Nadira Faber

Work Focus

It is central to human psychology that we are individual beings that operate in a social environment. My research centres around the overall question how humans trade off their own interests with the interests of others. When give people moral relevance to others, help them and cooperate with them? And when, in contrast, do people not act in the interest of others and their social group, either intentionally or unintentionally? I approach this overall question in three main research foci. First, I investigate prosociality and cooperation in groups. Here, I am looking at how both how situational and physiological factors shape whether people help other individuals and cooperatively contribute in small groups. Second, I am interested in morality. Here, I am looking at what people regard as morally right or wrong, what determines those views, and how they, in turn, shape behaviour towards other people. And third, I study speciesism, that is how people asses the value and rights of non-human animals. My research is collaborative and strongly interdisciplinary: I am using theory and methods from psychology, behavioural economics, neuroscience, and philosophy. In my teaching at the University of Bremen I focus on social psychology, and I am offering lectures and seminars in both the B.Sc. and the M.Sc. on basic and applied social psychology

Key Publications

• Morgenroth, T., Ryan, M. K., Click, A. S., & Faber, N. S. (in press). The strategic use of harm-based moral arguments in the context of women’s bodily autonomy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

• Wittmann, M. K., Lin, Y., Pan, D., Braun, M. N., Dickson, C., Spiering, L., Luo, S., Harbison, C., Abdurahman, A., Hamilton, S., Faber, N. S., Khalighinejad, N., Lockwood, P. L., & Rushworth, M. F. S. (in press). Basis functions for complex social decisions in dorsomedial frontal cortex. Nature.
• Lucas, S., Douglas, T., & Faber, N. S. (2024). How moral bioenhancement affects perceived praiseworthiness. Bioethics, 28, 129-137. doi: 10.1111/bioe.13237
• McGuire, L., Palmer, S. B., & Faber, N. S. (2023). The development of speciesism: Age-related differences in the moral view of animals. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 14, 228-237. doi: 10.1177/19485506221086182
• Caviola, L., Kahane, G., Everett, J. A. C., Teperman, E., Savulescu, J., & Faber, N. S. (2021). Utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people? Harming animals and humans for the greater good. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150, 1008-1039. doi:10.1037/xge0000988
• Caviola, L., Everett, J. A. C., & Faber, N. S. (2019). The moral standing of animals: Towards a psychology of speciesism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116, 1011-1029. doi: 10.1037/pspp0000182
• Kahane, G., Everett, J. A. C., Earp, B. D., Caviola, L., Faber, N. S., Crockett, M. J., & Savulescu, J. (2018). Beyond sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology. Psychological Review, 125, 131-164. doi: 10.1037/rev0000093
• Faber, N. S., & Häusser, J. A. (2022). Why stress and hunger both increase and decrease prosocial behaviour. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 49-57. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.023
• Caviola, L., Schubert, S., Kahane, G., & Faber, N. S. (2022). Humans first: Why people value animals less than humans. Cognition, 225, 105139. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105139
• Gross, J.†, Faber, N. S.†, Kappes, A., Nussberger, A.-M., Cowen, P., Browning, M., Kahane, G., Savulescu, J., Crockett, M., & De Dreu, C. K. W. (2021). When Helping is Risky: The Behavioral and Neurobiological Tradeoff of Social and Risk Preferences. Psychological Science, 32, 1842-1855. doi: 10.1177/09567976211015942 ( † shared first authorship)