Description of research and teaching

My research focuses on two themes. One is individual differences in personality traits and personal values. How should these constructs be understood, how are they manifest in social behavior, how do they influence one’s life course and how are they influenced by life events? Another major theme is moral psychology. Within this area I have focused on conformity, hypocrisy, altruism, empathy, and various experimental economics games, such as the prisoner’s dilemma. More recently I have started moving more in the direction of political psychology, in which moral intuitions and emotions are receiving more research attention. Throughout my research, I have been interested in how individual differences and situational factors together create and shape social behavior over the life course.