Clifford Workman

Biography

Clifford Workman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware, where he teaches social psychology and methods. He is also a visiting researcher in the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, directed by Professor Anjan Chatterjee at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Workman received his Ph.D. in medicine from the University of Manchester in 2016, where he studied the role of moral cognition and emotions in remitted major depressive disorder under the guidance of Rebecca Elliott and Roland Zahn. Gilmore was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago's Department of Psychology. Later, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Neurology with Anjan Chatterjee. 

Workman joined the Psychological and Brain Sciences faculty in 2023, where he investigates the dark side of morality. Morality refers to the values and customs ​that guide social behavior within and between groups. When morality works properly, it enables compassion for those in need; provides the courage to stand up to bad guys; and stops us from hurting the people who anger us, and much more. What happens when morality fails to work properly, though? Workman's research questions include:

• Can our moral intuitions sometimes impair our social functioning?
• Are some of our moral intuitions about ourselves and others susceptible to features that aren’t relevan​​t (or shouldn’t be, at least), like the attractiveness of our social partners?
• Why do some people feel so convicted about moral issues that they think their moral obligations justify hurting other people?
• Can individuals unlearn such beliefs and learn to treat others better?

With these​ questions in mind, Workman is currently working on projects examining:

1. The neuroscience of moral cognition (e.g., beliefs), emotion (e.g., guilt), and motivation​​ (e.g., underpinning altruism), and how these facets of morality are shaped by learning.
2. Relations between morality and beauty (e.g., how moral emotions influence aesthe​tic evaluations), as well as their neural substrates and the extent to which they are shared.
3. Disturbances to normal moral functioning in healthy (e.g., supporting sociopolitical violence) and disordered populations (e.g., symptomatic guilt in major depression).​​​
   

Representative publications

Workman, C.I., Smith, K.S., Apicella, C.L., & Chatterjee, A. (2022). Evidence against the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype in Hadza hunter gatherers. Scientific Reports, 12(8693):1-10.

Han, H, Workman, C.I., May, J., Scholtens, P., Dawson, K.J., Glenn, A.L., & Meindl, P. (2022). Which moral exemplars inspire prosociality? Philosophical Psychology, 35(7):943-970. 

May, J., Workman, C.I., Haas, J., Han, H. (2022). The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment: Empirical and Philosophical Developments. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong & F. De Brigard (Eds.), Neuroscience and Philosophy (pp. 17-47), Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Workman, C.I., Humphries, S., Hartung, F., Aguirre, G.K., Kable, J.W., Chatterjee, A. (2021). Morality is in the eye of the beholder: The neurocognitive basis of the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1494(1):3-17.

Workman, C.I., Yoder, K.J., Decety, J. (2020). The dark side of morality: Neural mechanisms underpinning moral convictions and support for violence. AJOB Neuroscience, 11(4):269-284.