Moral Emotions as the Mechanisms of Social Cohesion

The Moral Emotions

Morality dignifies and elevates. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God said "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil" (Gen. 3:22). In many of the world's religious traditions, the good go up, to heaven or a higher rebirth, and the bad go down, to hell or a lower rebirth. Even among secular people, moral motives are spoken of as the "highest" and "noblest" motives,...

Moral emotions

Moral emotions have been badly neglected by philosophical ethics. In my view to the detriment of this discipline because they are not only important for the moral evaluation of persons but also for value theory and thus also for a theory of morally right actions. This paper outlines my account of moral emotions. Emotions such as regret or shame are sometimes but not always moral emotions. I wil...

Moral emotions and moral behavior.

Moral emotions represent a key element of our human moral apparatus, influencing the link between moral standards and moral behavior. This chapter reviews current theory and research on moral emotions. We first focus on a triad of negatively valenced "self-conscious" emotions-shame, guilt, and embarrassment. As in previous decades, much research remains focused on shame and guilt. We review cur...

The Status of Moral Emotions

Emotions as Moral Amplifiers: An Appraisal Tendency Approach to the Influences of Distinct Emotions upon Moral Judgment

In this article, we advance the perspective that distinct emotions amplify different moral judgments, based on the emotion’s core appraisals. This theorizing yields four insights into the way emotions shape moral judgment. We submit that there are two kinds of specificity in the impact of emotion upon moral judgment: domain specificity and emotion specificity. We further contend that the unique...