research

Our research is driven by a central question:

To what extent can media messages lead audiences to think or act in ways that are moral or self-serving?

In pursuit of an answer to this question, we conduct experiments and quantitative content analyses to investigate the reciprocal relationship between media and audiences in two main areas:

entertainment media & children’s morality

Our work with 10-14 year old adolescents has revealed predictable, nuanced differences in young audiences’ moral behaviors as a result of exposure to moral media content. For instance, in one study we found that the moral content in a storybook predicted not only an increase in the extent to which 10-year-old readers shared their belongings with others, but it also predicted how they chose to share – with specific story content predicting children’s patterns of sharing. Other work we’ve collaborated on has examined media’s ability to increase 6-10 year old children’s physical activity via the satisfaction of their intrinsic, self-serving motivations. In our ongoing work in this area, we are attempting to develop & validate novel measures capable of assessing children’s moral judgments & behaviors.

morality as a radicalization tool

Building on Aristotle’s logic suggesting that a virtue carried to the extreme is a vice (Nicomachean Ethics: Book II), our work investigating terrorism and extremism attempts to examine individuals’ moral penchants as a mechanism underlying their ability to become radicalized. Our initial findings in this area suggest that terrorists are indeed morally engaged rather than disengaged, as violent groups tend to justify their heinous acts as having a moral purpose. Our ongoing work in this area focuses on understanding the manner in which terrorists and alt-right extremists use morality as a tool for radicalization, for instance by appealing to the superordinate moral concerns (e.g., ingroup solidarity) of existing members and new recruits to “blind” them to the groups’s atrocities.