Joshua D. Greene is Professor of Psychology and a member of the Center for Brain Science faculty at Harvard University.

Originally trained as a philosopher, Greene began his scientific career with behavioral and neuroscientific research on moral judgment, focusing on the interplay between emotion and reason in moral dilemmas (as in “trolley problems”) and social dilemmas involving cooperation.

His current social scientific research examines strategies for expanding our moral circles, with a focus on real-world impact. He is the co-founder of GivingMultiplier, a research-backed donation platform that increases the impact of charitable giving, and the co-creator of Tango, a cooperative online quiz game that reduces animosity and builds trust and respect across lines of division.

His current neuroscientific and computational research aims to understand the “language of thought”, how the brain combines concepts to form complex ideas.

Greene is the author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. He teaches Harvard’s General Education course Evolving Morality: From Primordial Soup to Superintelligent Machines.

Greene studied philosophy at Harvard (A.B., 1997) and Princeton (Ph.D., 2002), where he worked with David Lewis and Gilbert Harman. From 2002 to 2006 he trained as a postdoctoral researcher with Jonathan Cohen in the Neuroscience of Cognitive Control Lab and at the Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior, which is now the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.