Jesse Graham’s research while affiliated with University of Utah and other places

In this chapter, I will evaluate the psychology of blame from a feminist perspective. My intention is to bring the literature on feminist moral psychology into conversation with the literature on the psychology of blame. To this end, I will apply some central feminist critiques to four dominant theories of blame: cognitive theory, emotional theory, conative theory, and functional theory. These theories each identify blame with specific psycho- logical contents, except for functional theory, which says that blame (whatever it is) plays a specific functional role in our interpersonal practices. Feminist moral psychology has much to say about the role of cognition, emotions, desires, and beliefs in moral reasoning, so it should have a great deal say about psychological theories of blame. Although feminist moral psychology is a vast and internally diverse field of inquiry, there are a few central debates within this literature— particularly about emotions, the role of distorted states in moral reasoning, and individualism versus collectivism— all of which have implications for theories of blame. With this in mind, I’ll briefly outline the relevant debates in feminist moral psychology in the next section, and then bring them into conversation with debates about the psychology of blame in §35.3.

Can Large Language Models (LLMs) accurately estimate various societies’ moral values? Here, we query the perceptions of the GPT family of LLMs for the “average” person from 48 countries and compare them to a large-scale (n = 93,198) survey of six moral values (Care, Equality, Proportionality, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity) from those countries. Our findings indicate that LLMs poorly capture the moral diversity around the globe, systematically overestimating some moral values (especially Care) and underestimating others (especially Purity). Notably, examining various versions of GPT shows that these LLMs may overestimate the overall moral concerns of some Western countries (e.g., United States, Canada, and Australia) while underestimating those of non-Western countries (e.g., Nigeria, Morocco, and Indonesia). Our work reveals that LLMs are inaccurate generators of cross-cultural estimations in the moral domain; in other words, they stereotype the moral values of cultural populations in predictable ways. Our results highlight the ethical and epistemic risks of relying on LLMs to estimate the endorsement of moral values around the globe.

This work examines organizational-level inclusion signals and their subsequent effects on employees. Answering the call for more research on concealable stigmatized identities, we consider the effect of such organization-level inclusion signals for sexual and gender minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees) while also considering the effect on non-target employees. In a time-lagged observational study (N = 1,165 ), archival data (N = 229), and a randomized experiment (N = 380), we show that organizational-level inclusion efforts lead to more positive perception of the organization’s psychological climate for sexual and gender minorities, closing the psychological safety gap between non-LGBT and LGBT employees.. Notably, these intentional inclusion efforts also benefit non-LGBT employees, which contradicts recent theoretical assertions that intentional inclusion can harm majority groups, or that organizational inclusion is a zero-sum game.These signals shaped positive behavioral intentions for all employees, leading to non-LGBT employees engaging in more individual ally work, and LGBT employees feeling more free to share their identities. Unexpectedly, inclusion signals even made non-LGBT employees less likely to conceal intimidating parts of their identity (e.g. religion, parental status) as well. In sum, we show that such signaling improves psychological safety for all employees, reducing or eliminating the deficit between target and non-target employees while also encouraging value-aligned positive behaviors.

This account of puritanical morality is useful and innovative, but makes two errors. First, it mischaracterizes the purity foundation as being unrelated to cooperation. Second, it makes the leap from cooperation (broadly construed) to a monist account of moral cognition (as harm or fairness). We show how this leap is both conceptually incoherent and inconsistent with empirical evidence about self-control moralization.

Moral foundations theory has been a generative framework in moral psychology in the last 2 decades. Here, we revisit the theory and develop a new measurement tool, the Moral Foundations Questionnaire–2 (MFQ-2), based on data from 25 populations. We demonstrate empirically that equality and proportionality are distinct moral foundations while retaining the other four existing foundations of care, loyalty, authority, and purity. Three studies were conducted to develop the MFQ-2 and to examine how the nomological network of moral foundations varies across 25 populations. Study 1 (N = 3,360, five populations) specified a refined top-down approach for measurement of moral foundations. Study 2 (N = 3,902, 19 populations) used a variety of methods (e.g., factor analysis, exploratory structural equations model, network psychometrics, alignment measurement equivalence) to provide evidence that the MFQ-2 fares well in terms of reliability and validity across cultural contexts. We also examined population-level, religious, ideological, and gender differences using the new measure. Study 3 (N = 1,410, three populations) provided evidence for convergent validity of the MFQ-2 scores, expanded the nomological network of the six moral foundations, and demonstrated the improved predictive power of the measure compared with the original MFQ. Importantly, our results showed how the nomological network of moral foundations varied across cultural contexts: consistent with a pluralistic view of morality, different foundations were influential in the network of moral foundations depending on cultural context. These studies sharpen the theoretical and methodological resolution of moral foundations theory and provide the field of moral psychology a more accurate instrument for investigating the many ways that moral conflicts and divisions are shaping the modern world.