David Pizarro
I am currently an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. My primary research interests are in moral judgment. I am particularly interested in moral intuitions (especially concerning moral responsibility, and the permissibility or impermissibility of certain acts), and in biases that affect moral judgment. While intuitions are foundational principles on which people base their morality (e.g., that an act has to be intentional in order receive blame for it, or that killing someone is worse than letting them die), biases in moral judgment are the unintended consequence of certain cognitive and emotional processes (e.g., judging someone as more guilty of a crime because the person is a racial minority member).
I also have a general interest in the influence of emotional states on thinking and deciding. I am particularly interested in specific emotions (anger, disgust, fear, etc.) and their differential impact on how we process information, how we remember events, and how these emotions impact our moral judgments of others.
Primary Interests:
- Emotion, Mood, Affect
- Ethics and Morality
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Social Cognition
Journal Articles:
- Critcher, C. R., & Pizarro, D. A. (2008). Paying for someone else's mistake: The effect of bystander negligence on perpetrator blame. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1357-1370.
- Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2009). Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals. Cognition and Emotion, 23, 714-725.
- Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., Knobe, J., & Bloom, P. (2009). Disgust sensitivity predicts intuitive disapproval of gays. Emotion, 9, 435-439.
- Levine, L. J., & Pizarro, D. A. (2004). Emotion and memory research: A grumpy overview. Social Cognition, 22, 530-544.
- Monin, B., Pizarro, D. A., & Beer, J. (2007). Deciding versus reacting: Conceptions of moral judgment and the reason-affect debate. Review of General Psychology, 11, 99-111.
- Pizarro, D. (2000). Nothing more than feelings? The role of emotions in moral judgment. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 30, 355-375.
- Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2003). The intelligence of the moral intuitions: Comment on Haidt (2001). Psychological Review, 110, 193-196.
- Pizarro, D. A., Laney, C., Morris, E., & Loftus, E. (2006). Ripple effects in memory: Judgments of moral blame can distort memory for events. Memory and Cognition, 34, 550-555.
- Pizarro, D. A., Uhlmann, E., & Bloom, P. (2003). Causal deviance and the attribution of moral responsibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 653-660.
- Pizarro, D. A., Uhlmann, E., & Salovey, P. (2003). Asymmetry in judgments of moral blame and praise: The role of perceived metadesires. Psychological Science, 14, 267-272.
Other Publications:
Courses Taught:
- Moral Judgment
- Social Psychology
- Social Relationships
- The Intelligent Emotions
David Pizarro
Department of Psychology
224 Uris Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853-7601
United States of America
- Phone: (607) 255-3835
- Fax: (607) 255-8433