James Woodward's research has covered a number of different areas, including theories of causation, explanation and inductive inference in general philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of social science. His interests in psychology include the empirical psychology of causal learning and judgment, and moral psychology and the empirical study of human behavior in morally significant situations. Woodward taught at Caltech for over two decades before joining the department of history and philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in 2010.