The Empathy & Moral Psychology Lab will be at APS in Barcelona! Unfortunately, I can't be there in person. Check out @amormino.bsky.social's symposium & talk, @jokretz.bsky.social's first talk, two talks by @jdweng.bsky.social (including one on my behalf), @farvk.bsky.social's poster. A great team!

Interested in joining the 2027 SPSP Morality Preconference Committee? You would serve for 2 years, including this upcoming year with @diegoreinero.bsky.social and me. Applications via this link: forms.gle/NvMc9KuzsRxL... Due 5/15

The Presidential Budget Request for FY2027 calls for dismantling NSF's Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences Directorate — and reports suggest it could start this year. @cossa.bsky.social is hosting a Town Hall on April 14 and SPSP members are encouraged to attend! RSVP: https://ow.ly/sFYH50YH3Fl

🚨 NSF is already quietly eliminating the SBE Directorate, despite Congress’ mandate that NSF support the behavioral & social sciences. Steps to counter this are in motion. If you - have an SBE proposal under review - serve on an SBE grant panel You can help! Fill out this form: shorturl.at/xuKw2

We, as individuals, can do something. See below to help save SBE funding. #science #skyence 🧠 🧪

The proposed federal budget for 2027 cuts NSF funding by 55%, including dissolving the division for social, behavioral, & economic sciences. Now is an essential time to speak up for science funding!

Concerned about the possible dismantling of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Directorate of NSF?? www.nature.com/articles/d41... Find out what's happening and what we can do to protect behavioral science with @fabbs.org Friday April 10th at 1:30 ET. Register at us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

This post is part of a longer thread and we really wanted to make sure it got attention from our community. Many thank you's to Paige Amormino (@amormino.bsky.social) for putting together this action guide to help scholars advocate for the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences!

The latest U.S. Presidential Budget Request calls for the elimination of the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences - which plays a massive role in supporting personality and social psychology research.

Help save SBE at NSF (and 3 cheers for Paige 💙). Friends in the district Unis ++ have extra influence b/c their reps are on Appropriations. Click! Write! NYC schools (NYU/Columbia/Weill Cornell ..) Brown Vanderbilt U Delaware U Maryland UOregon & OSU Texas A&M U Rochester U Alabama +++

It is idiotic to make decisions based on a 'budget request'. As Timothy Snyder wrote, "Do not obey in advance."

I wrote this article to explain in plain English what is happening with the proposed 2027 NSF budget & why so many social psychologists are alarmed. THE GOOD NEWS: Congress has not finalized this yet. We have time to change Republican politicians’ minds. www.linkedin.com/pulse/saving...

This is a really thoughtful piece—clear-eyed about the scale of the damage higher education is facing, but still making room for future action. It tacitly defines hope as continued engagement and meaningful action. Thanks for including my resource page in this! What a cool newsletter!

Paige, I saw this in time to squeeze it into tonight's newsletter! Thank you - buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Once again it is time to contract your representatives: The FY27 budget request for NSF (see nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...) would get rid of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

Saving SBE starts before the bill is written. SBE needs a distinct FY27 appropriation. If your sch. is on the list, get a group of colleagues to meet w your House/Sen. offices. Esp. for Republican seats, direct constituent comms matter. Timeline/templates/updates: www.paigeamormino.com/pages/9337

Thanks for sharing! It’s something I’ve felt personally as a postdoc. Psychological orgs who have gov affairs representatives should be talking to members of congress to advocate for SBE to get a distinct appropriation in FY 27. Would love to hear from them to assess our signs of hope.

We've had many multi-disciplinary moral psychology events through the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making (moralconsortium.psu.edu), but this is the first primarily devoted to methodology. It spotlights the voices of early career researchers, driving the future of the field. Please attend and share!

We'll hear in the afternoon from @amormino.bsky.social on prosocial discounting tasks, @vladchituc.bsky.social on moral psych & Weber-Fechner law, @farvk.bsky.social on scale anchor neglect in study inference, and close with Becca Ruger discussing the role for mundane stimuli in moral psychology.

We'll hear from Jillian Lee Meyer on "Mapping the Moral Domain: A Gamified, Interdisciplinary Measure of Moral Decision-Making", & Ben Hardin will talk about round-robin approaches in moral psychology @rockethics.bsky.social @prcpennstate.bsky.social @spspnews.bsky.social @socphilpsych.bsky.social

Some highlights: @byrdnick.com will talk on "Psychometrics in the Age of AI: Two Problems, Two Solutions, and Two Resources", @ralucaszekely.bsky.social will talk on "Measurement Invariance and Generalizability in Moral Psychology" @psuliberalarts.bsky.social @ssripennstate.bsky.social

I'm pleased to drop the webpage for tomorrow's Consortium on Moral Decision-Making moral measures workshop. Click to see the schedule for the afternoon, including talk titles, abstracts, bios, & more. Monday March 23 from 1:30-5:00p.m. EDT, hybrid #psychscisky moralconsortium.psu.edu/events/moral...

And looking forward to hearing from @amormino.bsky.social @farvk.bsky.social @vladchituc.bsky.social @byrdnick.com @ralucaszekely.bsky.social and Becca, Jillian, and Ben. It will be an informal but long form dive into measurement and methods in interdisciplinary moral psych #socialpsych #psychscisky

For everyone going to #spsp2026 @spspnews.bsky.social in Chicago, come say hi to us! All of us in the EMP Lab will be there including @amormino.bsky.social @farvk.bsky.social @jdweng.bsky.social @jokretz.bsky.social. #socialpsych #psychscisky @psuliberalarts.bsky.social @prcpennstate.bsky.social

Join us Friday morning for a #SPSP2026 symposium on how psychological distance makes us “discount” our care/concern for more distant others. Feat. talks by Naomi Nero, Heather Doherty, Jin Capozzoli, and me, with moderation by the father of social discounting: Dr. Bryan Jones @spspnews.bsky.social

Check out Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship’s coverage of my undergrad replication course: cndls.georgetown.edu/projects/con... Huge thanks to @spspnews.bsky.social @cloudresearch.bsky.social @gupsychology.bsky.social & CNDLS for supporting this work.

Need Over Nearness: Impartial Beneficence Lowers the Threshold for Helping Strangers Over Close Others papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Sometimes you have one of those days when you feel, more than usual, how lucky it is to have a great team. As I walk into the weekend, grateful for the team of @amormino.bsky.social @jokretz.bsky.social @farvk.bsky.social @jdweng.bsky.social. It was a day when the holism of the EMP Lab stood out.

Also, yes, empathy matters. Normalizing empathy, or cruelty, through policy may shape when and for whom citizens feel appropriate empathizing. Empathic choices lace together in support or separation, and don't exist in a vacuum. Empathy matters, science matters, and communicating that is vital. 5/n

@spspnews.bsky.social @isreorg.bsky.social @affectscience.bsky.social @ispp-pops.bsky.social @psuliberalarts.bsky.social @prcpennstate.bsky.social @ssripennstate.bsky.social @rockethics.bsky.social @psychscience.bsky.social @socphilpsych.bsky.social 4/n

The article is open-access at the link, please share! The journal is associated with @fabbs.org and connects science to society and policymakers. I'm excited to see many of the other excellent social psychology articles that are coming out in this special issue, as well! 3/n

As a matter of motivated choice, we suggest our empathic decisions are interwoven with one another's. Ultimately we suggest this is a matter of applied moral psychology, considering how people navigate moral disagreements and the need to care for one other (or not) within a complex social world 2/n

Excited to see this out in print in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. It's the first publication with @amormino.bsky.social in the EMP Lab, along with Joel Segel from Health Policy and Administration. At a pivotal moment for empathy, we consider its role for policymaking 1/n

Wintry walk with the EMP Lab @amormino.bsky.social @jokretz.bsky.social @farvk.bsky.social @jdweng.bsky.social @psuliberalarts.bsky.social @prcpennstate.bsky.social @ssripennstate.bsky.social @rockethics.bsky.social

First paper with post doc @amormino.bsky.social! Policy as applied moral psychology. We discussed how motivated empathy & moral pluralism matter, for the public-facing FABBS Policy Insights journal. An opportunity to cross disciplines with health policy scholar Joel Segel @prcpennstate.bsky.social

Empathy & moral judgment are motivated by many different values. To understand the role that empathy & morality can play in policy, we consider how constituents & policymakers balance costs & benefits of moral emotions & regulate themselves & each other. osf.io/preprints/ps... @dcameron.bsky.social

The team: @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, Bren O’Connor, @amormino.bsky.social, @drcharlie.bsky.social, Brock Bastian, Abigail Marsh & @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social

Across 6 European countries, people feel more responsible to protect future generations than to directly reduce climate change. Both forms of responsibility predict climate policy support. 🔗 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lcgHzzKDP... New paper w/ Zhaoquan Wang, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, & many others.

The (stellar) team behind this work: David Markowitz, Thomas Mazzuchi, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, me, and @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social

Taken together, obituaries show how societies remember the dead by encoding values, responding to cultural upheavals, and reinforcing scripts of age and gender. They are cultural time capsules that reveal what we believe makes a life well lived.

With @jowylie.bsky.social, Gordon Kraft-Todd, @nathanliang.bsky.social, @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social, and @stysyropoulos.bsky.social!

Practically, if people expect their own virtue to be judged more favorably, this could (potentially) make them more willing to act publicly, which may support norm setting. Still, the consistent discounting of public relative to private virtue suggests those acts may carry a credibility cost.

Public displays of virtue like donating or speaking up can set norms, but they’re often met with skepticism (“virtue discounting”). Our new paper asks: do people expect their own public virtue to be judged differently than others’ similar actions? bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🪦 New in @pnas.org: we analyzed 38 million U.S. obituaries to ask what signals a life well lived: What values are people most remembered for? How do legacies shift with cultural events? How do age and gender shape what it means to have lived well? www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

As a reminder, the Moral Psychology Research Group online 2025 fall meeting starts today at 4pm EST on Zoom. Open to all! Details below (and note that the Zoom link has been updated). @amormino.bsky.social from the EMP Lab will be talking tomorrow at 11am EST. sites.google.com/view/mprg/on...

Which kids with early ODD/CD symptoms will grow out of them, and which may struggle long-term? Our ML models predict risk 3 years later with >90% accuracy. The strongest protective factor? Prosocial behavior—helping, sharing, caring. doi.org/10.1111/jcpp... Open Access report out now in JCPP

Check out the Moral Psychology Research Group online conference in November! EMP Lab and @prcpennstate.bsky.social post-doc @amormino.bsky.social will be talking about her work. A lot of great talks scheduled, a treat for folks who enjoy interdisciplinary work sites.google.com/view/mprg/on...

This paper grew out of my undergrad seminar: students collaborated on the replication project (Study2) & all earned co-authorship—it was a rare opportunity for undergrads to engage in journal-quality empirical work in the classroom & it’s a win for open science www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This paper grew out of my undergrad seminar: students collaborated on the replication project (Study 2) & all earned co-authorship—it was a rare opportunity for undergrads to engage in journal-quality empirical work in the classroom & it’s a win for open science www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We are excited to welcome @amormino.bsky.social to the Prevention Research Center as a postdoctoral scholar in our Prevention and Methodology Training program! Her PAMT mentors will be @dcameron.bsky.social and Joel Segel. For more about PAMT for pre- and postdoctoral scholars, visit pamt.psu.edu.