Joshua Rottman
Biographic Data
| ID | 123964 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joshua Rottman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joshua |
| FAMILY NAME | Rottman |
| SIGNATURE | ROTTMAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Franklin & Marshall College |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2284-1428 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Developing intellectual humility
This article presents an overview and critique of current interdisciplinary research on the nature and development of intellectual humility (IH), with the aim of systematically outlining currently debated open questions. We focus on four specific areas of research: (1) theoretical questions regarding the nature of IH, (2) issues with the measurement of IH in development, (3) existing research on the development of IH and related socio-cognitive a…
Moral expansiveness and pro-environmentalism
Moral circles represent the figurative boundaries that distinguish the human and non-human entities that are considered to have moral worth from the entities that are considered to lack moral worth. The extent to which individuals have wide-reaching boundaries is referred to as moral expansiveness. Investigations into the psychological processes that underlie moral circle decision-making and moral expansiveness are only just beginning. Through tw…
Impartial Beneficence Predicts Greater and More Uniform Concern for Others Across Social Relationships
The principle of impartial beneficence (IB) holds that we should strive to maximize others’ well-being regardless of their relationship to us. But does endorsement of IB in principle translate to more uniform concern for others irrespective of relationship type? Three pre-registered studies in online samples of U.S. participants (total N =1,716) found IB endorsement predicts greater and more uniform concern for others across social relationships …
When does “no” mean no? Insights from sex robots
How musicality changes moral consideration
A growing literature shows that music increases prosocial behavior. Why does this occur? We propose a novel hypothesis, informed by moral psychology: evidence of others’ musicality may promote prosociality by leading us to judge musical individuals as having enhanced moral standing. This effect may be largely indirect, by increasing perceptions of how intelligent and emotionally sensitive musical individuals are. If so, simply knowing about other…
Disgusting Democrats and Repulsive Republicans
The status of disgust as a sociomoral emotion is debated. We conducted a stringent test of whether social stimuli (specifically, political outgroup members) can elicit physical disgust, as distinct from moral or metaphorical disgust. We employed stimuli (male faces) matched on baseline disgustingness, provided other ways for participants to express negativity toward outgroup members, and used concrete self-report measures of disgust, as well as a…
One strike and you’re a lout
Context matters in myriad ways
Context matters in myriad ways: a reply to ‘Building a cooperative child: evidence and lessons cross-culturally’ by Tanya Broesch and Erin Robbins" published on 02 Nov 2023 by Bristol University Press
Navigating between punishment, avoidance, and instruction
Does disgust-eliciting propaganda shape children's attitudes toward novel immigrant groups
Propaganda frequently leverages themes of dirtiness and disease to foster negative attitudes toward marginalized social groups. Although history suggests that this tactic is highly successful, empirical evidence is required to evaluate propaganda's potential efficacy. Inspired by previous evidence that children rapidly form attitudes about social groups, we conducted an exploratory investigation into whether 5- to 9-year-olds' (N = 48) judgments …
Considering uncontaminated food as an early-emerging and previously ignored disgust elicitor
The present studies examine developmental changes in the elicitors of disgust by examining adults' and children's ideas of what is disgusting. In three experiments, we asked adults and children between the ages of 3 and 12 to report what is "disgusting," what is "gross," or what might have caused someone to make a disgust face. In Study 1, parents of 3- to 12-year-old children ( n = 120) were asked what they thought was disgusting and what they t…
Can coherence-based interventions change dogged moral beliefs about meat-eating
Moral Conviction, Emotion, and the Influence of Episodic versus Thematic Frames
Morally convicted attitudes—attitudes grounded in core beliefs about fundamental right and wrong—play an important role in political psychology, public opinion, and political behavior. Extant research suggests that these attitudes are intensely held, likely to evoke strong emotional responses, more stable and less amenable to compromise, and perceived to be universally true. Despite a large body of research on how morally convicted attitudes affe…
Being in the Know
The moral, or the story? Changing children's distributive justice preferences through social communication
The Influence of Direct and Overheard Messages on Children's Attitudes Toward Novel Social Groups
Individuals often develop negative biases toward unfamiliar or denigrated groups. Two experimental studies were conducted to investigate the extent to which brief negative messages about novel social groups influence children's (4- to 9-year-olds'; N = 153) intergroup attitudes. The studies examined the relative influence of messages that are provided directly to children versus messages that are overheard and examined whether the force of these …
Deadly but protective
International audience
Which Appraisals Are Foundational to Moral Judgment? Harm, Injustice, and Beyond
Harm-centric accounts of judgments of moral wrongdoing argue that moral judgments are fundamentally based on appraisals of harm. However, past research has failed to operationally discriminate harm appraisals from appraisals related to injustice. Four studies carefully discriminated harm qua pain/suffering from injustice, alongside appraisals related to impurity, authority, and disloyalty. Appraisals of injustice outperformed appraisals of harm a…
Cultural influences on the teleological stance
Recent research has suggested that humans have a robust tendency to default to teleological (i.e., purpose-based) explanations of natural phenomena. However, because samples have previously been heavily drawn from Western cultures, it is unclear whether this is a universal cognitive bias or whether prior findings are a product of Western philosophical and theological traditions. We evaluated these possibilities by administering a speeded judgment…
The impact of testimony on children’s moralization of novel actions
What leads children to moralize actions that cause no apparent harm? We hypothesized that adults' verbal instruction ("testimony"), as well as emotions such as disgust, would influence children's moralization of apparently harmless actions. To test this hypothesis, 7-year-old children were asked to render moral judgments of novel, seemingly victimless, body-directed or nature-directed actions after being exposed to adults' testimony or to an emot…
Hindering Harm and Preserving Purity
The issues of climate change and environmental degradation elicit diverse responses. This paper explores how an understanding of human moral psychology might be used to motivate conservation efforts. Moral concerns for the environment can relate to issues of harm (i.e., causing pain or impinging on another's welfare) or impurity (i.e., engaging in sacrilegious, polluting, or disgusting actions). Aversions to harm are linked to concern for current…
The Big ‘Whoops!’ in the Study of Intentional Behavior
Distinguishing intentional behavior from accidental behavior is a crucial component of social cognition and a major developmental achievement. It has often been assumed that developmental changes in intentional reasoning result from a gradual sophistication in the ability to discern intentions in action. We take issue with this notion, demonstrating that data from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology are more consistent with the hypoth…
Professional physical scientists display tenacious teleological tendencies
Teleological explanations account for objects and events by reference to a functional consequence or purpose. Although they are popular in religion, they are unpopular in science: Physical scientists in particular explicitly reject them when explaining natural phenomena. However, prior research provides reasons to suspect that this explanatory form may represent a default explanatory preference. As a strong test of this hypothesis, we explored wh…
Born believers
Karl Marx famously painted a metaphorical picture of religion as an insidious opiate that is societally manufactured to manipulate the minds of the masses. Born Believers: The Science of Children's
Moral Conviction, Emotion, and the Influence of Episodic versus Thematic Frames
Morally convicted attitudes—attitudes grounded in core beliefs about fundamental right and wrong—play an important role in political psychology, public opinion, and political behavior. Extant research suggests that these attitudes are intensely held, likely to evoke strong emotional responses, more stable and less amenable to compromise, and perceived to be universally true. Despite a large body of research on how morally convicted attitudes affe…
Context matters in myriad ways
Context matters in myriad ways: a reply to ‘Building a cooperative child: evidence and lessons cross-culturally’ by Tanya Broesch and Erin Robbins" published on 02 Nov 2023 by Bristol University Press
The Big ‘Whoops!’ in the Study of Intentional Behavior
Distinguishing intentional behavior from accidental behavior is a crucial component of social cognition and a major developmental achievement. It has often been assumed that developmental changes in intentional reasoning result from a gradual sophistication in the ability to discern intentions in action. We take issue with this notion, demonstrating that data from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology are more consistent with the hypoth…
Being in the Know
Hindering Harm and Preserving Purity
The issues of climate change and environmental degradation elicit diverse responses. This paper explores how an understanding of human moral psychology might be used to motivate conservation efforts. Moral concerns for the environment can relate to issues of harm (i.e., causing pain or impinging on another's welfare) or impurity (i.e., engaging in sacrilegious, polluting, or disgusting actions). Aversions to harm are linked to concern for current…
Professional physical scientists display tenacious teleological tendencies
Teleological explanations account for objects and events by reference to a functional consequence or purpose. Although they are popular in religion, they are unpopular in science: Physical scientists in particular explicitly reject them when explaining natural phenomena. However, prior research provides reasons to suspect that this explanatory form may represent a default explanatory preference. As a strong test of this hypothesis, we explored wh…
Born believers
Karl Marx famously painted a metaphorical picture of religion as an insidious opiate that is societally manufactured to manipulate the minds of the masses. Born Believers: The Science of Children's
The Big ‘Whoops!’ in the Study of Intentional Behavior
Distinguishing intentional behavior from accidental behavior is a crucial component of social cognition and a major developmental achievement. It has often been assumed that developmental changes in intentional reasoning result from a gradual sophistication in the ability to discern intentions in action. We take issue with this notion, demonstrating that data from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology are more consistent with the hypoth…
Hindering Harm and Preserving Purity
The issues of climate change and environmental degradation elicit diverse responses. This paper explores how an understanding of human moral psychology might be used to motivate conservation efforts. Moral concerns for the environment can relate to issues of harm (i.e., causing pain or impinging on another's welfare) or impurity (i.e., engaging in sacrilegious, polluting, or disgusting actions). Aversions to harm are linked to concern for current…
Cultural influences on the teleological stance
Recent research has suggested that humans have a robust tendency to default to teleological (i.e., purpose-based) explanations of natural phenomena. However, because samples have previously been heavily drawn from Western cultures, it is unclear whether this is a universal cognitive bias or whether prior findings are a product of Western philosophical and theological traditions. We evaluated these possibilities by administering a speeded judgment…
The impact of testimony on children’s moralization of novel actions
What leads children to moralize actions that cause no apparent harm? We hypothesized that adults' verbal instruction ("testimony"), as well as emotions such as disgust, would influence children's moralization of apparently harmless actions. To test this hypothesis, 7-year-old children were asked to render moral judgments of novel, seemingly victimless, body-directed or nature-directed actions after being exposed to adults' testimony or to an emot…
Which Appraisals Are Foundational to Moral Judgment? Harm, Injustice, and Beyond
Harm-centric accounts of judgments of moral wrongdoing argue that moral judgments are fundamentally based on appraisals of harm. However, past research has failed to operationally discriminate harm appraisals from appraisals related to injustice. Four studies carefully discriminated harm qua pain/suffering from injustice, alongside appraisals related to impurity, authority, and disloyalty. Appraisals of injustice outperformed appraisals of harm a…
The moral, or the story? Changing children's distributive justice preferences through social communication
The Influence of Direct and Overheard Messages on Children's Attitudes Toward Novel Social Groups
Individuals often develop negative biases toward unfamiliar or denigrated groups. Two experimental studies were conducted to investigate the extent to which brief negative messages about novel social groups influence children's (4- to 9-year-olds'; N = 153) intergroup attitudes. The studies examined the relative influence of messages that are provided directly to children versus messages that are overheard and examined whether the force of these …
Deadly but protective
International audience
Considering uncontaminated food as an early-emerging and previously ignored disgust elicitor
The present studies examine developmental changes in the elicitors of disgust by examining adults' and children's ideas of what is disgusting. In three experiments, we asked adults and children between the ages of 3 and 12 to report what is "disgusting," what is "gross," or what might have caused someone to make a disgust face. In Study 1, parents of 3- to 12-year-old children ( n = 120) were asked what they thought was disgusting and what they t…
Can coherence-based interventions change dogged moral beliefs about meat-eating
Moral Conviction, Emotion, and the Influence of Episodic versus Thematic Frames
Morally convicted attitudes—attitudes grounded in core beliefs about fundamental right and wrong—play an important role in political psychology, public opinion, and political behavior. Extant research suggests that these attitudes are intensely held, likely to evoke strong emotional responses, more stable and less amenable to compromise, and perceived to be universally true. Despite a large body of research on how morally convicted attitudes affe…
Being in the Know
Navigating between punishment, avoidance, and instruction
Does disgust-eliciting propaganda shape children's attitudes toward novel immigrant groups
Propaganda frequently leverages themes of dirtiness and disease to foster negative attitudes toward marginalized social groups. Although history suggests that this tactic is highly successful, empirical evidence is required to evaluate propaganda's potential efficacy. Inspired by previous evidence that children rapidly form attitudes about social groups, we conducted an exploratory investigation into whether 5- to 9-year-olds' (N = 48) judgments …
How musicality changes moral consideration
A growing literature shows that music increases prosocial behavior. Why does this occur? We propose a novel hypothesis, informed by moral psychology: evidence of others’ musicality may promote prosociality by leading us to judge musical individuals as having enhanced moral standing. This effect may be largely indirect, by increasing perceptions of how intelligent and emotionally sensitive musical individuals are. If so, simply knowing about other…
Disgusting Democrats and Repulsive Republicans
The status of disgust as a sociomoral emotion is debated. We conducted a stringent test of whether social stimuli (specifically, political outgroup members) can elicit physical disgust, as distinct from moral or metaphorical disgust. We employed stimuli (male faces) matched on baseline disgustingness, provided other ways for participants to express negativity toward outgroup members, and used concrete self-report measures of disgust, as well as a…
One strike and you’re a lout
Context matters in myriad ways
Context matters in myriad ways: a reply to ‘Building a cooperative child: evidence and lessons cross-culturally’ by Tanya Broesch and Erin Robbins" published on 02 Nov 2023 by Bristol University Press
When does “no” mean no? Insights from sex robots
Moral expansiveness and pro-environmentalism
Moral circles represent the figurative boundaries that distinguish the human and non-human entities that are considered to have moral worth from the entities that are considered to lack moral worth. The extent to which individuals have wide-reaching boundaries is referred to as moral expansiveness. Investigations into the psychological processes that underlie moral circle decision-making and moral expansiveness are only just beginning. Through tw…
Impartial Beneficence Predicts Greater and More Uniform Concern for Others Across Social Relationships
The principle of impartial beneficence (IB) holds that we should strive to maximize others’ well-being regardless of their relationship to us. But does endorsement of IB in principle translate to more uniform concern for others irrespective of relationship type? Three pre-registered studies in online samples of U.S. participants (total N =1,716) found IB endorsement predicts greater and more uniform concern for others across social relationships …
Developing intellectual humility
This article presents an overview and critique of current interdisciplinary research on the nature and development of intellectual humility (IH), with the aim of systematically outlining currently debated open questions. We focus on four specific areas of research: (1) theoretical questions regarding the nature of IH, (2) issues with the measurement of IH in development, (3) existing research on the development of IH and related socio-cognitive a…
Psychology (21 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (18 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (10 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (7 works) · Disgust (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)