Nina Powell received bachelor’s degrees (magna cum laude) in psychology and French studies from The University of North Caroline at Greensboro. Nina’s main interest is condemnation and emotion relating to immoral acts. She is currently in the final year of her PhD at the University of Birmingham, and investigates how people respond when angered and disgusted by immoral acts committed by a removed third-party. Her research has shown that people are very willing to condemn others without looking for potential mitigating information even when they are uninformed and have nothing to gain directly from condemning. She has also found that the experience of condemning another person and being morally outraged in some situations can be an enjoyable and positive experience, despite what people may report explicitly. Nina’s work extends beyond condemnation and judgement, however, to deeper questions of how a moral sense develops and how we decide what is right and wrong.

Nina has written on topics including the morality of animal pain and gender equality. She has spoken at international conferences on morality and the development of moral judgements. Pursuing an understanding of the moralisation and moral panic associated with parenting and gender roles are some of her additional research interests. She believes we are living during an interesting period in history with moral dissonance and moral panic playing a major role in decision making; everything has a moral component, from recycling to parenting. Her goal is to understand culturally what has led us to this point as a society, and how and when moral principles emerge.