Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Investigating the Link between Moral Curiosity and Moral Learning

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）项目的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在博士的赞助下。波士顿学院的Liane Young和Gregg Sparkman，这个博士后奖学金支持一个早期职业科学家研究道德好奇心。该项目旨在培养对道德好奇心的基本理解，它在日常生活中的作用，是什么使它成为一种独特的动力，以及它是否有助于了解我们希望避免的想法和那些人。此外，该项目还研究了大脑的哪些部分支持这种强大的驱动力。这项工作将促进我们对道德心理学的理解，并通过询问我们是否会寻找坏人和不寻常的人和事来学习什么不该做，对更广泛地理解心灵具有启示意义。此外，在探索学习和道德好奇心之间的潜在联系时，该项目还将帮助我们了解这种好奇心是否可以作为变革的工具——通过帮助告知干预措施以鼓励积极的社会行为。这个项目将通过帮助我们更好地理解生活中常见经历的根源和后果，推动心理学领域的发展。此外，这项工作还将通过支持代表性不足的学者的工作来支持科学的多样性。该项目的成果丰富了相关学科的理论，它们将在发展对我们如何以及为什么了解社会中的坏人、思想和问题的更丰富的理解方面发挥关键作用。这个项目采用跨学科的方法来描述道德生活的一个未被理论化的方面：不道德往往是迷人的。迄今为止，对不道德行为的兴趣研究主要集中在他们在娱乐中的角色或我们对他们的判断上。很少有实证研究试图在道德认知的背景下理解不道德的吸引力，更不用说这种偏好可能具有的功能效用。这个项目将是第一个系统地研究：1)是什么激发了道德好奇心；2)它对了解自我、他人和更广泛的社会有什么用处；3)除了支持奖励处理和记忆的神经区域外，心智理论网络是否在支持这种好奇心方面发挥了特别的作用。在此过程中，这项工作将推进我们关于道德认知的理论化，并有助于理解道德领域中对坏和非典型性的偏好揭示了我们的道德思想。通过使用多种方法，包括脑成像、调查研究和行为实验，并整合哲学、社会和媒体心理学以及神经科学的理论，该项目的目标是揭示道德好奇心在塑造我们对自己、他人和周围世界的理解方面所起的独特作用。此外，这项工作标志着通过更好地理解促使个人形成新的道德概念和评价的原因，在推导和测试旨在促进亲社会行为和规范的干预措施方面迈出了重要的第一步。该奖项还将支持早期职业生涯中未被充分代表的学者，从而增强科学的多样性。这项工作以及所使用的材料、方法和研究结果将在其相关平台或渠道上广泛传播。这个项目将对不道德行为的好奇心重新想象为道德认知的一个有用特征，而不是一个缺陷：道德好奇心最终可能在个人学习和了解社会弊病方面发挥重要作用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of the NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Drs. Liane Young and Gregg Sparkman at Boston College, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating moral curiosity. This project seeks to develop a foundational understanding of moral curiosity, its function in daily life, what makes it a unique motivating force, and whether it supports learning about ideas and those people whom we wish to avoid. Further, this project examines which parts of the brain support this powerful drive. This work will advance our understanding of our moral psychology, and it has implications for understanding the mind more broadly by asking whether we seek out bad and unusual people and things to learn what not to do. Further, in exploring the potential links between learning and moral curiosity, this project will also help us understand whether this kind of curiosity can be leveraged as tool for change—by helping to inform interventions to encourage positive social behavior. This project will advance the field of psychology by helping us better understand the roots and consequences of a common experience in life. Further, this work will also support diversity in science by supporting the work of an underrepresented scholar. The results of this project enrich theory across relevant disciplines, and they will play a crucial role in developing a richer understanding of how and why we learn about bad people, ideas, and problems in our society.This project takes an interdisciplinary approach to characterizing an undertheorized aspect of moral life: immorality is often fascinating. To date, research on interest in immoral agents has largely focused on their role in entertainment or our judgments about them. Few empirical studies have sought to understand the allure of the immoral within the context of moral cognition and even less on what functional utility such a preference may have. This project will be the first to systematically examine 1) what motivates moral curiosity, 2) what utility it has for learning about the self, others, and broader society, and 3) whether, alongside neural regions that support reward processing and memory, the Theory of Mind Network specifically plays a role in supporting this kind of curiosity. In doing so, this work will advance our theorizing about moral cognition and help to make sense of what a preference for badness and atypicality in the moral domain reveals about our moral minds. Using a variety of methods including brain imaging, survey research, and behavioral experiments, and integrating theory from philosophy, social and media psychology, and neuroscience, the goal of this project it to unveil the unique role moral curiosity plays in shaping our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us. Further, this work marks a significant first step to deriving and testing interventions aimed at the promotion of prosocial behaviors and norms by better understanding what prompts individuals to formulate new moral concepts and evaluations. The award will also support an early career, underrepresented scholar, thus enhancing diversity in science. This work, along with the materials, methods used, and the findings will be widely disseminated in their relevant platforms or outlets. This project reimagines curiosity for immorality as a useful feature of moral cognition, not a bug: Moral curiosity may ultimately serve a vital role in individual learning and learning about society’s ills.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.