Welcome to my academic page!

Darcia Narvaez (Pronunciation: DAR-sha Narv-EYES)

by Matt Cashore University of Notre Dame

I am a Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame with a Puerto Rican and German-American background. My work focuses on moral development and flourishing from an interdisciplinary perspective. I am especially interested in how early life experience and societal culture interact to influence wellbeing and virtuous character in children and adults.

I have identified

The Evolved Nest as a millions-year-old heritage of ancestral wisdom critical for forming the foundations of health, wellbeing, prosociality and compassionate morality.
Triune-ethics meta-theory (TEM) as a framework for how moral mindsets can shift or become dispositional from (early life) experience.
The critical need for Indigenous wisdom for fostering human flourishing and optimal moral functioning (relational attunement and communal imagination).
Integrative ethical education (via RAVES: relationship, apprenticeship, virtue exemplars, ethical expertise, self-authorship) for fostering compassionate moral character in classrooms.

FILMS

6-minute film, Breaking the Cycle (in Spanish & Subtitled in 16 languages at YouTube)

8-minute film, The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children

(in Spanish & Subtitled in 16 languages at YouTube)

12-minute film: Reimagining Humanity (in Spanish & Subtitled in 16 languages) Watch 2-minute trailer

Curriculum Vitae12.23

BOOKS

Download Published Papers by Topic

En español: LINK

WORKSHOP Materials For Educators

RESEARCH TOOLS (for teachers and researchers)

See also EvolvedNest.org

DarciaNarvaez.com

Kindred Media

ARCHIVED BLOG AT PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

BLOG POST LIST with LINKS

YouTube Playlist

Twitter: @MoralLandscapes, @EvolvedNest

Facebook: Moral Landscapes, EvolvedNest

SoundCloud: Evolved Nest

RESEARCH TOPICS

Triune Ethics Meta-Theory (and measures)

The Evolved Nest (Evolved Developmental Niche)

Indigenous Wisdom

Conference: Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous Knowhow for Global Flourishing

For Life to Continue on Earth, Every Day Must Be Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Moral Complexity/Mature Moral Functioning

Education for Virtue, Ethics, Morality

Moral Discourse Processing/Comprehension

Moral Self and Identity
Diversity and Culture
Moral & Political Judgment
College and Professional Education
Other Areas of Interest

OTHER LINKS

Center for the Study of Ethical Development at the University of Alabama (information about the Defining Issues Test)

Collaboration for Ethical Education

Minnesota Community Voices and Character Education Curriculum Materials

Wikipedia Page

About my spouse, Dan Lapsley

Evolved Nest

Babies Love Rhyming Time
“Rhymers will be readers; it’s that simple. Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by age four, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight!” – Mem Fox, author Reading Magic I am living proof that this Mem Fox quote is true. […]
Grounded Expansion: What The Mother Tree “Ent” Said
Letter from the Editor Kindred’s November 2024 Issue Read this issue in your browser here. * “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” ― Rumi What does the Mother Tree offer […]
Child Humiliation
We live in a semi-totalitarian system* where most families are forced to under nurture their children and themselves in order to eat and have a place to sleep. Many families fall through the cracks and are broken apart due to addiction, prison, child protective services, and other forms of trauma and its symptoms. We can […]
Contemporary Eliminationism and Fascism
I grew up with the radio on most of the time, tuned into a university radio station with educational shows on the arts, public affairs, cooking, gardening. The shows expanded imagination, for example, providing insights about foreign lands and people from those lands—building empathy and understanding. It was an introduction to a type of cosmopolitanism […]
Thirteen Ways to Enable Free Play and Other Independent Activities for Your Kids
We live in a child-unfriendly world (or at least a child-unfriendly nation), where children are more or less continuously imprisoned. We have increased the pressures and decreased the pleasures of schooling. We have developed largely irrational fears of letting our kids run free outdoors. Neighbors, police, and child protective services often regard what was once […]
How This One OLD Story Keeps Shaping the World: With Four Arrows
If you are curious about discovering your worldview literacy capacities, you’ll love this interview with Claudia Ayuso that covers the basics of exposing the Dominant Worldview, our Old Story, and how we shift to a life-affirming, Indigenous/Kinship Worldview. You can see Four Arrows present in the video at the 14:17 mark. Four Arrows says about […]
10 Ways to Be an Exceptional Listener
Are you a good listener? If you ask any person, they will likely tell you they are good listeners. But if you ask the people in their life, you may get another story. The skill of great listening, the kind that really helps those around you feel met, is essential in all areas of life––parenting, […]
Virtue and Vice, Individual and Cultural
Philosophers have long discussed how one develops goodness. Whereas Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory, rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, emphasized reasoning sophistication with the assumption that aligned action would follow, there was another, older view of goodness—practicing virtue. In fact, Jeffrey Rosen points out that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ that USian male founders wrote about was not referring […]
Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality?
Watch the video interview with Stephanie about this post and her Beyond Attachment post below and here. I consider the word “Goddess” to refer to a state of evolved consciousness. One attains it by being free of trauma and standing unconditionally in one’s Original Brilliance, or empowered selfhood. Women, as I have observed from […]
Using CAT-FAWN “De-Hypnotizing” Technology: Four Arrows On Trance-Based Self-Learning
Download Kindred’s Worldview Chart by Four Arrows here, or BUY a poster-size chart here. Read Four Arrows on Kindred here. About this Video The internet and social media are moving from the post and comment to the shared experience model. Over the course of 23 books and hundreds of scholarly articles, Four Arrows (Donald Trent […]

Contact Info

Address:

Darcia Narvaez

Professor of Psychology Emerita

Department of Psychology

University of Notre Dame

390 Corbett Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556

Email: dnarvaez@nd.edu