Professional Bio

Daryl Cameron, Ph.D. investigates the psychological processes involved in empathy and moral decision-making, using an interdisciplinary approach drawing on affective science, social cognition, and moral philosophy. In much of his research, he examines motivational and situational factors that shape how people regulate empathic emotions and prosocial behaviors. He has studied why people fail to show empathy for mass suffering and during intergroup conflicts, and whether and how people choose to feel empathy, compassion, and moral outrage in social life. In other research, he uses implicit measurement and mathematical modeling to assess empathy and moral judgment in healthy and clinical populations. His lab studies moral emotions toward a range of targets, including humans, non-human animals, and artificial intelligence (e.g., robots, LLMs), and has recruited from a range of populations, including students, community adults, voters, patients, and physicians. His lab is welcoming to many different disciplines, including but not limited to psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, political science, marketing, communications, and engineering. To learn more about his research, please visit the Empathy and Moral Psychology Lab web page (https://emplab.la.psu.edu).

Daryl Cameron, Ph.D. is a Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute for 2023-2026. Additionally, he is a Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute. Dr. Cameron directs the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making (https://moralconsortium.psu.edu/), an interdisciplinary network of scholars who study empathy and moral decisions.

Daryl Cameron, Ph.D. also directs the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making (https://moralconsortium.psu.edu/), an interdisciplinary network of scholars who study empathy and moral decisions.

Selected Publications

Anderson, S., Cameron, C. D., & Beaty, R. E. (2025). Creative empathy. Creativity Research Journal, 37(1), 71-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2023.2229649

Inzlicht, M., Cameron, C. D., D’Cruz, J., & Bloom, P. (2024). In praise of empathic AI. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(2), 89-91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.12.003

Cameron, C. D., Scheffer, J. A., Hadjiandreou, E., & Anderson, S. (2022). Motivated empathic choices. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 66, 191-279.

Cameron, C. D., Conway, P., & Scheffer, J. A. (2022). Empathy regulation, prosociality, and moral judgment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 188-195.

Cameron, C. D., Lengieza, M. L., Hadjiandreou, E., Swim, J. K., & Chiles, R. M. (2022). Empathic choices for animals versus humans: The role of choice context and perceived cost. The Journal of Social Psychology, 162(1), 161-177.

Bambrah, V., Cameron, C. D., & Inzlicht, M. (2022). Outrage fatigue? Cognitive costs and decisions to blame. Motivation and Emotion, 46, 176-196.

Cameron, C. D., Hutcherson, C. A., Ferguson, A., Scheffer, J. A., Hadjiandreou, E., & Inzlicht, M. (2019). Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 962-976.

Spring, V. L., Cameron, C. D., & Cikara, M. (2018). The upside of outrage. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22, 1067-1069.