I am a grad student in Social Psychology at the University of Virginia. I graduated from the University of Chicago and Harvard Divinity School before starting at UVA. My interests generally hover around morality and ideology. Why do our deeply-held ideological and moral beliefs feel so crucial to our senses of self and meaning in life? Where do our gut reactions of right and wrong come from, and how can people come to such opposing positions based on those reactions? My research focuses on the moral intuitions that guide our conscious and unconscious judgments. I'm interested in how these judgments shape behavior in the stream of social life, from the playground to close relationships to political choices.
Graham, J., Haidt, J. & Nosek, B.A. (in press). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Abstract: How and why do moral judgments vary across the political spectrum? To test moral foundations theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2004; Haidt & Graham, 2007), we developed several ways to measure people’s use of five sets of moral intuitions: Harm...
Graham, J., Haidt, J. & Rimm-Kaufman, S. E. (2008). Ideology and intuition in moral education. European Journal of Developmental Science, 2, 269-286.
Abstract: We propose that social psychological findings on the intuitive bases of moral judgment have broad implications for moral education. The “five foundations theory of intuitive ethics” is applied to explain a longstanding rift in moral education...