The University of Toronto Mississauga’s student newspaper, The Medium, recently published an interview with Professor Andrew Miles. The article focused on Miles' newly funded research that asks whether adhering to morals can make people happy. His study, “Living Right, Feeling Good: The Effects of Moral Action on Positive Emotion,” focuses on understanding human behaviour (why people do what they do), and identities and values. Dr. Miles, a recipient of the Connaught Fund New Researcher Award, studies such topics as where morality comes from and how we as a society hold certain types of moralities over another.
Professor Miles is an Assistant Professor of Sociology with undergraduate teaching responsibilities at the Mississauga campus. In addition to his work on morality, Professor Miles is known for his expertise in quantitative research methodologies.
We have included a brief excerpt of the Medium article; the full interview can be found here.
Can adhering to morals make us happy?
Dr. Andrew Miles recently won the Connaught Fund New Researcher Award worth $35,000
Fatima Adil, Yasmeen Alkoka
Dr. Andrew Miles focuses his research on understanding human behaviour, identities, and values.
You help someone and you feel good. But does following rules and adhering to one’s morals also elicit individual happiness? This is the fundamental question Dr. Andrew Miles, an assistant sociology professor at UTM, hopes to answer with his study “Living Right, Feeling Good: The Effects of Moral Action on Positive Emotion.” Miles, a recent recipient of the Connaught Fund New Researcher Award worth $35,000, sat down with The Medium to discuss his award-winning research.
Miles explains that he focuses his research on two things. “One of them is understanding human behaviour—why people do what they do—[and the second is] identities and values.”
After receiving the Connaught funding, Miles has started to “branch out into other questions about morality, like how people learn morality, where does it come from, what happens in our families as we’re growing up, or our schools, that lead us towards holding certain types of moralities over another.”