My research bridges a number of areas of inquiry including social, political, and moral psychology. In particular, I am interested in the psychological antecedents and consequences of moral convictions and exploring how people's moral convictions differ from other kinds
of strong attitudes; the cognitive and motivational foundations of ideological disagreements and political psychology more generally; and questions relating to distributive and procedural justice.

For example, what leads people to identify some attitudes as morally grounded and others not? Are people more likely to take a stand in defense of attitudes rooted in moral conviction, than otherwise strong but non-moral attitudes, or attitudes rooted more in religious conviction? Are people with strong moral convictions less likely to pay attention to procedural safeguards (e.g., the law) designed to protect civil society when they are in pursuit of morally mandated ends? What is the decision making calculus underlying how people decide whether to support various social policies, such as spending on the poor, and why do political liberals and political conservatives see these issues in fundamentally different ways? When can you get a liberal to behave like a conservative and vice versa? Taken together, my program of research aims to ask interesting theoretical questions, while at the same time shedding light on how variables like political orientations, moral convictions, and justice concerns play out in everyday life.