Narvaez was the design leader of the Minnesota Community Voices and Character Education project funded with $1 million by the US Department of Education during 1998–2002. She is co-author with James Rest, Steve Thomas and Muriel Bebeau of the book Postconventional Moral Thinking (1999).

Narvaez was one of five psychologists to be invited to speak at the White House's Conference on Character in Community in 2002.

Narvaez's work emphasizes moral development over a lifespan, and the interaction between implicit and explicit processes in moral functioning. She emphasizes the importance of early experience in shaping moral capacities. Her current work is on the evolved developmental niche for young children (natural birth, extensive on-demand breastfeeding, frequent affectionate touch, caregiver responsiveness, self-directed social free play, multiple adult caregivers and extensive positive social support). She studies the effects of early life experience on sociality, morality and thriving.

In her work for the public, she hosts the website EvolvedNest.org which emphasizes the importance of nestedness for all ages in order to maintain wellbeing and compassionate morality. She co-created the film Breaking the Cycle.

A recent emphasis in Narvaez's work involves indigenous wisdom, starting with her 2013 paper "The 99%--Development and socialization within an evolutionary context: Growing up to become 'A good and useful human being.'" She organized a conference in September 2016 called "Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous Knowhow for Global Flourishing" resulting in the volume, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom (2019). She and Four Arrows have a 2022 book, Restoring the Kinship Worldview.

Narvaez's blog, "Moral Landscapes," at Psychology Today has over 15 million hits (as of early 2022) with the most popular posts being "Dangers of 'Crying it Out'" with over 3.1 million hits, Five Things NOT to do to Babies, and Myths about Circumcision You Likely Believe.