Larisa Heiphetz studies how kids think about religion and morality. She’s an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University where she runs the Columbia Social and Moral Cognition Lab. As a new dad, I’ve been thinking about how young kids form opinions—do they even form opinions at all? So I was curious to talk with Larisa about her work on how kids make different kinds of judgments and think about their new social worlds.

 If your interested in participating yourself (or your young child!) in Dr. Heiphetz’s research, you can sign up for studies here: https://columbiasamclab.weebly.com/childstudysign-up.html

 Things we mention in this episode:

• Developmental psychology as a research tool to understand big questions (see Heiphetz, 2014)
• How we think of moral as different from facts and preferences (e.g., Heiphetz et al., 2013, 2014, 2017)
• Research on how kids evaluate “helpers” and “hinderers” (e.g., Hamlin & Van de Vondervoort, 2018).
• Psychological “essentialism” and why kids tend to think that way (Heiphetz, 2020)

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/how-kids-judge-with-larisa-heiphetz/

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