Interview with Molly Crockett: "Moral Judgment and Digital Technology"

Dr. Molly Crockett is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics.

Dr. Crockett's research focuses on moral judgment and social decision-making, including their neurological and computational underpinnings. Recently, she has focused on the expression of moral emotions in online environments.

“Our hypothesis…is [that] this kind of reinforcement of outrage expression on social media might actually make actually make the expression of outrage, over the long term, more habitual.”

Jump to a question:

• Who are you and where do you work?

• What does moral psychology tell us about how rational or emotional moral judgments are?

• Are moral character judgments “stickier” or more volatile in online environments?

• You’ve argued that there are dangers to digital moral outrage. Are there also benefits?

• Online outrage may be a specific instance of what are often called “supernormal stimuli.” Could you unpack this?

• By what mechanisms could social media amplify moral outrage?

• Are echo chambers to blame for the types of conflict we see online?

• Do we encounter the worst versions of the “other side” in online environments?

• Some of the moral dynamics online have been attributed to signaling. Could you describe how this works?

• How can we distinguish between genuine expressions of outrage and mere signaling?

• Does the prospect of putting morality into AI shed new light on our moral judgments?

• Do humans have a coherently describable “utility function?”