Brooklyn College Professor Brings Moralism Front and Center

Ana Gantman, an assistant professor in the Psychology Department, is an expert in moral psychology. She was recently named a “Rising Star” by the Association for Psychological Science—a designation presented to the association’s outstanding members in the earliest stages of their research career post-Ph.D. She also won a SAGE Young Scholar Award in 2020, which recognizes outstanding achievements by young scholars who are early in their research careers. 

With so much going on in the world, and our commitment to our morals being tested daily, Gantman explains moral psychology, its importance, and how it can be applied and used to better the world around us.

What is moral psychology?

Moral psychology is the study of how people think, feel, and act in moral contexts—that is, situations where people judge that their values are relevant to what decisions they make, how they interpret the situation they’re in, or what they will do next.

Importantly this is not the same as the study of ethics, or what decisions people should make. It is a descriptive exercise, seeking to understand how and why people think, feel, and act as they do in moral contexts.

What courses do you teach at Brooklyn College, and what are the key benefits students can learn from moral psychology?

I primarily teach two courses. I teach Social Psychology, the scientific study of how people think, feel, and act, with real or imagined others. We cover topics like the self, social norms and conformity, obedience to authority, empathy, and aggression.

I also teach Psychology for a Better Society, where we learn about how insights from psychology (and related fields like behavioral economics and behavioral science) can help us design and test policies that will improve people’s lives. A driving idea in the course is that often people know what behaviors will improve their lives or society in the long run (saving for retirement; being an organ donor), but life gets in the way. We think about what barriers people face when they try to do these behaviors and how we can design policies that work with—not against—our psychology. Then we think about how we can empirically test whether our ideas are actually working to change behavior in the way that we thought they would.
How can studying moral psychology help us in everyday life?

Understanding moral psychology is helpful for understanding ourselves and the people around us more. Moral psychology can help us understand things like why a friend has suddenly become a vegetarian, or why a family member voted a certain way. It can also be very helpful to know when you are engaged in a conversation about moral values. When people think about their values, they tend to see things as more black-and-white, that their ideas are more like facts than opinions, and that others should share in their judgments. That is, conversations about what is right and wrong are not like conversations about whether chocolate is better than vanilla.

How do you see moral psychology being applied in today’s somewhat toxic political landscape?

People’s moral values are tied to their political views and their ideology. My colleagues and I have found that people are more likely to literally see words related to morality—words like kill or should—than matched words like die or could. And that when people use this moral language on Twitter, their tweets are more likely to be retweeted. Online spaces, which often seem to be discussing current events and politics, are rewarding the use of moral language, which is often intense, negative, and potentially polarizing. 

What is the Gantman Lab?

The Gantman Lab is a research lab at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center as part of the Basic and Applied Social Psychology training area. We are a team of doctoral students, graduate students, and undergraduates conducting empirical research. We use methods that range from measuring visual perception, to behavior in online games, to randomized field experiments. Nothing would be possible without the stellar students who work in my lab. Together, we ask questions like:

• “How do people think about blame and punishment for systemic wrongs?”
• “Do people’s values affect how they think about the future?”
• “How do moral judgments affect support for public policy?”
• “How does morality affect what we see and think?”
• “Do the rules apply equally to all? When do they fail to do so?”

What are you working on next?

We have many exciting projects going on in the lab. One project looks at rules that most people break, but only some people get in trouble when they do, such as rules against jaywalking or pirating music. We call these rules “phantom rules” because they are mostly invisible to us when no one is following them. Yet, they can come out of the shadows when people want to punish the person for something else. They can use the rules as a technicality and get that person in trouble. For example, we find that people think it is more acceptable for a person to be stopped by a police officer for jaywalking when that person had also catcalled a woman nearby than when that person had just waved at a friend. In both cases, the person broke the rule against jaywalking, but in only one is there another motivation to punish.

Learn more Gantman and listen to her discuss her work and research on this podcast from Opinion Science.