CENTER FORMS TIES WITH THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY: CAUCUS OF CONCERNED SCHOLARS, COMMITTEE ON ALTRUISM AND ETHICAL ACTION.

At its mid-winter meeting on January 14, 2005, the Governing Council of the International Society of Political Psychology authorized the establishment of the Caucus of Concerned Scholars, Committee on Altruism and Ethical Action. Kristen Monroe heads this caucus, which is authorized for three years, with the option of renewal at the end of this period, pending approval by the Governing Council.  The Caucus will work with the Center to encourage the dissemination of scientific work on ethics and will compile a list of scholars willing to speak with the press about work in this area.

The Caucus will hold two sessions at the annual ISPP meetings and will issue an annual report to the ISPP Governing Council on its activities. Its mission is to:

• encourage and conduct research on the foundations of ethical action, ranging from altruism and cooperation at one end of a moral continuum to bystander behavior and prejudice, discrimination, ethnic violence, and genocide at the other end, with special emphasis to the psychological mechanisms and origins of all forms of behavior having to do with ethics,
• convene workshops and seminars on this topic,
• develop curricula and collect syllabi for the teaching of related courses, to students ranging from elementary and secondary students to college and graduate students,
• establish a website to publicize substantive findings and work in this area,
• collect names of serious scholars doing research in this field and to provide these names to legitimate media outlets and community groups interested in scholarly speakers,
• collaborate with other relevant agencies interested in the subject, such as Holocaust Museums, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Southern Poverty Center, and academic institutes similar to UCI’s Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality
• facilitate the generation and coordination of grant proposals to advance scholarly work in the field, including both educational grants dedicated to teaching students and research grants for original research.

As of June 30, 2005.

• The Caucus has arranged for two panels at the ISPP meetings, one on moral courage and one on the psychological foundations of ethics. We distributed our mission statement at these panels and encouraged members of the ISPP to join our group, if they so wish. The Caucus head has established loose affiliative ties with the Detroit Holocaust Museum, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Orange County Human Rights Commission, and is submitting grants to provide funding for workshops necessary to accumulate the kind of data base on what scientific findings we have concerning the psychological foundations of ethical behavior. All of these subjects were discussed at the ISPP meetings to get input from ISPP members and to generate new ideas on this topic. In particular, and with the Council’s approval, we proposed submitting a grant to the Borchard Foundation for the summer of 2006, when the ISPP will be meeting in Barcelona.

As of January 13, 2005

• The Caucus has scheduled two meetings at the ISPP meetings in Barcelona, Spain. The first is on The Psychology of Ethical Behavior and includes papers by Kai Jonas (Friedrich Schiller University of Jena), Mark Levine (Lancaster University), Anne Birgitta Yeung (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies), and Gerd Meyer (University of Tuebingen). Catarina Kinnvall (Lund University) is the discussant
• The second panel is organized by Sam McFarland and includes papers by Kristen Monroe and Pearl Oliner.

We encourage interested scholars and members of the media to contact Kristen Monroe at KRMonroe@UCI.Edu for further information.
Kristen Renwick Monroe, Caucus Chair