John M. Doris

About

John M. Doris is the Peter L. Dyson Professor of Ethics in Organizations and Life at Cornell University. His work lies at the intersection of cognitive science, moral psychology, and philosophical ethics. Doris has authored and co-authored numerous papers in prestigious venues such as Noûs, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Nature: Scientific Reports, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. He has written several books including Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency, and Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality. Additionally, he has collaborated with other scholars on works such as Reasonable Doubt: Rethinking Trust in Science, The Moral Psychology Handbook, and The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology. Doris has received funding from a variety of institutions including Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. He served as president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology for 2025-2026 and has been recognized with the Society’s Stanton Prize for excellence in interdisciplinary research as well as the American Philosophical Association’s Gittler Award for outstanding scholarship in the philosophy of social science. His teaching has been…

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Nursing
• Epistemology
• Public relations
• Psychiatry
• Environmental ethics
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• Situationism, Moral Improvement, and Moral Responsibility

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022 · 18 citations

  Abstract In this chapter, we recount some of the most pressing objections to character scepticism, pointing out their limitations and, when appropriate, incorporating their suggestions. From here, we consider what empirically informed moral improvement might look like by turning to the skill analogy. While the skill analogy provides a realistic rubric for becoming a better person, many of the questions concerning the details of how moral improvement might take place remain unanswered. When devel…

  PublisherDOI

• The paucity of morality in everyday talk

  Scientific Reports · 2023-04-12 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access

  Given its centrality in scholarly and popular discourse, morality should be expected to figure prominently in everyday talk. We test this expectation by examining the frequency of moral content in three contexts, using three methods: (a) Participants' subjective frequency estimates (N = 581); (b) Human content analysis of unobtrusively recorded in-person interactions (N = 542 participants; n = 50,961 observations); and (c) Computational content analysis of Facebook posts (N = 3822 participants;…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• It's Not the Flu: Popular Perceptions of the Impact of COVID-19 in the U.S.

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2021 · 16 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Messaging from U.S. authorities about COVID-19 has been widely divergent. This research aims to clarify popular perceptions of the COVID-19 threat and its effects on victims. In four studies with over 4,100 U.S. participants, we consistently found that people perceive the threat of COVID-19 to be substantially greater than that of several other causes of death to which it has recently been compared, including the seasonal flu and automobile accidents. Participants were less willing to help COVID…

  DOI

• Who attributes what to whom? Moral values and relational context shape causal attribution to the person or the situation

  Cognition · 2022-12-09 · 11 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Skepticism about Evil: Atrocity and the Limits of Responsibility

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-02-14 · 7 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter contends that the concept of evil is of limited explanatory utility for moral psychology. If evil is understood as very serious wrongdoing resulting from the exercise of morally responsible agency, instances of evil are probably vanishingly rare. In service of this conclusion, it is suggested here that most wrongdoing extreme enough to be a potential instance of evil falls into two categories. The first category comprises acts performed by individuals who suffer psychologic…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kevin M. Kniffin

  SC Johnson (United States)

  14 shared

• Laura Niemi

  Cornell University

  13 shared

• Robert L. Woolfolk

  12 shared

• Oscar W. Larson

  9 shared

• Stephen Stich

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  7 shared

• Édouard Machery

  6 shared

• Matthias R. Mehl

  University of Arizona

  5 shared

• Jesse Graham

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• Neil Lubow Prize
• Society for Philosophy and Psychology’s Stanton Prize

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Shaun Nicholsh-53
• Derk Pereboomh-34
• Andrei Marmorh-26