Cillian McHugh

University of Limerick | UL · Department of Psychology

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus is a destructive respiratory disease that has affected the lives of billions of people around the world. Researchers argue that a group‐based approach drawing on our membership of specific social groups, rather than appealing to our individual self‐interest, is necessary to combat the disease. Social gr...

Climate change is currently one of humanity’s greatest threats. To help scholars understand the psychology of climate change, we conducted an online quasi-experimental survey on 59,508 participants from 63 countries (collected between July 2022 and July 2023). In a between-subjects design, we tested 11 interventions designed to promote climate chan...

The self-importance of moral identity is about being moral for yourself (internalization) and for others (symbolization). We tested sex, age, and cultural differences in participants from 67 counties. We used Uz’s cultural tightness and looseness index and Hofstede’s dimensions. We found women had higher internalization and symbolization than men....

Trends and developments in recent behavioural and cognitive sciences demonstrate the need for a well-developed theoretical and empirical framework for examining the ecology of human behaviour. The increasing recognition of the role of the environment and interaction with the environment in the organization of behaviour within the cognitive sciences...

Moral judgments are increasingly being understood as showing context dependent variability. A growing literature has identified a range of specific contextual factors (e.g., emotions, intentions) that can influence moral judgments in predictable ways. Integrating these diverse influences into a unified approach to understanding moral judgments rema...

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and a...

Effectively reducing climate change requires dramatic, global behavior change. Yet it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an e...

Aims Given the risk of developing vicarious trauma through news media has increased during the pandemic, we explored risk factors associated with media induced secondary trauma, and its behavioral and psychological implications. Methods An international study ( N = 1066), with a diverse sample, was administered in July 2020. We used standardized a...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people defend a moral judgment, without reasons in support of this judgment. The phenomenon has been influential in moral psychology, however, despite its influence, it remains poorly understood. Based on the notion that cognitive load enhances biases and shortcomings in human judgment when elaboration is beneficial,...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people maintain a moral judgment even though they cannot provide a reason for this judgment. Dumbfounded responding may include admitting to not having reasons, or the use of unsupported declarations (“It’s just wrong”) as justification for a judgment. Published evidence for dumbfounding has drawn exclusively on sampl...

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied ma...

Reducing the spread of infectious viruses (e.g., COVID-19) can depend on societal compliance with effective mitigations. Identifying factors that influence adherence can inform public policy. In many cases, public health messaging has become highly moralized, focusing on the need to act for the greater good. In such contexts, a person's moral ident...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behavior change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public h...

Reducing the spread of infectious viruses (such as COVID-19) can depend on societal compliance with effective mitigations. Identifying factors that influence adherence can inform public policy. In many cases public health messaging has become highly moralized, focusing on the need to act for the greater good. In such contexts, a persons’ moral iden...

Authoritarianism emerges in times of societal threat, in part driven by desires for group-based security. As such, we propose that the threat caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with increased authoritarian tendencies and that this can be partially explained by increased national identification. We tested this hypothesis by collecting cr...

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and str...

Background: Although citizens in countries worldwide took coordinated steps to support collective public health during the COVID-19 pandemic, the processes that encourage citizens to adhere with COVID-19 restrictions are not fully understood. Method: A three-wave study with a sample of Irish citizens (N Wave 1 = 1,800) was conducted during the COVI...

The effectiveness of measures introduced to minimise the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19) depends on compliance from all members of society. The Irish response to COVID-19 has been framed as a collective effort, fostering national solidarity. However, dominant representations of the national communi...

Observed variability and complexity of judgments of 'right' and 'wrong' cannot currently be readily accounted for within extant approaches to understanding moral judgment. In response to this challenge we present a novel perspective on categorization in moral judgment. Moral judgment as categorization (MJAC) incorporates principles of category form...

The COVID‐19 pandemic has given rise to unprecedented and extraordinary conditions. It represents a profound threat to health and political and economic stability globally. It is the pressing issue of the current historical moment and is likely to have far‐reaching social and political implications over the next decade. Political psychology can inf...

Sexual harassment has increasingly become a main topic of conversation in academia in recent years. This current study investigated the role of gender, gender identity, locus of control and social dominance orientation on perceptions of sexual harassment. 121 undergraduate students (60 females and 61 males) were presented with four questionnaires....

Moral dumbfounding is the phenomenon that is observed when people defend a moral judgement even though they cannot provide a reason for this judgement. Dumbfounded responding may include admitting to not having reasons, or the use of unsupported declarations (e.g., “It’s just wrong”) as justification for a judgement. Published evidence for dumbfoun...

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a devastating global health crisis. Without a vaccine or effective medication, the best hope for mitigating virus transmission is collective behavior change and support for public health interventions (e.g., physical distancing, physical hygiene, and endorsement of health policies). In a large-scale international co...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people defend a moral judgment even though they cannot provide a reason in support of this judgment. Across a series of studies (N = 1081) we developed methods and materials for measuring and testing dumbfounded responding. We then identified specific situational features and individual differences that moderate dumbf...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people maintain a moral judgment even though they cannot provide reasons for it. Recently, questions have been raised about whether dumbfounding is a real phenomenon. Two reasons have been proposed as guiding the judgments of dumbfounded participants: harm-based reasons (believing an action may cause harm) or norm-bas...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people defend a moral judgement even though they cannot provide a reason in support of this judgement. It manifests as an admission of not having reasons, or the use of unsupported declarations (“it’s just wrong”) or tautological reasons (“because it’s incest”) as justifications for a judgment. We test a dual-processe...

Observed variability and complexity of judgments of 'right' and 'wrong' cannot currently be readily accounted for within extant approaches to understanding moral judgment. In response to this challenge we present a novel perspective on categorization in moral judgment. Moral judgment as categorization (MJAC) incorporates principles of category form...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people defend a moral judgement even though they cannot provide a reason in support of this judgement. It manifests as an admission of not having reasons, or the use of unsupported declarations (\enquote{it’s just wrong}) or tautological reasons (\enquote{because it’s incest}) as justifications for a judgment. It is c...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people defend a moral judgement even though they cannot provide a reason in support of this judgement. It manifests as an admission of not having reasons, or the use of unsupported declarations (“it’s just wrong”) or tautological reasons (“because it’s incest”) as justifications for a judgment. It typically occurs for...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people maintain a moral judgment even though they cannot provide reasons for it. Recently, questions have been raised about whether dumbfounding is a real phenomenon. Two reasons have been proposed as guiding the judgments of dumbfounded participants: harm-based reasons (believing an action may cause harm) or norm-bas...

Moral dumbfounding is defined as maintaining a moral judgement, without supporting reasons. The most cited demonstration of dumbfounding does not identify a specific measure of dumbfounding and has not been published in peer-review form, or directly replicated. Despite limited empirical examination, dumbfounding has been widely discussed in moral p...

Moral dumbfounding occurs when a person maintains a moral judgement even though they cannot provide supporting reasons. It is characterised by an admission of not having reasons or by unsupported declarations (“It’s just wrong!”). Despite being widely discussed in the moral psychology literature, there remains some controversy over whether the phen...

The present study is an attempted replication of Study 1 from Cameron, Payne, and Doris (2013). The premise of Cameron et al's study is that manipulating emotions can change moral judgements. They found that a person's ability to distinguish between their emotions (emotional differentiation) moderates the effect incidental emotion on moral judgemen...