Nova Southeastern University

I am an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Nova Southeastern University. My research is at the intersection of social and cognitive psychology, and primarily concerns the nature of moral judgment, especially as it relates to emotion, social cognition, politics, and religion. My work has been published in journals including Perspectives on Psychol... ogical Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Psychological Bulletin, and my paper "Does incidental disgust amplify moral judgment? A meta-analytic review of experimental evidence" received an award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology for outstanding research conducted by a graduate student. When I am not working, I enjoy cooking, trivia games, and cheering for the Baltimore Ravens. The banner at the top of this page is the School of Athens, painted by the Renaissance master, Raphael. The central figures are Plato and Aristotle, surrounded by many other titans of ancient Greek philosophy, whose exact identities have been variously debated. I chose this work to adorn my website for two reasons. First, I simply like the way it looks. The School was my favorite painting even before I became interested in (descriptive) ethics. Second, the themes of the painting dovetail with much of my own thinking. Raphael called the painting "Causarum Cognitio" - "Seek Knowledge of Causes" - the central task of any scientist, and the thinkers that it depicts believed, as I do, in our ability to use reasoning to arrive at moral conclusions, and in character as a central part of ethics.Read More