{"id":5,"date":"2015-09-22T15:11:09","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T22:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/immoralitylab\/?page_id=5"},"modified":"2021-10-12T00:08:30","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T07:08:30","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/immoralitylab\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome"},"content":{"rendered":"

The overcoming of morality, in a certain sense even the self-overcoming of\u00a0morality-let\u00a0this be the name for that long secret work which has been saved up for the finest and most honest, also the most malicious, consciences of today, as living touchstones of the soul. –\u00a0Friedrich Nietzsche<\/em><\/p>\n

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Wrath<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n

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Gluttony<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n

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Greed<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n

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Envy<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n

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Lust<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n

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Sloth<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n

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Pride<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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The Immorality Lab was created in 2009 at the campus of the\u00a0University of British Columbia in affiliation with Sauder School of Business and the Faculty of Psychology. The purpose of the lab is to unite a\u00a0virtual community of international scholars who study the many\u00a0ways people mistreat one another and contribute to the\u00a0sum total of misery and unhappiness in the world.<\/h5>\n

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The work of the lab is inspired by Sigmund Freud’s observation that most human beings see their neighbor as “not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him.”<\/p>\n

Human beings are capable of great cruelty and destructiveness. The hope of our lab is\u00a0that by scientifically studying these attributes of our\u00a0species we can discover ways of\u00a0regulating their expression and minimizing their most damaging effects. More broadly, our lab seeks to\u00a0understand morality as a cultural phenomenon and so we study such questions as: “How do the\u00a0moral ideals and norms of a\u00a0culture emerge?”, “What determines which moral belief systems\u00a0become\u00a0accepted and legitimized?”, and “What effects does believing in a certain kind of moral system have on\u00a0the thoughts and behaviour of individuals and groups?”.<\/p>\n

The Immorality Lab is organized\u00a0by Dr. Karl Aquino of the Sauder School of Business. Karl is the Richard Poon Chair of Organizations and Society. Karl also has a courtesy appointment in the <\/span>Faculty of Psychology<\/a> and is a Fellow at the <\/span>Maurice Young Center for Applied Ethics<\/a>. Karl has been doing research on immorality since 1992.\u00a0\u00a0His<\/span>\u00a0research interests include:<\/p>\n