- 203-503-4096
Julian De Freitas
Harvard University, Psychology, Graduate Student
- Rhodes Scholaredit
Research Interests:
For the first time in history, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are being deployed in populated environments. This unprecedent transformation of our everyday lives demands and relies upon a substantial requirement: endowing complex autonomous... more
For the first time in history, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are being deployed in populated environments. This unprecedent transformation of our everyday lives demands and relies upon a substantial requirement: endowing complex autonomous systems with ethically acceptable behavior. We outline how ethics is inextricably linked to several stakeholders in the technical, regulatory, and social perception spheres of autonomous vehicles. At bottom, the main difference between humans and AVs is that humans are presumed to have the ‘ethical common sense’ to deal with new driving situations beyond a standard driving test, whereas for AVs we need to test this ethical sense too. We flesh out, at a high level, what such a test could look like. We start by reviewing the proposal from studies of ‘driverless dilemmas’, an adaption of the traditional ‘trolley dilemmas’ of philosophy that have sparked helpful discussion on AV ethics, yet with limited use to the technical and regulatory spheres. Then, w...
The desire for a meaningful life is ubiquitous, and those who find their lives meaningful display superior mental and physical health. Yet the lay concept of a meaningful life is poorly understood. We investigated whether lay people think... more
The desire for a meaningful life is ubiquitous, and those who find their lives meaningful display superior mental and physical health. Yet the lay concept of a meaningful life is poorly understood. We investigated whether lay people think that meaningfulness depends on one’s psychological states or on the objective conditions of one’s life. Amongst academic philosophers, subjectivists argue that the former, and objectivists argue that latter, is necessary for meaning, while hybrid theorists claim that both conditions must be met for a life to be meaningful. Study 1 found that laypeople do not hold any of these three views. Instead, they consider a life meaningful if it meets either condition. Study 2 extended this finding, showing that positive psychological states can increase attributions of meaning even when those states are derived from senseless activities. However, Study 3 showed that severe immorality, while it does not reduce the incremental effect of fulfillment, can keep a...
People often coordinate for mutual gain, such as keeping to opposite sides of a stairway, dubbing an object or place with a name, or assembling en masse to protest a regime. Because successful coordination requires complementary choices,... more
People often coordinate for mutual gain, such as keeping to opposite sides of a stairway, dubbing an object or place with a name, or assembling en masse to protest a regime. Because successful coordination requires complementary choices, these opportunities raise the puzzle of how people attain the common knowledge that facilitates coordination, in which a person knows X, knows that the other knows X, knows that the other knows that he knows, ad infinitum. We show that people are highly sensitive to the distinction between common knowledge and mere private or shared knowledge, and that they deploy this distinction strategically in diverse social situations that have the structure of coordination games, including market cooperation, innuendo, bystander intervention, attributions of charitability, self-conscious emotions, and moral condemnation.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The alarm has been raised on so-called ‘driverless dilemmas’, in which autonomous vehicles will need to make ethical decisions on the road. We argue that these ideas are too contrived to be of practical use, represent an incorrect model... more
The alarm has been raised on so-called ‘driverless dilemmas’, in which autonomous vehicles will need to make ethical decisions on the road. We argue that these ideas are too contrived to be of practical use, represent an incorrect model of proper safe decision making, and should not be used to inform policy.
Research Interests:
Why do people esteem anonymous charitable giving? We connect normative theories of charitability (captured in Maimonides' Ladder of Charity) with evolutionary theories of partner choice to test predictions on how attributions of... more
Why do people esteem anonymous charitable giving? We connect normative theories of charitability (captured in Maimonides' Ladder of Charity) with evolutionary theories of partner choice to test predictions on how attributions of charitability are affected by states of knowledge: whether the identity of the donor or of the beneficiary is revealed to the other. Consistent with the theories, in Experiments 1-2 participants judged a double-blind gift as more charitable than one to a revealed beneficiary, which in turn was judged as more charitable than one from a revealed donor. We also found one exception: Participants judged a donor who revealed only himself as slightly less, rather than more, charitable than one who revealed both identities. Experiment 3 explains the exception as a reaction to the donor's perceived sense of superiority and disinterest in a social relationship. Experiment 4 found that donors were judged as more charitable when the gift was shared knowledge (ea...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
People sometimes disagree about who owns which objects, and these ownership dilemmas can lead to costly disputes. We investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying people's judgments about finder versus landowner cases, in which a... more
People sometimes disagree about who owns which objects, and these ownership dilemmas can lead to costly disputes. We investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying people's judgments about finder versus landowner cases, in which a person finds an object on someone else's land. We test psychological hypotheses motivated directly by three major principles that govern these cases in the law. The results show that people are more likely to favor the finder when the object is in a public space compared to a private space. We find mixed support for the hypothesis that people are less likely to favor a finder who is employed by the landowner. Last, we find no support for the hypothesis that people are more likely to favor finders for objects located above ground compared to below ground. We discuss implications for psychological theories of ownership and potential applications to property law.
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Jurisprudence, Ownership, Humans, and 4 moreJudgment, Female, Male, and Adult
People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside,... more
People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy-the tendency to view humans negatively-predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across ...
Research Interests:
Despite differences in beliefs about the self across cultures and relevant individual differences, recent evidence suggests that people universally believe in a 'true self' that is morally good. We propose that this belief arises... more
Despite differences in beliefs about the self across cultures and relevant individual differences, recent evidence suggests that people universally believe in a 'true self' that is morally good. We propose that this belief arises from a general tendency: psychological essentialism (PE).
Research Interests:
What is the relationship between the language people use to describe an event and their moral judgments? We test the hypothesis that moral judgment and causative verbs rely on the same underlying mental model of people's actions.... more
What is the relationship between the language people use to describe an event and their moral judgments? We test the hypothesis that moral judgment and causative verbs rely on the same underlying mental model of people's actions. Experiment 1a finds that participants choose different verbs to describe the major variants of a moral dilemma, the trolley problem, mirroring differences in their wrongness judgments: they described direct harm with a single causative verb (Adam killed the man), and indirect harm with an intransitive verb in a periphrastic construction (Adam caused the man to die). Experiments 1b and 2 separate physical causality from moral valuation by varying whether the victim is a person or animal and whether the harmful action rescues people or inanimate objects. The results show that people's moral judgments lead them to portray a causal event as either more or less direct and intended, which in turn shapes their verb choices. Experiment 3 finds the same basi...
Research Interests:
Recent scientific research has settled on a purely descriptive definition of happiness that is focused solely on agents' psychological states (high positive affect, low negative affect, high life satisfaction). In contrast to this... more
Recent scientific research has settled on a purely descriptive definition of happiness that is focused solely on agents' psychological states (high positive affect, low negative affect, high life satisfaction). In contrast to this understanding, recent research has suggested that the ordinary concept of happiness is also sensitive to the moral value of agents' lives. Five studies systematically investigate and explain the impact of morality on ordinary assessments of happiness. Study 1 demonstrates that moral judgments influence assessments of happiness not only for untrained participants, but also for academic researchers and even in those who study happiness specifically. Studies 2 and 3 then respectively ask whether this effect may be explained by general motivational biases or beliefs in a just world. In both cases, we find evidence against these explanations. Study 4 shows that the impact of moral judgments cannot be explained by changes in the perception of descriptive...
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Individuality, Culture, Humans, and 4 moreJudgment, Female, Male, and Adult
The more potential helpers there are, the less likely any individual is to help. A traditional explanation for this bystander effect is that responsibility diffuses across the multiple bystanders, diluting the responsibility of each. We... more
The more potential helpers there are, the less likely any individual is to help. A traditional explanation for this bystander effect is that responsibility diffuses across the multiple bystanders, diluting the responsibility of each. We investigate an alternative, which combines the volunteer's dilemma (each bystander is best off if another responds) with recursive theory of mind (each infers what the others know about what he knows) to predict that actors will strategically shirk when they think others feel compelled to help. In 3 experiments, participants responded to a (fictional) person who needed help from at least 1 volunteer. Participants were in groups of 2 or 5 and had varying information about whether other group members knew that help was needed. As predicted, people's decision to help zigzagged with the depth of their asymmetric, recursive knowledge (e.g., "John knows that Michael knows that John knows help is needed"), and replicated the classic bystan...
Research Interests:
The mind can track not only the changing locations of moving objects, but also their changing features, which are often meaningful for guiding action. How does the mind track such features? Using a task in which observers tracked the... more
The mind can track not only the changing locations of moving objects, but also their changing features, which are often meaningful for guiding action. How does the mind track such features? Using a task in which observers tracked the changing orientation of a rolling wheel's spoke, we found that this ability is enabled by a highly feature-specific process which continuously tracks the orientation feature itself-even during occlusion, when the feature is completely invisible. This suggests that the mental representation of a changing orientation feature and its moving object are continuously transformed and updated, akin to studies showing continuous tracking of an object's boundaries alone. We also found a systematic error in performance, whereby the orientation was reliably perceived to be further ahead than it truly was. This effect appears to occur because during occlusion the mental representation of the feature is transformed beyond the veridical position, perhaps in or...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside,... more
People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy-the tendency to view humans negatively-predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across ...
