EMP Lab members presenting at SPSP
For everyone going to #spsp2026 @spspnews.bsky.social in Chicago, come say hi to us! All of us in the EMP Lab will be there including @amormino.bsky.social @farvk.bsky.social @jdweng.bsky.social @jokretz.bsky.social.
#socialpsych #psychscisky
@psuliberalarts.bsky.social @prcpennstate.bsky.social
Join us Friday morning for a #SPSP2026 symposium on how psychological distance makes us “discount” our care/concern for more distant others. Feat. talks by Naomi Nero, Heather Doherty, Jin Capozzoli, and me, with moderation by the father of social discounting: Dr. Bryan Jones @spspnews.bsky.social
Check out Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship’s coverage of my undergrad replication course:
cndls.georgetown.edu/projects/con...
Huge thanks to @spspnews.bsky.social @cloudresearch.bsky.social @gupsychology.bsky.social & CNDLS for supporting this work.
Need Over Nearness: Impartial Beneficence Lowers the Threshold for Helping Strangers Over Close Others papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Sometimes you have one of those days when you feel, more than usual, how lucky it is to have a great team. As I walk into the weekend, grateful for the team of @amormino.bsky.social @jokretz.bsky.social @farvk.bsky.social @jdweng.bsky.social. It was a day when the holism of the EMP Lab stood out.
Also, yes, empathy matters. Normalizing empathy, or cruelty, through policy may shape when and for whom citizens feel appropriate empathizing. Empathic choices lace together in support or separation, and don't exist in a vacuum. Empathy matters, science matters, and communicating that is vital.
5/n
@spspnews.bsky.social @isreorg.bsky.social @affectscience.bsky.social @ispp-pops.bsky.social @psuliberalarts.bsky.social @prcpennstate.bsky.social @ssripennstate.bsky.social @rockethics.bsky.social @psychscience.bsky.social @socphilpsych.bsky.social
4/n
The article is open-access at the link, please share! The journal is associated with @fabbs.org and connects science to society and policymakers. I'm excited to see many of the other excellent social psychology articles that are coming out in this special issue, as well! 3/n
As a matter of motivated choice, we suggest our empathic decisions are interwoven with one another's. Ultimately we suggest this is a matter of applied moral psychology, considering how people navigate moral disagreements and the need to care for one other (or not) within a complex social world 2/n
Excited to see this out in print in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. It's the first publication with @amormino.bsky.social in the EMP Lab, along with Joel Segel from Health Policy and Administration. At a pivotal moment for empathy, we consider its role for policymaking 1/n
Wintry walk with the EMP Lab
@amormino.bsky.social @jokretz.bsky.social @farvk.bsky.social @jdweng.bsky.social
@psuliberalarts.bsky.social
@prcpennstate.bsky.social
@ssripennstate.bsky.social
@rockethics.bsky.social
First paper with post doc @amormino.bsky.social! Policy as applied moral psychology. We discussed how motivated empathy & moral pluralism matter, for the public-facing FABBS Policy Insights journal. An opportunity to cross disciplines with health policy scholar Joel Segel
@prcpennstate.bsky.social
@dcameron.bsky.social, Dr. Joel Segel, and I discuss Motivating Empathy and Moral Pluralism in Health Policy in our new preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Empathy & moral judgment are motivated by many different values. To understand the role that empathy & morality can play in policy, we consider how constituents & policymakers balance costs & benefits of moral emotions & regulate themselves & each other.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
@dcameron.bsky.social
The team: @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, Bren O’Connor, @amormino.bsky.social, @drcharlie.bsky.social, Brock Bastian, Abigail Marsh & @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social
Across 6 European countries, people feel more responsible to protect future generations than to directly reduce climate change. Both forms of responsibility predict climate policy support.
🔗 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lcgHzzKDP...
New paper w/ Zhaoquan Wang, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, & many others.
The (stellar) team behind this work: David Markowitz, Thomas Mazzuchi, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, me, and @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social
Taken together, obituaries show how societies remember the dead by encoding values, responding to cultural upheavals, and reinforcing scripts of age and gender. They are cultural time capsules that reveal what we believe makes a life well lived.
With @jowylie.bsky.social, Gordon Kraft-Todd, @nathanliang.bsky.social, @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social, and @stysyropoulos.bsky.social!
Practically, if people expect their own virtue to be judged more favorably, this could (potentially) make them more willing to act publicly, which may support norm setting. Still, the consistent discounting of public relative to private virtue suggests those acts may carry a credibility cost.
Public displays of virtue like donating or speaking up can set norms, but they’re often met with skepticism (“virtue discounting”). Our new paper asks: do people expect their own public virtue to be judged differently than others’ similar actions?
bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
🪦 New in @pnas.org: we analyzed 38 million U.S. obituaries to ask what signals a life well lived:
What values are people most remembered for?
How do legacies shift with cultural events?
How do age and gender shape what it means to have lived well?
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
As a reminder, the Moral Psychology Research Group online 2025 fall meeting starts today at 4pm EST on Zoom. Open to all! Details below (and note that the Zoom link has been updated). @amormino.bsky.social from the EMP Lab will be talking tomorrow at 11am EST.
sites.google.com/view/mprg/on...
Which kids with early ODD/CD symptoms will grow out of them, and which may struggle long-term?
Our ML models predict risk 3 years later with >90% accuracy. The strongest protective factor? Prosocial behavior—helping, sharing, caring.
doi.org/10.1111/jcpp...
Open Access report out now in JCPP
Check out the Moral Psychology Research Group online conference in November! EMP Lab and @prcpennstate.bsky.social post-doc @amormino.bsky.social will be talking about her work. A lot of great talks scheduled, a treat for folks who enjoy interdisciplinary work
sites.google.com/view/mprg/on...
Huge thanks to co-authors Drs. Abigail Marsh, Bryan Jones, and @kendraseaman.bsky.social for your helpful mentorship and continued belief in this project!
This paper grew out of my undergrad seminar: students collaborated on the replication project (Study2) & all earned co-authorship—it was a rare opportunity for undergrads to engage in journal-quality empirical work in the classroom & it’s a win for open science www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
This paper grew out of my undergrad seminar: students collaborated on the replication project (Study 2) & all earned co-authorship—it was a rare opportunity for undergrads to engage in journal-quality empirical work in the classroom & it’s a win for open science www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
smiling young woman wearing a blue cardigan sweater
We are excited to welcome @amormino.bsky.social to the Prevention Research Center as a postdoctoral scholar in our Prevention and Methodology Training program! Her PAMT mentors will be @dcameron.bsky.social and Joel Segel. For more about PAMT for pre- and postdoctoral scholars, visit pamt.psu.edu.
It's been great to welcome @amormino.bsky.social here to Penn State, she's already brought wonderful energy to the EMP Lab, the social psych area, and to @rockethics.bsky.social. Looking forward to her working with us as part of our team!
@prcpennstate.bsky.social @psuliberalarts.bsky.social
