Disgust is strongly related to aspects of intergroup conflict; from harmless feelings towards foreign cuisines, to dangerous feelings towards the foreigners themselves.
How does this role of disgust in intergroup conflict develop over the life history of individuals and communities?
How did the role of disgust in intergroup conflict develop over our human evolutionary history?
Competing psychological mechanisms under intergroup threat
Humans as particularly social and intelligent animals are uniquely adapted to deal with intergroup threat. Looking beyond “fight or flight”, what are the competing psychological mechanisms at play in our response to threat from another group?
How and why do our responses vary? How do they differ cross-culturally?
How can insights from cognitive science, biological anthropology, and social psychology help us understand this complex cognitive competition for social survival?
The fractionation of authority dependence in the moral-conventional distinction
If the US president said it was OK for Jews to eat pork, would a religious Jew think it is now fine to break this rule? Probably not. What if the collective congregation of Rabbis said it was OK? What about Imams concerning islamic law? This answer is not as simple.
According to the Turiel tradition, kosher laws are considered moral because they are not contingent on “authority”. Which type of authority? Does it matter if its a political or religious authority figure?
What ramifications does such a distinction have on the Turiel Tradition?
The influence of religious primes on religious and non-religious communities
Research suggests that priming religious concepts can have social-behavioral effects (i.e. charity giving) on both religious and non-religious individuals. What are the characteristics and variety of religious primes that influence both communities?
Given research in both contextual framing and religious priming, how do other mediums of influence such as symbolic religious architecture (i.e. Gothic cathedrals) and art (i.e. stained glass) effect social-behavior?
To what degree is this influence due to the power of cultural memes or the triggering of biologically evolved mechanisms?
Occasionally, researchers leave the lab and complete triathlons. (right: Nina Christie USC)
In a time of growing polarization, how can we understand and learn from the political other?
Insights from Haidt & Shermer help us understand the logic and morality of our political opponent, then provide an avenue to learn from each other. Given the nature of in-group bias, the political truth in any situation lies somewhere between the conservative and liberal perspective.
Amidst the digital cultural revolution, how do we balance the availability of diverse perspectives with the cognitive limitations of motivated reasoning? How can we can turn down the anger and fear, and instead invoke the better angels of our nature in civil discourse?
“There will be bad science on both sides of the debate. The only antidote I know for that is to use the scientific method as scrupulously as possible” - James Flynn
Online Threat and Toxicity
Is threat salience greater online than in previous social environments? If so, what is its relationship with online toxic dialogue?
How do we react to online threat across time and space? What can we do about it?
How do we utilize NLP and other novel machine learning tools to measure and predict changes in threat, toxic dialogue, and the relevant real world behavioral consequences?
