September 2024
The lab went to downtown Boston for a duck tour and dinner to say a bittersweet goodbye to our beloved postdoc Gordon! Thank you Gordon for being such an amazing presence in our lab over the past five years—we will miss you so much!
The Morality Lab had so much fun tabling at this year’s Cambridge Science Festival! We had the opportunity to talk to so many folks about our lab’s current work in social identity complexity—thanks to everyone who stopped by!
The postbaccs had a lovely time tabling at the Student Involvement Fair! A big thank you to everyone who stopped by, and we’re excited to have new faces in the lab soon!
May 2024
We had so much fun welcoming our incoming graduate students Seoyeon and Helen with a workshop and lab dinner—we are thrilled that they will be joining us soon!
We had a blast enjoying Tuesday’s weather with a pizza picnic and celebrating our wonderful graduating RAs! Here’s to their bright futures and all of the amazing adventures ahead!
Lab director Liane Young was recently the guest on the Templeton Ideas Podcast! She discussed factors that influence moral judgement and how morality can be a moving target for researchers. You can find her episode on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts!
Congratulations to our brilliant undergraduate RAs Patrick, Maggie, Katie, Heleni, and Harold for their wonderful presentations at the Undergraduate Research Conference—we are so proud!
April 2024
The lab would like to congratulate several current members and alumni on recent accomplishments!
Fourth-year Ph.D. candidate Isaac Handley-Miner received two grants, one from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study comparatively how humans and large language models assess the validity of claims, and another from the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) to understand researcher practices and attitudes towards reporting pilot studies in psychology.
Post-bacc Research Associate Lizy Szanton committed to the Counseling Psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota, where she will be advised by Melissa Ertl.
Second-year Ph.D. Student Marcus Trenfield was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship by the National Science Foundation, and Lizy Szanton received an honorable mention for the fellowship as well.
Finally, former graduate student Dr. Jordan Theriault will be joining Northeastern as an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department (with a cross appointment in Biology).
Congratulations to all for their amazing accomplishments!
February 2024
The lab had a wonderful time traveling to San Diego to attend the 2024 Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference! We presented posters, data blitzes, and symposium talks to psychologists from around the world, and we got to see some beautiful sights around San Diego. We were so grateful to present some of our latest findings, see old members of the lab, and connect with fellow researchers. A special shout out to our wonderful RAs Quinn, Sophia, and Maggie for coming and presenting in person!
November 2023
We went apple picking along with the Social Influence and Social Change lab in order to welcome our new Project Manager, Adaeze Chukwudebe, and say farewell to our visiting scholar, Aurore Gaboriaud!
October 2023
Lab members Trys, Mookie, Adaeze, and Stelios hosted two booths, “Identity Mapping” and “What Makes a Person ‘Virtuous’?”, at the CARNIVAL event during the Cambridge Science Festival! It was a great day of sharing our research with the greater Boston community!
August 2023
Our lab had a blast playing with laser phasers in a couple rounds of intense laser tag to say goodbye to Nathan, who will be heading to graduate school later this month, and to welcome our two newest post-bacc researchers, Jodie and Thomas!
Despite torrential downpour, the lab made its way to White Mountain Creamery for an ice cream social to celebrate the hard work of our summer Research Assistants. Thank you, RAs!
June 2023
Our lab took a trip to Puttshack to celebrate Minjae’s graduation and to say goodbye to both her and Sunny. Despite Marcus’s best efforts, Trys walked away with the victory.
Our lab is excited to be collaborating with Reservoir Church in Cambridge! Last Sunday, lab members Jordan Wylie and Mookie Manalili and collaborator Abby McLaughlin explored the concept of moral curiosity with some of Reservoir’s youngest members.
May 2023
We celebrated the end of Ryan’s time in the lab with an epic trip to Level99, where we climbed, swung, and thought very hard! After all this work, we presented Ryan with some special gifts and closed with a lovely lab dinner. We’ll miss you, Ryan!
We’re so proud of our two phenomenal graduating Ph.D. students, Minjae Kim and Ryan McManus! Both have successfully defended their dissertations, and are exceptional scholars, mentors, and people. Congratulations to Dr. Kim and Dr. McManus!
April 2023
April has been full of happy news in the Morality Lab! We’re delighted to announce that this coming year, former lab coordinator Aditi Kodipady will be joining Kristina Olson as a Ph.D. student at Princeton University, research analyst Sunny Liu will be joining Anna Jenkins as a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania, project manager Nathan Liang will be joining Laura Niemi as a Ph.D. student at Cornell University, and graduating grad student Minjae Kim will be joining Shari Liu as a postdoc at Johns Hopkins University! We can’t wait to see the amazing work they all do next!
We’re also proud to announce that first-year graduate student Trystan Loustau has received a Doctoral Fellowship from the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy! She will be joining first-year graduate student Marcus Trenfield, a current Clough Center fellow. Congratulations, Trys!
March 2023
We’re so excited to announce two wonderful pieces of lab news: first, our project manager Nathan Liang received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP) for his graduate studies next year (stay tuned for more exciting grad school news).
Second, lab alum Brendan Bo O’Connor was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Albany.
A huge congratulations to Nathan and Brendan!