My research explores the ways in which issues of justice, personal autonomy, authority, and social conventions become increasingly coordinated and integrated in children’s social and moral decisions and action.  I employ the framework of social domain theory, a constructive, social-cognitive, and domain-specific approach to understand the development of social knowledge.  I am interested in how children and adolescents understand and coordinate competing social concerns, especially moral matters (issues pertaining to others’ welfare, fairness, and rights), social conventions (arbitrary, culturally variable rules and norms) and psychological issues (personal jurisdiction).

Currently, I am studying the ways children and adolescents reason about and resolve situations involving social and moral conflict, and how they evaluate and coordinate the salient features of those situations in executing their judgments. Using clinical interviews, naturalistic observation, and survey methods, I have focused on children’s reasoning and behaviors related to honesty and deception, and the ways children make judgments about deception as a means of advancing their interests and moral priorities.

I am also conducting a number of research projects with undergraduate students in my lab at the Early Education Center (formerly the Elizabeth Amen Laboratory School). Our primary project investigates children’s altruistic behavior as it relates to classroom activities and the ways students evaluate and engage in behaviors related to fairness, kindness, and distributive justice.