Culture and Morality Lab · University of Massachusetts Amherst
How culture shapes morality.
We study how culture shapes moral values and norms, across societies today and across historical time. Combining computational methods, experiments, and fieldwork, we ask why morality binds people together, and why it sometimes divides them.
About the Lab
The Culture and Morality Lab investigates the interplay between culture and moral psychology, who we consider one of “us,” what we owe each other, and how those intuitions differ across time and place.
Based in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at University of Massachusetts Amherst, we combine computational techniques, particularly natural language processing, with laboratory experiments and fieldwork. Much of our work looks beyond the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) populations that dominate psychological science.
Research
Three questions drive our work
Each program stands on its own, but they share one premise: moral psychology can only be understood in cultural context.
- Culture Across Time and PlaceHow and why do psychological processes vary across history and across cultures?
- Pluralistic MoralityHow do different moral systems bind people together, or divide them into “us” versus “them”?
- Computational Social ScienceHow can natural language processing help answer social-psychological questions at scale?
People
Meet the lab
An international group of researchers led by Dr. Mohammad Atari, spanning social psychology, peace and violence, and developmental science.
Community
Related projects
Tools and collaborations from the lab and the broader culture-and-morality and historical-psychology research community.
- CCRContextualized Construct Representations — our text-analysis platformOur project
- YourMorals(opens in a new tab)
- Moral Foundations Theory(opens in a new tab)
- Harvard Historical Psychology Project(opens in a new tab)
Curious about culture and morality? Work with us.
We welcome inquiries from prospective PhD students, undergraduate research assistants, postdoctoral researchers, and collaborators around the world.