Geoff Goodwin is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

He obtained his PhD in cognitive psychology at Princeton University in 2006, where Phil Johnson- Laird was his mentor. He then completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University with John Darley. His undergraduate degree was obtained from the University of Queensland, where he double-majored in psychology and philosophy.

Geoff’s research spans a variety of topics concerning thinking, reasoning, social cognition, and moral judgment.  It aims to answer such questions as:  Do people think of their moral beliefs as objective facts or subjective preferences?  What underlies people’s desire to punish wrongdoers?  What role does moral character play in guiding the global impressions we form of other people? How do people value different human lives?  What underlies people’s moral concern for the environment and future generations?  His research on reasoning focuses on the meaning of conditional assertions and relational reasoning.  The main goal of this research is to understand the basic psychological processes that underlie people’s moral judgments and reasoning processes, and to do so in a way that unites careful conceptual analysis with modern empirical methodologies.

Geoff is a member of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and has co-authored over 40 journal articles, chapters, commentaries, and encyclopedia entries.