The MAP Lab investigates the psychological foundations of exceptional prosociality — forms of altruism that maximize impact and transcend parochial boundaries — with the goal of inspiring individual and collective action to address both present (e.g., treatable illness, poverty, inequality) and future (e.g., future pandemics, climate change, AI) global challenges.

 

Despite unprecedented capacity to help others, this potential is often underutilized. Human cooperative tendencies developed in the context of small, closely-knit groups where helping others often conferred survival advantages to oneself or one's kin. Today, human social systems are growing larger and more interconnected. People can help distant others. Yet, they often choose not to. The very cooperative tendencies that promote helping within groups (e.g., loyalty, reciprocity, obligation) can limit helping between them. 

 

As a result, prosociality today remains relatively insensitive to the actual consequences of action (e.g., how many lives can be saved or improved by helping), while being shaped by seemingly inconsequential factors like the social and temporal distance of beneficiaries and how their identities or numbers are presented. This poses a challenge to human progress because effectively confronting the greatest challenges to global health and well-being often requires helping distant, faceless multitudes and generations yet to come — the very targets humans typically neglect.

 

Using a combination of large-scale surveys, behavioral experiments, and archival text analysis, our basic research seeks to better understand the evolved and socialized psychological mechanisms that expand and contract the boundaries of human moral concern, guide moral cognition, and drive cooperative, prosocial, and altruistic behaviors.

 

Applying this knowledge, we develop and test laboratory and field interventions to inspire impactful and impartial altruism, promote environmentally conscious behaviors, and get people to consider the future consequences of their present actions for themselves and others.

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By integrating insights across these domains, our research aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the psychological foundations of altruism while informing strategies to inspire more equitable and impactful prosocial behavior at both individual and societal levels.