Curated & Moderated by:
Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou

Peter Ditto

Professor of Psychological Science at the University of California, Irvine

Peter Ditto (B.A., UCLA; Ph.D., Princeton University) is Professor of Psychological Science at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Ditto is an experimental social psychologist whose research focuses on “hot cognition” – how motivation and intuition shape our political, moral, medical, and legal judgments. His work has been published in top scientific journals including Science, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and has been covered by numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, the BBC, and Time Magazine. His current research is focused on the moral and psychological underpinnings of the “culture war” in contemporary American politics.

When you feel that it’s morally offensive what the other side is doing…it creates anger, anxiety, very often fear, particularly when they are in power, and you could see the connections between the political and the personal in this sort of situation.