Christian J. Mott

I am a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. I work with Dr. Larisa Heiphetz in the Social and Moral Cognition Lab.

My research focuses on people's judgments about issues at the intersection of law and psychology. Recently, I have been focusing on questions like:

  • How do people learn and apply legal concepts (e.g., when serving on juries)?

  • How does the passage of time affect people's judgments about the appropriateness of legal and moral punishment?

  • How much and what types of punishments do people think are appropriate for violations of the criminal law and how does that map onto positive law?

Before coming to Columbia, I worked as a researcher at Opportunity Insights, an attorney at Covington & Burling, and a judicial law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the Massachusetts Appeals Court. I received my J.D. from Yale Law School and my B.A. in philosophy from Yale University.

Email: christian.mott@columbia.edu; Twitter: @cjmott1