Andrew Delton

Biography

Andrew Delton is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and the College of Business. He received his PhD in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Research

Delton studies evolution, psychology, and politics. One goal is to uncover the psychology that allows humans to live as a cooperative and moral species. This includes research on generosity, social dilemmas, personality, and emotions like anger, compassion, shame, and gratitude. He views human psychology as a series of information-processing systems, each one designed to solve an important problem that our human ancestors faced. Another goal of his research is to use this knowledge to understand politics, including voting, partisanship, and public goods. Current work includes a forthcoming book on the politics of climate change. He is also interested in how our evolved psychology gives rise to political thought, focusing on liberalism, rights, and toleration. He uses many methods to study these topics, particularly experimental economic games.

RECENT Publications 

Andrews, T. M., Delton, A. W., & Kline, R. (in press). Who do you trust? Institutions that constrain leadershelp people prevent disaster. Journal of Politics.

Andrews, T. M., Delton, A. W., & Kline, R. (in press). Is a rational politics of disaster possible? Makinguseful decisions for others in an experimental disaster game. Political Behavior.

Andrews, T. M., Delton, A. W., & Kline, R. (in press). Anticipating moral hazard undermines climatechange mitigation in an experimental geoengineering game. Ecological Economics.

Delton, A. W., Jaeggi, A. V., Lim, J., Sznycer, D., Gurven, M., Robertson, T. E., Sugiyama, L., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (in press). Cognitive foundations for helping and harming others: Making welfare tradeoffs in industrialized and small-scale societies. Evolution and Human Behavior. [PDF]

Delton, A. W., Kane, J. V., Petersen, M. B., Robertson, T. E., & Cosmides, L. (2022). Partisans use emotions as social pressure: Feeling anger and gratitude at exiters and recruits in political
groups. Party Politics, 28, 845-853.

Del Ponte, A., Delton, A. W., & DeScioli, P. (2021). Altruism and spite in politics: How the mind makeswelfare tradeoffs about political parties. Political Behavior, 43, 1289-1310.

DeScioli, P., Cho, B., Bokemper, S., & Delton, A. W. (2020). Selfish and cooperative voting: Can the majority restrain themselves? Political Behavior, 42, 261-283.

Delton, A. W., DeScioli, P., & Ryan, T. J. (2020). Moral obstinacy in political negotiations. Political Psychology, 41, 3-20.

Andrews, T. M., Delton, A. W., & Kline, R. (2018). High risk–high reward investments to mitigate climate change. Nature Climate Change, 8, 890-894.

Delton, A. W., Petersen, M. B., & Robertson, T. E. (2018). Partisan goals, emotions, and political
mobilization: The role of motivated reasoning in pressuring others to vote. Journal of Politics, 80,
890-902.

Delton, A. W., Petersen, M. B., DeScioli, P., & Robertson, T. E. (2018). Need, compassion, and support for social welfare. Political Psychology, 39, 907-924.

Del Ponte, A., Delton, A. W., Kline, R., & Seltzer, N. A. (2017). Passing it along: Experiments on creatingthe negative externalities of climate change. Journal of Politics, 79, 1444-1448.

Teaching

News