Geoffrey Goodwin

Geoffrey Goodwin is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on decision processes, social and cultural psychology, particularly in social cognition, moral psychology, and reasoning. He teaches courses such as PSYC 170 (Social Psychology) and PSYC 470 (Seminar in Social Psychology). His work examines moral objectivism, retributive psychology, and the valuation of human lives, with a secondary interest in deductive reasoning and relational logic.

Education: BA in Psychology from the University of Queensland; Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University. He is affiliated with Solomon Labs at 3720 Walnut St, Room D16.

Research Interests:

• Moral judgment and objectivism
• Social cognition and belief attribution
• Retribution directed toward non-human entities
• Generational obligations and environmental ethics
• Conditional reasoning and probabilistic logic

Recent work emphasizes asymmetries in moral judgments (e.g., soldiers in war contexts) and lay intuitions about belief controllability. He has advised Ryan Wheat in the Psychology graduate program. Notably, he will not accept new graduate students for Fall 2025.

Labs: Solomon Labs (UPenn)