DAVID PIZARRO is an associate professor of psychology at Cornell University. His primary interest is in moral judgment, particularly moral intuitions (especially concerning moral responsibility, and the permissibility or impermissibility of certain acts), and in biases that affect moral judgment. While intuitions are foundational principles on which people base their morality (e.g., that an act has to be intentional in order receive blame for it, or that killing someone is worse than letting them die), biases in moral judgment are the unintended consequence of certain cognitive and emotional processes (e.g., judging someone as more guilty of a crime because they are a racial minority).
Pizarro also has a general interest in the influence of emotional states on thinking and deciding. He is particularly interested in specific emotions (anger, disgust, fear, etc.) and their differential impact on how we process information, how we remember events, and how these emotions impact our moral judgments of others.