moral science lab

Experimental philosophy, cognitive science & moral psychology at the University of Granada.

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Dept. of Philosophy I
Cartuja Campus
Granada, Spain 18011


Welcome to our website! The Moral Science Lab is an interdisciplinary research lab based in the Department of Philosophy I at the University of Granada. We combine experimental and observational research methods to investigate a variety of issues…

  1. Philosophical Concepts: the cognitive processes that subserve people’s reasoning about philosophical questions, such as whether free will and determinism are compatible or what it means to be self-deceived or to consent.

  2. Moral Psychology: how people conceive the moral status of non-human species, how we perceive non-native and migrant individuals. We have also documented generational or cohort differences in moral judgment.

  3. Experimental Jurisprudence: what people consider to be law, how they interpret rules, and how law and morality are related. Learn about experimental jurisprudence (x-jur) through the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.

Our research is described in greater detail on the projects page. You can also take some of our studies here!

The Moral Science Lab is generously funded by a 2023 Research Consolidation Project (Legal Interpretation and Moral Reasoning; CNS2023.144543), awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR, and by a 2025 Leonardo Grant for Scientific Research and Cultural Creation (Philosophical Expertise and Non-Classical Conceptual Structure), awarded by the BBVA Foundation.

BBVA Leonardo


selected publications

  1. Agency, desire, and the conceptual representation of consent
    Lucı́a Garzón, Jorge Suárez, and Ivar R Hannikainen
    Cognition, 2025
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  2. Integration gaps persist despite immigrants’ value assimilation: evidence from the European Social Survey
    Jorge Suárez, and Ivar R Hannikainen
    Frontiers in Sociology, 2025
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    N/A Google Scholar citations
  3. Legal provisions on medical aid in dying encode moral intuition
    Ivar R Hannikainen, Jorge Suárez, Luis Espericueta, Maite Menéndez-Ferreras, and David Rodrı́guez-Arias
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024
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    N/A Google Scholar citations
  4. Self-Deception: A case study in folk conceptual structure
    Carme Isern-Mas, and Ivar R Hannikainen
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2024
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  5. Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism
    Ivar R Hannikainen, Kevin P Tobia, Guilherme da FCF Almeida, Noel Struchiner, Markus Kneer, Piotr Bystranowski, Vilius Dranseika, Niek Strohmaier, Samantha Bensinger, Kristina Dolinina, Bartosz Janik, Eglė Lauraitytė, Michael Laakasuo, Alice Liefgreen, Ivars Neiders, Maciej Próchnicki, Alejandro Rosas, Jukka Sundvall, and Tomasz Żuradzki
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022
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  6. How do people use ‘killing’, ‘letting die’ and related bioethical concepts? Contrasting descriptive and normative hypotheses
    David Rodrı́guez-Arias, Blanca Rodriguez Lopez, Anibal Monasterio-Astobiza, and Ivar R Hannikainen
    Bioethics, 2020
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  7. Is utilitarian sacrifice becoming more morally permissible?
    Ivar R Hannikainen, Edouard Machery, and Fiery A Cushman
    Cognition, 2018
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    N/A Google Scholar citations
  8. Bad actions or bad outcomes? Differentiating affective contributions to the moral condemnation of harm
    Ryan M Miller, Ivar R Hannikainen, and Fiery A Cushman
    Emotion, 2014
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    N/A Google Scholar citations