The UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality

Since 2003, the UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality has explored the question "What causes moral behavior?"

By creating this center, faculty at UCI are able to address topics that reflect critically on the moral implications of the new frontiers in science.

The center brings together faculty, researchers, graduate students and visiting scholars to conduct studies, present lectures and publish professional papers and proceedings from public talks and organized conferences.

The scope of the Center’s interests is wide-ranging, and includes topics as disparate as:

• Altruism, cooperation and moral psychology
• Bioethics and the biochemistry of friendship, community and human flourishing
• Religion and international security
• An innate moral sense, cognition and moral reasoning
• Genes, personality and moral responsibility

Although housed in the School of Social Sciences, the center is truly interdisciplinary, engaging faculty members from the Schools of Biological Sciences, Humanities, Medicine, Social Science and Social Ecology.