UROP Project

Childhood Environments, God Attachment, and Moral Decision Making

morality, childhood environments, God attachment

Research Mentor: Felicia Jones, She/Her
Department, College, Affiliation: Psychology, Arts and Sciences
Contact Email: fjones@psy.fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 1
Relevant Majors: Psychology
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required:
Remote or In-person: In-person
Approximate Weekly Hours: 9-11, During business hours
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:
Not participating in the roundtable

Project Description

What leads to a person’s honesty, helping, and supporting versus lying, cheating, and stealing? Our research team is investigating different environmental and personal factors that influence morality, specifically, childhood environments and experiences and how individuals relate to God. Childhood environments set the stage for how people think, feel, and approach others, including in important decisions about whether to help or harm another person. Childhood environments can be stable, well-resourced, and safe, or they can be unpredictable, deprived, and threatening. One part of this project entails reviewing the literature on work linking specific childhood environmental factors and experiences to moral thoughts, feelings, approaches, and decision making. Of course, people’s beliefs, including their religious ones, can play a large role in which moral thoughts, feelings, approaches, and decisions they demonstrate. One important factor that is less studied is how people relate to and see God. Just as people can feel relationally close to or distant from their loved ones, they can be securely or insecurely (i.e., anxiously or avoidantly) attached to their God. In sum, in this project, we aim to systematically review and study how childhood environmental factors and attachment to God relate to people’s moral psychology, decision-making, and behavior.


Research Tasks: Literature reviews
Data collection, working with participants
Data cleaning
Writing
Research presentation


Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Familiarity with Microsoft suite/Google docs (required)
Literature review experience (recommended)
Experience in statistical analysis software (SPSS; recommended)