Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Published online: 16 June 2026; doi:10.1057/s41599-026-07942-1 Interdisciplinarity is widely endorsed yet difficult to enact, particularly when concepts travel between the humanities and empirical sciences. Moral psychology, positioned between moral philosophy and psychological science, offers a revealing case study of both the benefits and challenges of work that straddles these traditions. Past research in moral psychology has been organized large