Michael McCullough

Michael McCullough is an experimental psychologist who is concerned primarily with the evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human sociality. In addition to pioneering work on forgiveness, gratitude, prosocial behavior, religion, and morality, for twenty-five years he has studied the effects of empathy on how we treat others. He currently directs a research network devoted to understanding how people express and experience gratitude across many different cultures, and he is the principal investigator on a multi-disciplinary, multi-site project designed to uncover the effects of religion on cooperation.

• Carter, E. C., & McCullough, M. E. (2018). A simple, principled approach to combining evidence from meta-analysis and high-quality replications. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 174-185.
• McAuliffe, W. H. B., Forster, D. E., Philippe, J., & McCullough, M. E. (2018). Digital altruists: Resolving key questions about the empathy-altruism hypothesis in an Internet sample. Emotion, 18, 493-506.
• Pedersen, E. J., McAuliffe, W. H. B., & McCullough, M. E. (2018). The unresponsive avenger: More evidence that disinterested third parties do not punish altruistically. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147, 514-544.
• McAuliffe, W.H.B., Forster, D.E., Pedersen, E.J., & McCullough, M.E. (2018). Experience with anonymous interactions reduces intuitive cooperation. Nature Human Behaviour.
• McCullough, M. E., & Reed, L. I. (2016). What the face communicates: Clearing the conceptual ground. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 110-114.

Updated September 2019