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The long-term goal of my research is to improve science education outcomes in regions with large demographics of underrepresented students in STEM and medicine. With this goal in mind, I investigate how social, cultural, and psychological factors influence important yet controversial views in science, e.g., climate change and evolution by natural selection. Historically, anti-science attitudes have been approached from the view of epistemology: what it means to “know” and beliefs about knowledge. An alternative view uses moral psychology to explore the influence of in-group/out-group biases on values and beliefs. My view is that the theoretical foundations of moral psychology offer a more meaningful explanation of the factors influencing beliefs in science and are therefore more relevant to practice and policy.  

As a result, my research has split into two primary tracks. In the first, I propose and test developmental theories of rapid, intuitive moral judgments and decision making. Toward this end, I am focused on novel assessment creation and the use of advanced statistical methods to study latent psychological constructs. Much of this work is focused on the development and use of text-based instruments to test nuanced theories for neuro- and psycholinguistic processing—primarily related to the theoretical cognitive mechanisms of implicit bias influence on moral judgments.

 

On the second track, I take insights gleaned from my moral psychology research and apply them to understanding outcomes in science education. On this track, I investigate things like religion, political ideology, and other demographic factors that are predictive of scientific knowledge and beliefs about science. Importantly, much of this work is focused on stereotypes around minorities in science—offering insight into how to create more equitable, effective, and sustainable science education initiatives.

My research agenda is meant to help guide large-scale science and technology investments—especially investments targeted at improving science education outcomes in rural and politically conservative regions of the United States. Conducting this research is especially relevant in the context of East Texas—where major disparities in science education outcomes have had a measurably negative impact on high-level STEM and medical career pipelines.

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Character Foundations Survey

Brandon Bretl, Principal Investigator

KU IRB: STUDY00142366

The Character Foundations Survey (CFS) is an instrument for studying how moral intuitions (feelings about right and wrong) are influenced by various factors like age, sex, gender identity, political ideology, religion, education, and other socio-cultural, epistemological, and demographic factors. 

 

Students rate a series of conventional and moral violations on degree of wrongness and outcomes are analyzed via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Covariances between factors and factor means are compared to look for unique developmental patterns. 

The CFS is based on a synthesis of moral foundations theory and social domain theory. Through this synthesis, adolescent moral development can be seen as the result of a gene-culture coevolutionary process, and more rigorous predictions about adolescent moral development can be made.

To date, more than 3,000 middle and high school students from more than 11 different schools in Kansas have taken the CFS. 

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Assessing Effects of Variable Presentations of Gender Information in Text-based Moral Intuition Assessments. 

Brandon Bretl, Principal Investigator

Preliminary analysis shows significant effects of the order in which gender information is presented in text-based moral violation vignettes. These effects are consistent with literature on the time courses of text-based priming effects and stereotype activation. See my paper in The Journal of Psychology at https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2020.1832034

 

This paradigm offers many opportunities to assess theories of cognitive processes during moral intuition deployment and the influence of stereotype activation in moral judgments. 

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