UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Rock Ethics Institute's Expanding Empathy Speaker Series returns for its sixth consecutive year starting Tuesday, March 19.

Organized under the leadership of Daryl Cameron, who is Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute, associate professor of psychology, director of the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making and senior research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Expanding Empathy is an international, interdisciplinary examination of empathy and moral decision-making processes.

This will be the first year that the series is hosted through the new Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, with joint sponsorship through the Rock Ethics Institute, College of the Liberal Arts, Social Science Research Institute, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy and Department of Philosophy, with additional promotional support from the Department of Psychology.

The broad theme for this year’s series is conflict and change.

“In an especially tumultuous year, and in advance of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, how can we use empathy and other social emotions (such as compassion and anger/outrage) to motivate change?” Cameron said. “All of the speakers have won numerous awards and are leaders in their fields about their respective topics.”

Tuesday’s panel, from noon to 2 p.m., will focus on empathy, forgiveness and conflict. Each speaker will give short talks followed by conversation with each other and the audience in the second hour.

• Psychologist Sa-kiera Hudson of the Haas Business School at UC Berkeley will discuss empathy and “counter-empathy,” or schadenfreude.
• Philosopher Felipe De Brigard of Duke University will discuss the psychological processes and ethical implications of forgiveness in Colombia.
• Psychologist Eran Halperin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will discuss empathy and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“I love bringing people together for these sorts of interdisciplinary conversations,” Cameron said. “I was a philosophy and psychology double major when I got my start on an interdisciplinary collaboration between the two disciplines — that’s what inspired my interest in moral psychology as a set of core questions. As a co-appointed faculty member in the Rock Ethics Institute, I’m afforded wonderful opportunities to bring together people across the sciences and humanities.”

Admission to Tuesday’s online event is free, but pre-registration is required.

“I think the series has been successful for several reasons,” Cameron said. “In terms of the content, I think people like hearing experts from different fields and backgrounds talk about important ethical issues in everyday life.

“How do we resolve conflicts? How do we get people to care about the lives of people they don’t know? How do we get past moral disagreements and increase the scope of those we care about? How do we manage the interface between humans, animals, and tech such as ChatGPT and AI? These are the sorts of questions we regularly dig into. And the format in the past few years has afforded a lot of interesting interdisciplinary conversations, explicitly designed so that philosophers and psychologists engage each other in conversation as part of each panel," said Cameron.

The second Expanding Empathy panel, slated for Tues., April 2, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., will delve into the evolution of moral convictions, featuring Linda Skitka of the University of Chicago at Illinois and Matti Wilks from the University of Edinburgh exploring explore "the moral circle" and its implications for moral psychology studies. Accompanying them will be philosopher Evan Westra from Purdue University, shedding light on the role of affect and emotions in shaping moral norms.

On Thurs., April 25, from 10 a.m. to noon, the series will culminate with a discussion on compassion and concern. Stephanie Preston of the University of Michigan will delve into the psychology and neuroscience of compassionate care. Philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong of Duke University will explore the dynamics of compassion across different target groups, while Aleksandra Cichocka of the University of Kent will present groundbreaking research on in-group love and out-group hate.

The Expanding Empathy Speaker Series epitomizes the Rock Ethics Institutes commitment to fostering interdisciplinary dialogues and advancing ethical discourse on a global scale. For more information and registration details, visit the Rock Ethics Institute website.