Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Investigating the Link between Moral Curiosity and Moral Learning

Wylie, Jordan, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of the NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Drs. Liane Young and Gregg Sparkman at Boston College, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating moral curiosity. This project seeks to develop a foundational understanding of moral curiosity, its function in daily life, what makes it a unique motivating force, and whether it supports learning about ideas and those people whom we wish to avoid. Further, this project examines which parts of the brain support this powerful drive. This work will advance our understanding of our moral psychology, and it has implications for understanding the mind more broadly by asking whether we seek out bad and unusual people and things to learn what not to do. Further, in exploring the potential links between learning and moral curiosity, this project will also help us understand whether this kind of curiosity can be leveraged as tool for change—by helping to inform interventions to encourage positive social behavior. This project will advance the field of psychology by helping us better understand the roots and consequences of a common experience in life. Further, this work will also support diversity in science by supporting the work of an underrepresented scholar. The results of this project enrich theory across relevant disciplines, and they will play a crucial role in developing a richer understanding of how and why we learn about bad people, ideas, and problems in our society. This project takes an interdisciplinary approach to characterizing an undertheorized aspect of moral life: immorality is often fascinating. To date, research on interest in immoral agents has largely focused on their role in entertainment or our judgments about them. Few empirical studies have sought to understand the allure of the immoral within the context of moral cognition and even less on what functional utility such a preference may have. This project will be the first to systematically examine 1) what motivates moral curiosity, 2) what utility it has for learning about the self, others, and broader society, and 3) whether, alongside neural regions that support reward processing and memory, the Theory of Mind Network specifically plays a role in supporting this kind of curiosity. In doing so, this work will advance our theorizing about moral cognition and help to make sense of what a preference for badness and atypicality in the moral domain reveals about our moral minds. Using a variety of methods including brain imaging, survey research, and behavioral experiments, and integrating theory from philosophy, social and media psychology, and neuroscience, the goal of this project it to unveil the unique role moral curiosity plays in shaping our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us. Further, this work marks a significant first step to deriving and testing interventions aimed at the promotion of prosocial behaviors and norms by better understanding what prompts individuals to formulate new moral concepts and evaluations. The award will also support an early career, underrepresented scholar, thus enhancing diversity in science. This work, along with the materials, methods used, and the findings will be widely disseminated in their relevant platforms or outlets. This project reimagines curiosity for immorality as a useful feature of moral cognition, not a bug: Moral curiosity may ultimately serve a vital role in individual learning and learning about society’s ills. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.