Kurt Gray
Kurt Gray is a social psychologist who studies our moral minds and how best to bridge political divides. He was almost a geophysicist, but a night trapped in the Canadian wilderness convinced him otherwise. Prof Gray received his PhD from Harvard University, and now directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also leads the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, which explores new ways to reduce polarization, and is a Field Builder in the New Pluralists, which seeks to build a moral pluralistic America. Spanning over 120 journal articles, Gray's work reveals that morality is grounded in perceptions of harm, and that political disagreement revolves around different assumptions about who is most vulnerable to victimization. His work has been discussed in New York Times, the Economist, Scientific American, Wired, and Hidden Brain. He is the author of the book The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels and Why it Matters (Viking), and the forthcoming Outraged: Why we Fight about Morality and Politics (Pantheon), which explores the power of our harm-based mind to both divide and unite us.
