MORAL ECONOMICS AND DYNAMICS LAB

RESEARCH

How we treat one another, be it with kindness or cruelty, has functional consequences for the allegiances of individuals and the solidarity of groups. We are interested in the myriad ways in which our moral convictions interact with the structural dynamics of groups. We believe that this conceptual intersection can help us understand meaningful real world problems. Why don't people care more about inequality? Why do political liberals and conservatives disagree? Why are some wars seemingly never ending? Why do democratic elections yield candidates and policies that a majority of the electorate disapproves of? We answer questions like these in the Moral Economics and Dynamics Lab at CSUSM and provide students with an enriching educational experience. You can find out more about these projects on our research page.

INNOVATIVE METHODOLOGY

We use behavioral economic games to study people and the groups they live in. This gives us the capacity to investigate social phenomena--like inequality, war, and polarization--in the controlled setting of the lab. We also use more typical social psychological methods such as priming, explicit reports, and implicit tests.

ADVANCED MODELING

We need advanced quantitative techniques that are up to the task of modeling complex social dynamics over time. Therefore, we use multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling, general linear modeling, signal detection analysis, conditional process analysis, or some combination of these techniques to answer our research questions.