Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Stellar
Associate Professor
Project Description
Sometimes we find ourselves facing moral dilemmas in which either choice leads to an immoral action. Do we report a friend we know has cheated on an exam or do we protect our friend and look the other way when it comes to their cheating? A great deal of research has examined how people try to navigate these challenging decisions. In this project I am interested in how observers perceive the people who make these decisions. I propose that regardless of which choice is made in a moral dilemma (e.g., report friend or hide their cheating) decision-makers will be seen as less moral by observers. In many ways that isn’t fair because the decision-maker had to choose between two terrible options. Although observers know this, I think they will have trouble weighting that information properly and see the decision-maker more negatively regardless of their choice simply because it resulted in an immoral action. The mentee would design a study that presents participants with decision-makers in various moral dilemmas. The mentee would then conduct repeated measures analysis to examine how perceptions of the decision-maker changed from before to after they made their decision. I hope this research will contribute to our understanding of how we perceive people who are forced to make moral decisions and reveal a potential bias in perception that should be corrected. I expect the mentee will conduct a review of the literature in this area, help design the survey materials, and learn how to analyze the data.
Does this project require the SROP Student to be in-person or remote? Either one
Mentorship Statement
I believe that direct mentorship offers a more personalized way for students gain skills that will help them advance to the next stage of their career and that supportive relationships are critical to learning how to navigate the challenges of doing good research. I will meet directly with my mentee and pair them with a graduate student to maximize their support. We will work on designing a study to test this idea and through individual meetings, but the graduate student and I will also provide feedback on work that the mentee does independently. The mentee will learn how to create surveys, collect data, and analyze data. I hope that this experience will offer students a chance to get more hands-on experience doing research and to spark a passion for research that may lead the mentee to consider a career in psychological research.