About Heath

Heather María Maranges (or just Heath, heh · the; say Heather without the “er”) is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida). Heath received her PhD in Social and Personality Psychology from Florida State University, was awarded the Horizon Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research with the Social Justice Centre, Department of Psychology, and Department of Philosophy at Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec), and was director of research at Wake Forest University’s Program for Leadership and Character (Winston-Salem, North Carolina). Most recently, Heath was a Research Fellow investigating the role of forgiveness (divine, interpersonal, self) in mental health, social health, and morality at the Family Institute and Department of Human Development and Family Science at Florida State University. Her work addresses when, why, and how people cooperate, or make decisions in accord with the group’s well-being, and evince virtue. In her research, she examines individual differences, social processes, and ecological factors that shape personal and social health. Heath not only employs traditional experimental and individual difference methods but also leverages diverse theories and methods, including those of evolutionary biology, relationship research, philosophy, neuroscience, and genetics to understand how people arrive at their social and moral judgments. Her research has been published in scientific journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Individual Differences, and Review of General Psychology and featured in Huffington Post, Consumer Affairs, MSN, and Science Daily.

In her current work, Heath explores moral cognitive and social health processes and the centrality of self-control in them. Her research demonstrates that high self-control is associated with less moral temptation and with diverse, often countervailing moral concerns, such as avoiding harm and maximizing outcomes. Her work also highlights that people appear to understand the importance of self-control for cooperation and therefore make inferences about others' self-control abilities to inform attributions of morality and trustworthiness. Heath also examines how childhood environments affect later individual and social well-being, such as moral dilemma judgments.

Additionally, Heath investigates bias, stereotyping, and prejudice—whether against people or groups based, e.g., on their weight, race, or gender—which fundamentally undermine psychological and social health. She finds that moralized concerns about self-control contribute to prejudice based on weight and that politically motivated concerns about self-protection contribute to bias based on race. This program of research also includes research for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded Brilliant Thinkers, Empathic Therapists: What Explains the Gender Gap in Philosophy versus Psychology? project at Concordia during her postdoc. Specifically, Heath investigated how stereotypes about gender and these fields contribute to the gender imbalance across psychology and philosophy, including through lower feelings of belonging.

She received her B.S. in Psychology from Florida State University. During that time, Heath also completed substantial coursework in the areas of Biology, Philosophy, and English Literature. She received her M.S. and her Ph.D. in Experimental Social and Personality Psychology from Florida State University with support from a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship.