Profile
**On leave Fall 2024-Spring 2025**
Katrina Fincher studies moral psychology. Her research focuses on the basic cognitive and perceptual psychological mechanisms that enable people to live in social groups, in particular three mechanisms that enable this transition; perceptual dehumanization (her primary focus), covert retribution, and sacred values.
Degrees Held
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Professional Affiliation
Association for Psychological Science
Society for Judgment and Decision Making
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
National Latina/o Psychological
Association Academy of Management
Recent Publications
Fincher, K. M. (2019). Social Antecedents and Perceptual Consequences of How We Look at Others. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(1), 143–157.
Morris, M. W., Savani, K., & Fincher, K. (2019). Metacognition Fosters Cultural Learning: Evidence from Individual Differences and Situational Prompts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(1), 46–68.
Fincher, K.M., Tetlock, P.E. & Morris, M.W. (2017) Interfacing with Faces: Perceptual Humanization and Dehumanization, Current Directions in Psy. Sci.
Fincher, K.M. & Morris, M.W. (2016) Look Again: The Value in Distinguishing Three Processes Underlying Social-Perceptual Effects, Psychological Inquiry, 27:4.
Fincher, K.M., & Tetlock, P.E. (2016) Perceptual Dehumanization of Faces Is Activated by Norm Violations and Facilitates Norm Enforcement, Journal of Experimental Psychology : General.
Fincher. K.M & Tetlock, P.E. (2015) Brutality Undercover of Ambiguity: Covert Retributivism and Punitiveness Traps. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Tetlock, P.E. & Fincher, K.M., (2014) Social Functionalism. "Theory and Explanation in Social Psychology." Guilford Press, New York.
Mellers B, Ungar L, Baron J, Ramos J, Gurcay B, Fincher K.M., Scott S.E., Moore D, Atanasov P, Swift SA, Murray T, Stone E, & Tetlock, P (2014). Psychological strategies for winning a geopolitical forecasting tournament. Psychological science, 25(5), 1106-1115.
Baron, J. Metz, S.E., Scott, S., & Fincher, K.M. Why does the Cognitive Reflection Test (sometimes) predict utilitarian moral judgment (and other things)? Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 4 (2015) 265-284.
Hormes, J. M., Rozin, P., Green, M. C., & Fincher, K. (2013). Reading a book can change your mind, but only some changes last for a year: food attitude changes in readers of The Omnivore's Dilemma. Frontiers in Psychology, 4.
Mellers, B., & Fincher, K.M.(2013) Surprise: A belief or an emotion? Progress in Brain Research, Vol. 202, Amsterdam: The Netherlands, 2013, pp. 3-19.
Rozin, P., Fincher, K.M., Guillot, L,.,Rozin, A., & Tsukayama, E. (2013). Glad to be sad, and other examples of benign masochism. Judgment & Decision Making, 8(4).
Fedotova, N., Fincher, K.M., Goodwin, G., & Rozin P. (2012) How Much Do Thoughts Count?: Preference for Emotion versus Principle in Judgments of Antisocial and Prosocial Behavior. Emotion Review.
Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & Fincher, K.M. (2009). From oral to moral. Science, 323, 1179-1180
Allison K. C., Paré E, Cicco Barker J, Kavanaugh K, Fincher, K., Sarwer DB. Predicting excess weight gain among overweight pregnant women: the PoEMS study. Journal of Women’s Health 2007; 16:1102, P-20.
Research Interests
morality, cognition, perception
Awards And Honors
2016 Mortimer D. Sackler Summer Institute in Neuroscience and Law
2010–2015 Russell Ackoff Student Research Fellowship, Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, The Wharton School (Total Awards: $17,500)
2009–2015 Mellon Fellowship, Department of Psychology University of Pennsylvania (Total Awards: $280,000)
2013–2015 Benjamin Franklin Summer Fellowship Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania (Total Awards: $6,300)