For the first session of Expanding Empathy 2026, we will be joined by Mohammad Atari (Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst).

Talk Title: Moral Psychology Across Time and Space

Talk Abstract: Morality consists of evolved instincts and inherited rules, which co-evolve with institutions. This cultural-evolutionary process creates moral diversity not only across regions, but also over historical time. In this talk, Atari argues that understanding moral minds requires studying the histories and environments that shape them. To demonstrate this approach, he presents research tracing moral psychology across more than two millennia of Chinese history and 270 prefectures. Using computational analyses of classical texts and local historical records, we uncover substantial regional variation and nonlinear historical change. We also find that stronger kin-based institutions are associated with greater emphasis on loyalty, authority, and honor, and less emphasis on moral egalitarianism. These findings illustrate how historical records can help us investigate both the diversity of moral worlds and the institutions that sustain them. By expanding the remit of moral psychology across time and space, we can begin to distinguish recurring features of human morality from those specific to particular places and historical moments.

Biography: Atari's research focuses on the intersection of culture, morality, and computational methods. He studies how moral values and norms vary across societies and historical periods, and how cultural evolution, institutions, ecology, language, and social learning shape the moral mind. He is interested in both the cooperative power of morality (how shared values bind people together) as well as its darker side: how moral convictions can fuel prejudice, polarization, hate, and violence. Atari uses methods from experimental social psychology, ethnography, natural language processing, and large-scale social data analysis to study psychological life across time and place. Part of his research examines how artificial intelligence systems, specifically large language models, represent human psychology—and when they compress, stereotype, or misrepresent the psychological diversity of human populations. A broader question underlies most of this work: How does culture shape what humans value, and what happens when machines begin to model those values?