Reasoning and Imagination Lab

PhD Studentship in Moral Reasoning

A PhD studentship is available to carry out research on cognitive processes in moral judgments supervised by Ruth Byrne. The PhD studentship is funded from a grant awarded by the John Templeton Foundation. It will provide the successful candidate with €16,000 per annum for three years plus annual University tuition fees commencing in September 2014. It is part of the research conducted at the Reasoning and Imagination lab at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland.

The PhD studentship would suit candidates who are carrying out or have completed a dissertation for an undergraduate or master’s degree examining cognitive processes using experimental methods. Interested applicants should send a short CV, including a one-page summary of their dissertation, to Ruth Byrne at rmbyrne@tcd.ie   The closing date for applications is May 16^th 2014.

COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING SYMPOSIUM, QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY BELFAST

Alice Ping Ping Tse and Ruth Byrne attended the Counterfactual Thinking Symposium on October 24th 2013 at Queen’s University, Belfast:

Ruth Byrne (Trinity College Dublin) Counterfactual thinking and intentions

Eimear O’Connor (Queen’s University Belfast)  The relationship between regret and decision making in children

Rachel McCloy (Reading University) Children’s understanding of counterfactual alternatives

Sarah Beck (Birmingham University)  Moving between counterfactual and real worlds

Teresa McCormack (QUB)  Are there limitations in young children’s counterfactual reasoning abilities?

Annual Psychology Lecture: Neal Roese (Northwestern University, Illinois) Is there a positive side to a negative emotion?

Cristina Quelhas presented a talk ‘Conditional reasoning about intentions’ (Byrne, Juhos & Quelhas) at the European Society for Cognitive Psychology conference in Budapest 29th August – 1st September 2013.

Ruth Byrne presented a talk ‘Inferences between conditionals and disjunctions’ (Espino & Byrne) at the European Society for Cognitive Psychology  conference in Budapest 29th August – 1st September 2013.

Mary Parkinson presented a poster at ESCOP in Budapest 28th August-1st September 2013.

Eoin Gubbins presented a poster at the Cognitive Science Conference, Berlin, July 31st-August 3rd

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Professor Phil Johnson-Laird (New York University) visited the lab 22nd-25th August 2013, and attended talks:

Eoin Gubbins: Inconsistency in reasoning about morally good and bad actions.

Mary Parkinson: Moral responsibility judgments about causal and enabling agents.

COGSCI2013, BERLIN

Eoin Gubbins will present ‘Consistency in degrees of morality’ (Gubbins, Byrne & Johnson-Laird) at the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society in Berlin, August 1st-3rd 2013.

Ruth Byrne will present ‘Reasoning about intentions’ (Ndubuisi & Byrne) at the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society in Berlin, August 1st-3rd 2013.

ESCOP2013, BUDAPEST

Mary Parkinson will present ‘The role of intent in moral judgments of purity and harm violations’ at ESCOP2013,  the European Society for Cognitive Psychology Conference,  in Budapest, August 30th – September 2nd 2013.

Cristina Quelhas will present ‘Conditional reasoning about intentions (Byrne, Quelhas & Juhos) at ESCOP2013,  the European Society for Cognitive Psychology Conference,  in Budapest, August 30th – September 2nd 2013.

Ruth Byrne will present ‘Heuristic processes in inferences between conditionals and disjunctions’ (Espino & Byrne) at ESCOP2013,  the European Society for Cognitive Psychology Conference,  in Budapest, August 30th – September 2nd 2013.

Professor Sergio Moreno-Rios from Granada University in Spain will visit the lab this week.

Eoin Gubbins and Mary Parkinson will give talks on May 23rd at 12 in the Board Room:

Mary Parkinson: Judgments of moral responsibility for accidental and intentional violations of harm and purity principles.

Eoin Gubbins: Inconsistencies in moral judgments about conjunctions of good and bad actions.

Mary Parkinson and Ruth Byrne have contributed an experiment to the Science Gallery’s latest exhibition ‘RISKLAB’.

The Science Gallery describes RISK LAB   as examining “the psychology and mathematics underpinning the risks that surround every aspect of our lives, and our ability to assess and understand those risks”.

The experiment is described by the Science Gallery as follows:
“RISKY RIGHTS AND WRONGS  What would you do if faced with a moral dilemma? Would you choose a solution that would definitely solve some of the problem, or would you risk it all for a chance to solve all of it? This experiment examines how people make risky moral decisions.”

Trinity’s Science Gallery – ‘a place where science and art collide’ –  is one of the top ten free cultural attractions in Ireland. RISKLAB runs from 2nd May to 23rd June 2013.