34 - Fiery Cushman: The Possibility of Violence

Joseph Outa chats with Professor Fiery Cushman, professor of psychology at Harvard University. Fiery directs the Moral Psychology Research Lab where he investigates how people make decisions in social contexts; he focuses on questions like why and how did punishment evolve, what are the emotional systems that prevent us from doing harm, and how do humans make sense of each other’s behaviors. He received his BA and PhD from Harvard University and has been bestowed with various awards and fellowships including the APA Distinguished Award for Early Career Contributions, the Stanton Prize from the Society of Philosophy and Psychology, just to name a few. He has written over 50 journal articles and is published in prestigious journals like Cognition, Psychological Science and the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and his research has been continuously funded by organizations such as NSF, the Templeton Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

In this episode, Joseph and Fiery talk about an unpublished manuscript titled "The Possibility of Violence" which examines how our morals constrain the possibilities we consider when making decisions, as well as a case study of a violence-reduction program in the Chicago Public School system.