About

Sean Laurent is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and a member of the Graduate Faculty in Social Data Analytics at Pennsylvania State University. He serves as the Director of the Morality and Social Cognition Laboratory. His primary research interests focus on understanding how people think and feel about other individuals, particularly in relation to the formation and revision of moral judgments. His work explores social and moral cognition, perspective taking and empathy, intentionality and mental states, as well as the intersection of psychology and the law. For more information and publications, he directs the Morality and Social Cognition Lab.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Turning down the outrage <b>Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground</b> <i>Kurt Gray</i> Pantheon, 2025. 368 pp.

  Science · 2025-02-27

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A moral psychologist offers a framework for bridging divides.

  PublisherDOI

• Intent, harm, and the law: Examining the intersection of varied intent and outcome severity on legal judgments.

  Law and Human Behavior · 2025-11-10

  article1st authorCorresponding

  OBJECTIVE: This research examined how people reason about intended and unintended harms commonly adjudicated in the U.S. legal system, exploring the impact of a causal actor's intent and resultant harm severity on individuals' legally relevant judgments. HYPOTHESES: We hypothesized that participants would reliably differentiate between variations in unintended harm, with blame, guilt, liability, and punishment judgments increasing across a continuum of harm moving from accidental to negligent to reckless to intentional. We also hypothesized that harm severity would impact criminal guilt and civil liability judgments in some ways that the legal system intends and others that it does not. METHOD: = 4,085; four reported only in additional online materials: https://osf.io/fxzms), participants read about someone causing physical harm or damage to property. Intent (negligent, reckless, and intentional) and harm severity (no harm/damage to serious harm/damage) were manipulated. Participants completed measures related to blame, guilt, liability, and punishment. RESULTS: ² ranged from <.01 to .10). CONCLUSION: Our studies suggest considerable convergence between folk and legal psychology when examining the impact of a causal actor's intent on criminal and civil judgments and indicate that harm severity can sometimes play a role in the process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Inaugural editorial.

  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  will retain its centrality if we increase submissions and publish more articles, while continuing to strive to communicate methodologically trustworthy, intellectually stimulating, and socially relevant research, in a responsible fashion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Victim impact statements limit the effects of perspective taking on juror decisions

  Frontiers in Cognition · 2024-11-20 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Past work suggests that victim impact statements (VISs) encourage jurors to take victims' perspectives, but this has not been explored empirically. Across four experiments (total N = 881), the present research examines the effects of perspective taking and the impact of the crime expressed in VISs on juror perceptions of defendants. In Experiment 1, mock jurors read a capital murder case that prompted them to perspective take (or not) and included VISs that were high or low in impact of the crime on the victims. Results indicate that the impact of the crime expressed in the VISs influenced perceptions of culpability for the defendant, but perspective taking did not. Experiment 2 used an armed robbery case, and the results again showed that the higher impact of the VIS led to seeing the defendant as more culpable, but perspective taking did not. Experiment 3 examined whether the type of perspective taking mattered (imagining self vs. defendant) when VISs were also presented. Those using the self during perspective taking found the defendant less culpable compared to non-perspective takers. Experiment 4 examined whether priming perspective taking influenced decisions. While high-impact VISs resulted in more death penalty sentences than low-impact VISs, priming perspective taking did not. Overall, the impact of the crime expressed in VIS typically influenced the perceptions of the defendants. In contrast, perspective taking had limited effects. These findings contribute to our understanding of VISs in the courtroom and may be useful for attorneys when presenting cases and advising clients.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Interdependent versus independent inconsistency: Cultural differences in how East Asian and Western people attribute hypocrisy.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2024-06-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Humans worldwide have long deplored hypocrisy, a concept that has been mentioned in texts dating back 100-1,000 years (e.g., the Analects of Confucius, the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, and the Qur'an). However, what influences the extent of hypocrisy attribution or counts as hypocrisy may differ as a function of culture. Previous studies have shown that Westerners attribute greater hypocrisy for within-person attitude-behavior inconsistency than East Asians. Building on this, we predict that East Asians' (vs. Westerners') hypocrisy attribution is more heavily influenced by social relationships. Consistent with past research, this can lead to greater leniency. However, as we show, this can also result in the novel finding we present that attributions of mild-to-moderate hypocrisy are made even when no explicit within-person attitude-behavior inconsistency is present. Across six experiments, we found that Koreans (vs. participants from the United States) attributed more hypocrisy to attitude-contradicting behavior when the person enacting the behavior was not the person who stated the attitude but was someone who shared social bonds with that person (i.e., cross-person, within-relationship attitude-behavior inconsistency; "relational hypocrisy"). Specifically, Koreans attributed more hypocrisy than Americans when a child's behavior contradicted their parent's views (Experiments 1a and 1b) or when attitude-contradicting behavior was enacted by the child of a close friend (Experiment 2). Experiments 3-5 replicated the findings from Experiments 1-2 using additional social contexts (e.g., a spousal relationship). Supplementary analyses showed that differences in hypocrisy attribution between Americans and Koreans were mediated by cultural differences in their perceptions of shared responsibility within relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• People who seem disgusting seem more immoral

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2024-05-23 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Despite unresolved questions about replicability, a substantial number of studies find that disgust influences and arises from evaluations of immoral behavior and people. Departing from prior emphases, the current research examines a novel, related question: Are people who are viewed as disgusting (i.e., people whose habits seem disgusting) perceived as more immoral than typical or unusual people? Four experiments examined this, also exploring the downstream impacts of moral character judgments. Adults who seemed disgusting were regarded as more immoral for purity and non-purity violations (Experiment 1) and less praiseworthy for prosocial acts (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, an 8-year-old with typical (but seemingly disgusting) habits was rated as "naughtier" and likelier to misbehave than an atypical child who loved vegetables and disliked sweets. Experiment 4 revealed how, when no behavioral information is available, beliefs about target disgust influence beliefs about future behavior, helping explain why seemingly disgusting targets are viewed as more immoral, but not always more punishable for their bad behavior.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Signaling outrage is a signal about the sender: moral perceptions of online flaming

  Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication · 2024-03-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Most flaming research addresses explanations for and the immediate effects of flaming on those engaging in and targeted by flaming. However, online interactions are increasingly visible, suggesting that understanding third-party evaluations of flaming is important. By integrating considerations in computer-mediated communication theorizing with the social-perceptual effects of online moral outrage, we explore how third-party observers evaluate flaming, also assessing beliefs about the signaling social function that flaming serves. In seven experiments (total N = 3,178), we manipulated the intentionality of triggering events and compared flaming to other types of online responses (less-toxic criticism; supportive), measuring reactions including moral regard, comment approval, and positive/negative engagement. Findings suggest that flaming may sometimes act as exculpable moral outrage when responding to egregious behaviors. However, contrary to participants’ beliefs, flaming does not reliably or persuasively influence perceptions of those whom it targets; rather, it mostly appears to send negative signals about the flamer.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do Injustice and Mortality Salience Impact Secondary Victimization Through the Need to Believe in a Just World?

  Basic and Applied Social Psychology · 2023-01-02

  article1st authorCorresponding

  According to just-world theory, people need to believe in a just world (NBJW). Theoretically, exposures to injustice and confronting mortality threaten this belief, prompting attempts to restore it. Past research has found that victimization of innocents and mortality salience prompts observers to engage in secondary victimization (e.g., blaming or derogating victims and underestimating their suffering). Theoretically, secondary victimization helps restore perceptions that the world is just. To test whether NBJW might explain these effects, three experiments conceptually replicated prior work relying on this process explanation. Although our goal was to test whether NBJW could be measured and might explain why secondary victimization occurs, we failed to find any substantive effects of exposure to injustice or mortality salience on secondary victimization.

  PublisherDOI

• If negligence is intentionality’s cousin, recklessness is it’s sibling: Differentiating negligence and recklessness from accidents and intentional harm

  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · 2023-08-31 · 5 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Beautiful seems good, but perhaps not in every way: Linking attractiveness to moral evaluation through perceived vanity.

  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2022-06-02 · 36 citations

  articleSenior author

  For almost 50 years, psychologists have understood that what is beautiful is perceived as good. This simple and intuitively appealing hypothesis has been confirmed in many ways, prompting a wide range of studies documenting the depth and breadth of its truth. Yet, for what is arguably one of the most important forms of "goodness" that there is-moral goodness-research has told a different story. Although greater attractiveness is associated with a host of positive attributes, it has been only inconsistently associated with greater perceived morality (or lesser immorality), and meta-analyses have suggested the total effect of beauty on moral judgment is near zero. The current research documents one plausible reason for this. Across nine experiments employing a variety of methodological and measurement strategies, we show how attractiveness can be perceived as both morally good and bad. We found that attractiveness causally influences beliefs about vanity, which translates into beliefs that more attractive targets are less moral and more immoral. Then, we document a positive association between attractiveness and sociability-the nonmoral component of warmth-and show how sociability exerts a countervailing positive effect on moral judgments. Likewise, we document findings suggesting that vanity and sociability mutually suppress the effects of attractiveness on each other and on moral judgments. Ultimately, this work provides a comprehensive process account of why beauty seems good but can also be perceived as less moral and more immoral, highlighting complex interrelations among different elements of person perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Heidemarie K. Laurent

  University of Oregon

  33 shared

• Douglas A. Granger

  16 shared

• Robin Hertz

  9 shared

• Shoko Watanabe

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  9 shared

• Narina Nuñez

  University of Wyoming

  8 shared

• Benjamin W. Nelson

  Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

  7 shared

• Michael W. Myers

  Showa University

  6 shared

• Jeanine Skorinko

  Worcester Polytechnic Institute

  5 shared

Labs

• Morality and Social Cognition LaboratoryPI

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  University of Oregon

  2010

• BA, Psychology

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  2004