Morality and Trust in high-stakes conditions

Project ID – KUP1

We are seeking applications for a 3-year full-time PhD student to work on the psychology of trust and morality based at Nottingham Trent University under the supervision of Dr Tom R. Kupfer and external supervision by Professor Daniel M.T. Fessler (UCLA). The PhD student will be part of an interdisciplinary team working on a U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Project ‘Mind-blind morality: A route to trust in high-stakes conditions’.

According to standard accounts, both trust and moral judgement are contingent on inferences made about an actor’s mind, whether their momentary intentions or enduring dispositions. However, these accounts have overlooked that trust and cooperation are often necessary in situations in which it is either impractical or impossible to obtain such person-based information. This project will test the proposition that rules and judgments that ignore the actor’s mind enhance situational trust by inducing people to carefully monitor and control their own actions. Mind-blind judgments and parallel rules should emerge when trust is crucial, yet opportunities for mind-inference are limited – a configuration characteristic of many high-stakes situations. Shedding light on an important but largely overlooked category of norms and the psychology that underlies it, this project aims to make a fundamental contribution to basic research in fields of trust and morality.

The project can employ an array of methods, including studies of legal codes; semi-structured interviews with participants recruited from selected groups; vignette studies using richly described hypothetical situations; decision tasks involving interactions with computer-based simulations of high-threat environments; experimental economic games; and cross-cultural surveys. Candidates with prior experience in one or more of these areas, and those with a strong interest in morality and trust are preferred. Training and support in some specific research skills will be provided, but the successful candidate will need to have a demonstrable interest in standard qualitative research and/or quantitative approaches to experimental data.

References

Barrett, H. C., & Saxe, R. R. (2021). Are some cultures more mind-minded in their moral judgements than others?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376(1838), 20200288.

Entry qualifications

A degree and master’s degree in psychology or relevant social science, and relevant research experience.

Fees and funding

The PhD is fully funded, including a bursary (~£18,622/year), and tuition fees, for its 3 year duration.