Penn State’s Consortium on Moral Decision-Making will be hosting a hybrid conference on political polarization and moral decision-making on Friday, April 25, at Foster Auditorium in Paterno Library and live-streamed on Zoom.
According to consortium director Daryl Cameron, Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and associate professor of psychology at Penn State, the conference “Political Division and Morality: An Interdisciplinary Conversation” will include presenters from philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, and communications.
Presenters include Penn State alumni Michael Pasek, former Ph.D. candidate in psychology who is now an assistant professor at University of Illinois at Chicago; and Joseph Phillips, former Ph.D. candidate in political science who is now a post-doc at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, England.
Other Penn State speakers include:
- Sean Laurent (Psychology)
- Daniel DellaPosta (Sociology)
- Chris Beem (McCourtney Institute for Democracy)
- Chris Skurka (Bellisario College of Communications)
- Anne Pisor (Anthropology)
Psychology speakers include:
- Keith Payne (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
- Abigail Cassario and Mark Brandt (Michigan State University)
- Fade Eadeh (Seattle University)
- Emily Kubin (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau)
- William Brady (Northwestern University)
- Karina Schumann (University of Pittsburgh)
- James Floman (Yale University)
- Samantha Moore-Berg (University of Utah)
Additionally, communications graduate student Robert Stise (University of Delaware); philosophy speaker Hannah Read (Duke University); and political science professor Scott Clifford (Texas A&M) will be presenting.
According to Anne Pisor, assistant professor of anthropology at Penn State, the conference will focus on moral reasoning, “including fairness, goodness and badness, and cooperation. An interesting avenue for research is identifying how these common elements underlie moral decision-making — even when at first glance, moral reasoning may seem so variable across cultures."
Another focus of the conference is political polarization. Penn State alumni Michael Pasek, who is now an assistant professor at University of Illinois Chicago, said “It is increasingly difficult to disentangle the study of politics from the study of morality. Politics is a vehicle to advance moralized causes, and moral disagreement gives rise to political rancor. Thus, the scientific study of polarization without the study of moral decision making would be a fool’s errand.”
Another speaker, Abby Cassario from Michigan State University, commented that right now she’s “really hung up on this question of why so many Americans who are not politically informed or ideologically consistent in their attitudes are still so strongly affectively polarized. I think it’s an interesting question because to answer it you have to consider both features of our two-party/ first past the post system in the US and of human psychology.”
Mark Brandt, also from Michigan State, notes that “I think that polarization research is a compelling topic to study academically because it requires engagement with multiple academic disciplines and levels of analysis. Understanding political polarization isn’t possible without understanding the psychology of the polarized individual, the political context in which they operate, and the social systems that dictate their norms. “
The conference will include a focus on communications as well. Chris Skurka, from Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications and a speaker, asks “how might an extreme reliance on social media for news (including a “news finds me” mindset) impact our political engagement? Once we’ve answered these questions, we’ll be in a better position as researchers to think about intervention strategies to minimize political engagement gaps within the electorate and, hopefully, reduce polarization.”
The University of Kaiserslautern-Landau’s Emily Kubin remarked that “People think we are polarized because we are fundamentally morally different, but much of our conflict comes from standing on the same moral ground while being pulled in opposite directions." Related to this, Fade Eadeh, a psychologist from Seattle University and another speaker, says “I wonder whether studies on polarization may overlook important areas of convergence and divergence that could ultimately exaggerate the degree of polarization we observe in the world and within the United States.”
The conference will explore these questions through short talks and panel discussions between many of the speakers.
For more information and to get involved in the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, contact Cameron.
The consortium is being supported by the Penn State’s Social Science Research Institute and The Rock Ethics Institute in the College of the Liberal Arts, with additional funding from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, Department of Philosophy, and Department of Psychology.