Psychology 571: The Psychology of Empathy and Moral Decision-Making (Graduate Seminar in Social Psychology)

Undergraduate Students

We are currently seeking highly motivated undergraduate students to work in our lab. Interested students must have at least a 3.0 GPA, be extremely conscientious and attentive to detail, and be interested in empirical approaches to human morality and ethics. We prefer students who can commit to 9-10 hours per week, and who can commit to work in the lab for multiple semesters. Interested students must be able to attend the weekly lab meeting. Experiences in this lab will provide contact with all stages of the research process, including brainstorming of ideas, literature review, stimulus development and design, study programming, running experiments, compiling and coding data, data analysis and visualization, and assisting with manuscripts and presentations. Research assistants receive course credit (PSYCH 494). Working in the EMP Lab will provide useful research experience and be good preparation for graduate school. Students with dual interests/majors in relevant fields (e.g., psychology & philosophy) are especially encouraged to apply. To apply, contact Dr. Cameron over email for more details for the application survey. You may also fill out the survey directly by proceeding to the Social Psychology research opportunities page here, and scrolling down to the entry for Daryl Cameron and the EMP Lab. If you are interested in pursuing an Honors thesis with Dr. Cameron, please get in contact with Dr. Cameron. Typically, Honors students should have prior experience as an RA in the lab.

Graduate Students

Please contact Dr. Cameron to inquire about the upcoming application cycle. Dr. Cameron is hoping to recruit for the upcoming application cycle (to start in fall 2025).

In general, the lab supports highly motivated, creative, and collaborative students who have interests in topics related to empathy, compassion, emotion regulation, moral outrage, moral judgment, and prosocial behavior. Dr. Cameron looks for students to join the team who work well with others, enjoy talking and thinking about ideas, and have a high drive and attention to detail. We have placed our EMP Lab graduate students in prestigious post-doctoral positions (including NYU and UC Berkeley), and are supportive of a broad range of career paths post-Ph.D., both inside and outside of academia. We highly value having diverse research and personal interests (e.g., one of our former PhD students is a novelist), and encourage holistic work-life balance. Our lab focuses much of our research on motivated regulation of empathy, compassion, and outrage. Prospective applicants should take a look at the lab webpage to understand our overall research focus and current and emerging themes and projects. Dr. Cameron also encourages prospective applicants to look at the Penn State Social Psychology program page here. The program has strengths in affect and emotion across researchers, and there is a research cluster in moral psychology (with the EMP Lab and Dr. Sean Laurent’s lab), along with strengths in gender studies and research on psychological interventions. The EMP Lab supports broad interdisciplinary thinking, methodological development, and a collegial atmosphere in which to generate novel ideas. We regularly collaborate across areas of psychology (e.g., cognitive, clinical, and industrial-organizational), and across disciplines (e.g., philosophy, political science) and institutes at Penn State (e.g., Rock Ethics Institute, Social Science Research Institute, Huck Institutes for the Life Sciences, McCourtney Institute for Democracy). In particular, Dr. Cameron organizes events through the interdisciplinary Rock Ethics Institute and the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, which affords prospective students the opportunity to develop a broad foundation in integrative approaches to studying morality and ethics.

Post-Doctoral Researchers and Visiting Scholars

If you’re interested in joining the lab as a post-doctoral researcher, please contact Dr. Cameron to discuss opportunities. Typically, post-doctoral researchers will need to have external funding of some kind to support their time at Penn State. Dr. Cameron is open to discussing collaborative post-doctoral grant applications. If you are a graduate student or post-doc at another institution and want to join the lab as a visiting scholar (e.g., for a semester), reach out to Dr. Cameron to discuss possibilities. We regularly have external scholars present in our lab meetings (on Zoom), and support collaborative connections between different research groups.