Welcome to the Developmental Moral Psychology Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz! Our lab studies the development of reasoning, judgments, emotions, and actions around issues of right and wrong from infancy to adulthood. The lab is directed by Audun Dahl in the Department of Psychology.
Every day, from infancy to old age, we encounter acts of moral relevance. We help or hurt another person, or we witness others who help or hurt, in both mundane and life-changing ways. As we grow older, and enter new social situations, we encounter new rules for right and wrong behaviors. Religious texts spell out how to pray. Schools teach their students about how to use sources without plagiarizing. The abundance of moral and other principles prompts children and adults to determine, again and again, what makes for right and wrong ways of acting.
Our research is about how humans reason, judge, feel, and act around issues of right and wrong across the lifespan. We also study how morality develops through everyday social interactions, starting in early childhood. We use a variety of methods—including laboratory experiments, naturalistic observations, structured interviews, and surveys—to study infants, children, adolescents, and adults from different communities. For instance, we study how infants begin to help and harm others, and how adults form judgments and decisions about complex issues, such as academic integrity and moral dilemmas. Through this range of methods and age groups, we seek to understand both the diversity and the unity of human morality.
Here are a few recent chapters that survey our work:
