Moral Emotions builds upon the philosophical theory of persons begun in _Phenomenology and Mysticism _and marks a new stage of phenomenology. Author Anthony J. Steinbock finds personhood analyzing key emotions, called moral emotions. _Moral Emotions _offers a systematic account of the moral emotions, described here as pride, shame, and guilt as emotions of self-givenness; repentance, hope, and despair as emotions of possibility; and trusting, loving, and humility as emotions of otherness. The author argues these reveal basic structures (...) of interpersonal experience. By exhibiting their own kind of cognition and evidence, the moral emotions not only help to clarify the meaning of person, they reveal novel concepts of freedom, critique, and normativity. As such, they are able to engage our contemporary social imaginaries at the impasse of modernity and postmodernity. (shrink)

Current discussions of hermeneutical injustice, I argue, poorly characterise the cognitive state of victims by failing to account for the communicative success that victims have when they describe their experience to other similarly situated persons. I argue that victims, especially when they suffer moral wrongs that are yet unnamed, are able (1) to grasp certain salient aspects of the wrong they experience and (2) to cultivate the ability to identify instances of the wrong in virtue of moral emotions. (...) By moral emotions I mean emotions like indignation that reflect an agent’s ethical commitments and bear on her ethical assessments. Further, I argue that victims can impart their partial understanding of the wrong they suffer to others who are not similarly situated by eliciting moral emotions such as pity that are tied to broad notions of justice and fairness. (shrink)

Fitouchi et al. illustrate the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality, while leave the emotional foundation unclear. We complement their theory by proposing moral emotions (e.g., guilt and shame) as characteristic emotions underlying puritanical morality. Our proposition is based on the findings that these moral emotions emerge after violations of puritanical norms and promote self-control and cooperation.

Emotions can be the subject of moral judgments; they can also constitute the basis for moral judgments. The apparent circularity which arises if we accept both of these claims is the central topic of this paper: how can emotions be both judge and party in the moral court? The answer I offer regards all emotions as potentially relevant to ethics, rather than singling out a privileged set of moral emotions. It relies on taking a moderate position (...) both on the question of the naturalness of emotions and on that of their objectivity as revealers of value: emotions are neither simply natural nor socially constructed, and they apprehend objective values, but those values are multidimensional and relative to human realities. The axiological position I defend jettisons the usual foundations for ethical judgments, and grounds these judgments instead on a rationally informed reflective equilibrium of comprehensive emotional attitudes, tempered with a dose of irony. (shrink)

In the post‐Kohlbergian era of moral education, a ‘moral gap’ has been identified between moral cognition and moral action. Contemporary moral psychologists lock horns over how this gap might be bridged. The two main contenders for such bridge‐building are moral emotions and moral selves. I explore these two options from an Aristotelian perspective. The moral‐self solution relies upon an anti‐realist conception of the self as ‘identity’, and I dissect its limitations. In its (...) stead, I propose a Humean conception of the moral self which preserves Aristotelian insights into the difference between self and identity, yet remains closer to modern sensitivities. According to such a conception, the moral‐self versus moral‐emotions dichotomy turns out to be illusory. Finally, I show some of the practical implications of this conception for moral education. (shrink)

To understand the structure of moral emotions poses a difficult challenge. For instance, why do liberals and conservatives see some moral issues similarly, but others starkly differently? Or, why does punishment depend on accidental variation in the severity of a harmful outcome, while judgments of wrongfulness or character do not? To resolve the complex design of morality, it helps to think in functional terms. Whether through learning, cultural evolution or natural selection, moral emotions will tend to guide (...) behavior adaptively in ordinary social situations. Thus, considering possible functions of morality can help us to comprehend its form. (shrink)

Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions provides an account of how we might effectively address wrongdoing given challenges to the legitimacy of anger and retribution that arise from ethical considerations and from concerns about free will. The issue is introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 asks how we might conceive of blame without retribution, and proposes an account of blame as moral protest, whose function is to secure forward-looking goals such as the moral reform of the wrongdoer and (...) reconciliation in relationships. Chapter 3 considers whether it's possible to justify effectively dealing those who pose dangerous threats if they do not deserve to be harmed, and contends that wrongfully posing a threat is the core condition for the legitimacy of defensive harming. Chapter 4 provides an account of how to treat criminals without a retributive justification for punishment, and argues for an account in which the right of self-defense provides justification for measures such as preventative detention. Chapter 5 considers how we might forgive if wrongdoers don't basically deserve the pain of being resented, which forgiveness would then renounce, and proposes that forgiveness be conceived instead as renunciation of the stance of moral protest. Chapter 6 considers how personal relationships might function without retributive anger having a role in responding to wrongdoing, and contends that the stance of moral protest, supplemented with non-retributive emotions, is sufficient. Chapter 7 surveys the options for theistic and atheistic attitudes regarding the fate of humanity in a deterministic universe, and defends an impartial hope for humanity. (shrink)

Emotions are said to be moral, as opposed to non- moral, in virtue of their objects. They are also said to be moral, for example morally good, as opposed to immoral, for example morally bad or evil, in virtue of their objects, nature, motives, functions or effects. The definition and content of moral matters are even more contested and contestable than the nature of emotions and of other affective phenomena. At the very least we should distinguish (...) moral norms, moral obligations, moral right and wrong, moral values and moral virtues. And different accounts of morals and of morality understand norms, values and virtues and their interrelations in different ways. For example, such accounts disagree about the relation between moral and non- moral oughts, the relation between moral and non- moral values, and the relation between moral and intellectual virtues ; and about the moral weight to be attached to self-regarding attitudes and behaviour and other-regarding attitudes and behaviour. Thus we may expect the range of putative moral emotions to display a bewildering variety. (shrink)

While psychopathy research has been growing for decades, a relatively new area of research is corporate psychopathy. Corporate psychopaths are simply psychopaths working in organizational settings. They may be attracted to the financial, power, and status gains available in senior positions and can cause considerable damage within these roles from a manipulative interpersonal style to large-scale fraud. Based upon prior studies, we analyze psychopathy research pertaining to 23 moral emotions classified according to functional quality and target. Based upon our (...) review, we suggest that psychopaths are high in moral emotions associated with other-directed negative signals, low in self-directed negative signals, and low in other-directed positive signals. We found no empirical articles related to self-directed positive signals. This understanding of the specific moral emotion deficits of corporate psychopaths provides greater theoretical understanding and practical implications of knowing which individuals not to promote, though more research is needed on moral emotions that are faked for manipulative reasons. (shrink)

The essays in this collection explore, from philosophical and religious perspectives, a variety of moral emotions and their relationship to punishment and condemnation or to decisions to lessen punishment or condemnation.

This research was focused on investigating why some consumers might support cause-related marketing campaigns for reasons other than personal benefit by examining the influence of moral emotions and cultural orientation. The authors investigated the extent to which moral emotions operate differently across a cultural variable (US versus Korea) and an individual difference variable (self-construal). A survey method was utilised. Data were collected from a convenience sample of US ( n = 180) and Korean ( n = 191) undergraduates. (...) Moral emotions significantly influenced purchase intention for a social-cause product. The influence of an ego-focused moral emotion (i.e., pride) on purchase intention was greater for US than Korean participants. The influence of another-focused moral emotion (i.e., guilt) on purchase intention was greater for high-interdependent participants than for low-interdependent participants. The findings of this research provide important and relevant implications to marketers and policy makers in developing persuasive messages and customer relationship programmes. (shrink)

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 will determine when they are moral emotions. In I (...) will deal with the views of some other authors and in and I will explain my own account. (shrink)

This article outlines a developmental approach to the study of moral emotions. Specifically, we describe our developmental model on moral emotions, one in which emotions and cognitions about morality get increasingly integrated and coordinated with development, while acknowledging inter-individual variation in developmental trajectories across the lifespan. We begin with a conceptual clarification of the concept of moral emotions. After a brief review of our own developmental approach to the study of moral emotions, we provide a selective (...) summary of the developmental literature on negatively and positively valenced moral emotions, and describe a recent line of developmental research on the anticipation of negatively and positively valenced moral emotions in multifaceted contexts of social exclusion and inclusion. Next, we describe what it means to take a developmental perspective on moral emotions. Finally, we provide some preliminary conclusions and recommendations for future work to the developmental study of moral emotions. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue for the value of two complementary pedagogical tools for teaching moral emotions: (1) taxonomies and (2) normative case studies. The paper proceeds in four parts. Section One discusses our motivations for teaching moral emotions. Section Two introduces envy as the central example we use to demonstrate the value of developing a scaffolded approach to teaching moral emotions that moves from taxonomy to normative case studies. Specifically, we engage with Sara Protasi’s The Philosophy (...) of Envy (2021). We start by focusing on how an instructor could use Protasi’s taxonomy of envy effectively in the classroom. Then, Section Three engages with Rebecca M. Taylor’s recent work on normative case studies. We build on one of Protasi’s cases to demonstrate how instructors can design normative case studies to speak directly to the experiences of their students and we suggest a sample assignment. Finally, Section Four concludes by reinforcing the complementary relationship between taxonomies and normative case studies for teaching moral emotions. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to illuminate the limitations of adopting thick ethical concepts to support the rationality of moral emotion. To this end, I shall first of all concentrate on whether emotions, especially moral emotions are thick concepts and can be analysed into both evaluative and descriptive components. Secondly,I shall examine Gibbard’s thesis that to judge an act wrong is to think guilt and anger warranted. I then raise the following question. If we identify (...) class='Hi'>moral considerations with anger in particular, it overly emphasizes one seemingly arbitrary emotion. In other words, I doubt whether ‘other’s anger’ can be the general concept corresponding to thick concepts such as courage or generosity. My doubt about the objectivity of Gibbard’s moral emotion depends on Bernard Williams’doubt about ethical objectivity in terms of a critical notice of the distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts. Finally, I shall pose a challenge to the distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts on the ground that it is not in fact a clear one. I shall argue that it is impossible clearly to classify various ethical concepts either as thick or thin. This is because, I shall argue, as Scheffler points out, “any division of ethical concepts into the two categories of the thick and the thin is itself a considerable oversimplication.” Indeed, I shall argue, our ethical vocabulary is tragically rich with an irreconcilable plurality of values. If my analysis is right, I argue Gibbard’s attempt to appeal to thick concepts to explain the rationality of moral emotion is open to question. (shrink)

Psychological research shows that our emotions and feelings often guide the moral decisions we make about our own lives and the social groups to which we belong. But should we be concerned that out important moral judgments can be swayed by "hot" passions, such as anger, disgust, guilt, shame and sympathy? Aren't these feelings irrational and counterproductive? Using a functional conflict theory of emotions (FCT), Giner-Sorolla proposes that each emotion serves a number of different functions, sometimes inappropriately, (...) and that moral emotions in particular are intimately tied to problems faced by the individuals in a group, and by groups interacting with each other. Specifically, the author suggests that these emotions help us, as individuals and group members, to: Appraise developments in the environment Learn through association Regulate our own behavior Communicate convincingly with others. Drawing on extensive research, including many studies from the author's own lab, this book shows why emotions work to encourage reasonable moral behaviour, and why they sometimes fail. This is the first single-authored volume in the field of psychology dedicated to a separate examination of the major moral and positive emotions. As such, the book is ideal reading for researchers, postgraduates and undergraduates of social psychology, sociology, philosophy and politics. (shrink)

It is well known that the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi particularly emphasizes the role of emotions in human life. This paper shows that the four ‘moral emotions’ are central to Zhu's thinking, insofar as only their genuine actualization enables the individual to achieve spiritual freedom. Moreover, I discuss the crucial notions of ‘awareness’/‘perception’ and ‘knowledge’/‘wisdom’, in order to reveal the complex dynamic that moral emotions are said to create in the moral agent. I also analyse two important (...) passages from the Mencius and examine how Zhu Xi, in his exegetical glosses, defines the conditions of virtuous agency as based on the moral emotions. Finally, I explain the reasons why Neo-Confucians like Zhu Xi have sometimes been described as Kantian thinkers avant la lettre. (shrink)

Background Moral distress is common in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurses. Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationships between NICU nurses’ moral foundations, moral emotions, and moral distress. Research design and method This is an observational cross-sectional self-report questionnaire study. Participants and research context One hundred and forty-two (24%) of 585 Level 3–4 NICU nurses completed pen-and-paper self-report measures of moral foundations (harm, fairness, ingroup, authority, and purity) (Moral Foundations (...) Questionnaire-20), proneness to self-conscious moral emotions (guilt and shame) (modified Personal Feelings Questionnaire-2), and moral distress (futile care, compromised care, and untruthful care) (modified Revised Moral Distress Scale). Ethical considerations Participation was voluntary and anonymous. The ethics committees of the participating hospitals approved the study protocol (HREC Reference: LNR/18/SCHN/316). Results Non-parametric statistical analyses showed medium to large correlations between moral foundations and moral emotions. Moral foundations and moral emotions had trivial to small correlations with moral distress. Using a liberal p-value of <.10 for statistical significance because of the small sample size, harm ( rs = 0.22) and fairness ( rs = 0.16) predicted futile care, ingroup predicted compromised care ( rs = 0.19) and untruthful care ( rs = 0.15), and purity predicted untruthful care ( rs = 0.15). Guilt-proneness predicted futile care ( rs = 0.15). Shame-proneness did not predict moral distress. Conclusion The correlations between moral foundations and moral emotions were significant. Moral foundations and guilt-proneness predicted one or more dimensions of moral distress. The smaller than expected effect sizes may have been owing to how moral foundations, moral emotions, and moral distress were conceptualized and measured, or to moral disengagement, including NICU nurses’ possible reluctance to countenance aversive but morally warranted feelings of guilt and especially shame. Understanding the nature of these relationships may complement the efforts of NICU administrators, educators, counsellors, and nurses themselves to mitigate moral distress. (shrink)

The purpose of this thesis is to examine two moral emotions(‘ressentiment' and 'cheerfulness’) in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality. In “the first essay”, Nietzsche analyzes 'ressentiment' as the moral emotion of the weak and explains how the weak have succeeded in the inversion of values. However, Nietzsche considers that 'ressentiment' have played a negative role in harming human health from the perspective of the value of life. The feeling of the incompetence inherent in 'ressentiment', at first, (...) turned the discontent toward the powerful men. But in the end it resulted to oneself, and ascetic ethics appeared. The ascetic ethics have played a role in their own way. It not only interpreted the meaning of human suffering, but also kept it from disturbance of impulses and emotions. But Nietzsche says that the ascetic ethics is far from "great health", because it excessively restrains the exertion of our nature and power. The feelings of 'ressentiment' still remain in the ascetic ethics and make a life heavy. A sinful Life itself can never be a cheerful life. It is Nietzsche's idea that you can not really feel the cheerful emotion without departing from the moral duties and self-condemnation. Nietzsche suggests that "emotions of power" should be exercised to the maximum, unlike the ascetic who want to suppress emotions as much as possible. He believes that man must be completely free from moral obligations and guilt in order to experience these emotions. For Nietzsche, 'cheerfulness' is an emotion that comes to free humans completely free from moral duty. Man must unleash the yoke of life that forces only truth and good. Nietzsche says that "great health" comes when man seeks strength and beauty. 'Cheerfulness' is the signal that "great health" is coming. The restoration of 'cheerfulness' from the feelings of 'ressentiment' is a new challenge of Nietzsche's philosophy. (shrink)

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: Risk and Emotions -- PART I Risk Debates, Stalemates, Values and Emotions -- 2 Emotions and Values in Current Approaches to Decision Making About Risk -- 3 Risk Perception, Intuitions and Values -- PART II Reasonable Risk Emotions -- 4 Risk Emotions: The 'Affect Heuristic', its Biases and Beyond -- 5 The Philosophy of Moral Risk Emotions: Toward a New Paradigm of Risk Emotions -- PART (...) III Emotional Deliberation About Risk -- 6 Reflection on and with Risk Emotions -- 7 Participation with Emotion -- 8 Emotional Deliberation on Technological Risks in Practice -- Epilogue -- References -- Index. (shrink)

Anger, disgust, elevation, sympathy, relief. If the subjective experience of each of these emotions is the same whether elicited by moral or nonmoral events, then what makes moral emotions unique? We suggest that the configuration of moral emotions is special—a configuration given by the underlying structure of morality. Research suggests that people divide the moral world along the two dimensions of valence (help/harm) and moral type (agent/patient). The intersection of these two dimensions gives four (...) class='Hi'>moral exemplars—heroes, villains, victims and beneficiaries—each of which elicits unique emotions. For example, victims (harm/patient) elicit sympathy and sadness. Dividing moral emotions into these four quadrants provides predictions about which emotions reinforce, oppose and complement each other. (shrink)

Moral emotions shape the effectiveness of culturally diverse teams. However, these emotions, which are integral to determining ethically responsive patient care and team relationships, typically go unrecognised. The contribution of emotions to moral deliberation is subjugated within the technorational environment of healthcare decision‐making. Contemporary healthcare organisations rely on a multicultural workforce charged with the ethical care of vulnerable people. Limited extant literature examines the role of moral emotions in ethical decision‐making among culturally diverse healthcare teams. Moral (...) emotions are evident in ethnocentric moral perspectives that construct some colleagues' practices as ‘other’. This article examines how moral emotions are evoked when cultural dissonance influences nurses' moral perceptions. We use a qualitative investigation of teamwork within culturally diverse healthcare organisations. We use Haidt's () account of moral emotions to examine practice‐based accounts of 36 internationally educated and 17 New Zealand educated nurses practising in New Zealand. The study provides evidence that moral emotions are frequently elicited by communication and care practices considered ‘foreign’. The main implication is that although safe practice in healthcare organisations is reliant on highly functioning teams, collaboration is challenged by interprofessional power relations of contested culturally shaped values. We address practice‐based strategies that enable engagement with moral emotions to enhance effective teamwork. (shrink)

I vindicate the thrust of the particularist position in moral deliberation. this purpose, I focus on some elements that seem to play a crucial role in first-person moral deliberation and argue that they cannot be incorporated into a more sophisticated system of moral principles. More specifically, I emphasize some peculiarities of moral perception in the light of which I defend the irreducible deliberative relevance of a certain phenomenon, namely: the phenomenon of an agent morally coming across (...) a particular situation. Following on from Bbernard Williams, I talk of an agent’s character as a factor that contributes to fixing what situations an agent comes morally across. A crucial point, in the debate, will be how an agent confronts the normatively loaded features of his own character when he is engaged in first-person deliberation. (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of moral emotions from an attributional point of view, guided by the metaphors of man as a naïve scientist (Heider, 1958) and as a moral judge (Weiner, 2006). The theoretical analysis focuses on three concepts: (a) The distinction between the actor and the observer, (b) the functional quality of moral emotions, and (c) the perceived controllability of the causes of events. Moral emotions are identified (admiration, anger, awe, contempt, disgust, elevation, embarrassment, (...) envy, gratitude, guilt, indignation, jealousy, pity, pride, rage, regret, remorse, resentment, respect, schadenfreude, scorn, shame, and sympathy). A classification of these moral emotions is suggested and the empirical evidence briefly summarized. In discussing our results, we identify unresolved issues awaiting further analyses and research. (shrink)

Creepiness and the emotion of the creeps have been overlooked in the moral philosophy and moral psychology literatures. We argue that the creeps is a morally significant emotion in its own right, and not simply a type of fear, disgust, or anger (though it shares features with those emotions). Reflecting on cases, we defend a novel account of the creeps as felt in response to creepy people. According to our moral insensitivity account, the creeps is (...) fitting just when its object is agential activity that is insensitive to basic moral considerations. When, only when, and insofar as someone is disposed to such insensitivity, they are a creep. Such insensitivity, especially in extreme forms, raises doubts about creeps’ moral agency. We distinguish multiple types of insensitivity, respond to concerns that feeling the creeps is itself objectionable, and conclude with a discussion of epistemic issues relating to the creeps. (shrink)

Although much research on emotion and morality has treated emotion as a relatively undifferentiated construct, recent work shows that moral transgressions can evoke a variety of distinct emotions. To accommodate these results, we propose a multiple-appraisal model in which distinct appraisals lead to different moral emotions. The implications of this model for our understanding of the relationship between appraisals, emotions and judgments are discussed. The complexity of moral emotional experience presents a methodological challenge to researchers, (...) but we submit that a complete understanding of human morality must acknowledge the differentiated nature of moral emotions. (shrink)

This paper presents a praxiological analysis of three everyday educational practices or strategies that can be considered as being directed at the moral formation of the emotions. The first consists in requests to imagine other's emotional reactions. The second comprises requests to imitate normative emotional reactions and the third to re-appraise the features of a situation that are relevant to an emotional response. The interest of these categories is not just that they help to organize and recognize the significance (...) of what might otherwise appear to be a disparate set of ordinary moral-educational interactions between children and educators. We suggest, further, that this analysis provides some new insight into what distinguishes the broad and recurrent conceptions of moral education from one another. Rather than being straightforwardly reducible to intractable differences over core normative or meta-ethical questions they can also be seen as correlating with different suppositions about the central role of the emotions in moral life and, correspondingly, different but to a large degree compatible interpretations of what the. (shrink)

Two correlational studies tested whether personality differences in empathy and perspective taking differentially relate to disapproval of unethical negotiation strategies, such as lies and bribes. Across both studies, empathy, but not perspective taking, discouraged attacking opponents' networks, misrepresentation, inappropriate information gathering, and feigning emotions to manipulate opponents. These results suggest that unethical bargaining is more likely to be deterred by empathy than by perspective taking. Study 2 also tested whether individual differences in guilt proneness and shame proneness inhibited the endorsement (...) of unethical bargaining tactics. Guilt proneness predicted disapproval of false promises and misrepresentation. Empathy did not predict disapproval of false promises when guilt proneness was included in the analysis. The comparatively private nature of the sin of false promises suggests that private ethical breaches are more likely to be deterred by anticipated guilt, while ethical breaches with clear interpersonal consequences are more likely to be deterred by empathy. (shrink)

[Book symposium] Are Moral Emotions Key to Informed Risk Decisions? : A Commentary on Sabine Roeser, Risk, Technology, and Moral Emotions.

The name of Thomas Reid rarely appears in discussions of the history of moral thought. This is a pity, since Reid has a lot of interesting ideas that can contribute to the current discussions in meta-ethics. Reid can be understood as an ethical intuitionist. What makes his account especially interesting is the role affective states play in his intuitionist theory. Reid defends a cognitive theory of moral emotions. According to Reid, there are moral feelings that are the (...) result of a moral judgment made by reason. The judgment and the feeling together constitute what Reid calls sentiments. Reid thinks that affective states (feelings and sentiments) play the role of helping reason to guide and control the egoistic feelings and passions. The affective states are particularly important, in Reid's view, because the motivating force of reason is often defeated by the stronger motivating force of the passions. So without affective states, we would often not be able to do what is morally good or right. In this paper, I will argue that the role of the affective states is still too limited in Reid's approach. He takes affective states to have a merely motivational function, namely, to help reason to control the passions and motivate to action where reason is too weak. Reid thinks that in making moral judgments we do not need to have feelings, feelings are at most a result of a judgment. Instead, I will argue that affective states also play an epistemological role. (shrink)

Three experiments explored how hypocrisy affects attributions of criminal guilt and the desire to punish hypocritical criminals. Study 1 established that via perceived hypocrisy, a hypocritical criminal was seen as more culpable and was punished more than a non-hypocritical criminal who committed an identical crime. Study 2 expanded on this, showing that negative moral emotions (anger and disgust) mediated the relationships between perceived hypocrisy, criminal guilt, and punishment. Study 3 replicated the emotion finding from Study 2 using new (...) scenarios where group agents were clearly aware of the hypocrisy of their actions, yet acted anyway. Again, perceived hypocrisy worked through moral emotions to affect criminal guilt and punishment. The current studies provide empirical support for theories relating hypocrisy and moral transgressions to moral emotions, also informing the literature on the role of moral emotions in moral reasoning and legal decision making. (shrink)

In this article we explore a self-regulatory perspective on the self-evaluative moral emotions, shame and guilt. Broadly conceived, self-regulation distinguishes between two types of motivation: approach/activation and avoidance/inhibition. We use this distinction to conceptually understand the socialization dimensions (parental restrictiveness versus nurturance), associated emotions (anxiety versus empathy), and forms of morality (proscriptive versus prescriptive) that serve as precursors to each self-evaluative moral emotion. We then examine the components of shame and guilt experiences in greater detail and conclude (...) with more general implications of a self-regulatory perspective on moral emotions. (shrink)

Abstract: Forgiveness of wrongdoing in response to public apology and amends making seems, on the face of it, to leave little room for the continued commemoration of wrongdoing. This rests on a misunderstanding of forgiveness, however, and we can explain why there need be no incompatibility between them. To do this, I emphasize the role of what I call nonangry negative moral emotions in constituting memories of wrongdoing. Memories so constituted can persist after forgiveness and have important moral (...) functions, and commemorations can elicit these emotions to preserve memories of this sort. Moreover, commemorations can be a restorative justice practice that promotes reconciliation, but only on condition that the memories they preserve are constituted by nonangry negative, not retributive, emotions. (shrink)

In this article, I address problems associated with ‘Modernity’ and those encountered at the impasse of post-modernity and the newly named phenomenon of ‘post-secularism’. I consider more specifically what I call ‘moral emotions’ or essentially interpersonal emotions can tell us about who we are as persons, and what they tell us about our experience and concepts of freedom, normativity, power, and critique. The moral emotions, and retrieving the evidence of the ‘heart’, point to the possibility of contributing to (...) the social imaginary of the Modern and its post-modern variants, playing a significant role in shaping civic life and relations of power. (shrink)

Le dernier livre d’Anthony Steinbock, Moral Emotions, aborde une thématique en apparence inédite chez cet auteur connu aux spécialistes de phénoménologie surtout pour Home and Beyond : Generative Phenomenology after Husserl (1995), mais aussi, plus récemment, pour Phenomenology and Mysticism. The Verticality of Religious Experience (2007) ; et cependant, il investit et prolonge les résultats de ces ouvrages à plus d’un titre, pour révéler ce faisant la profonde cohérence du travail de son aut...

This study investigates the role of “moral” emotional traits—guilt proneness, shame proneness, empathic concern, and perspective taking—as predictors of workplace bullying perpetration. We also test and find support for a model derived from moral emotions literature and the sociometer theory of self-esteem in which the tendency to take reparative action following interpersonal transgressions mediates the buffering effect of guilt proneness on bullying. Data were obtained from working MBA students and advanced undergraduates during 2 survey sessions, 4 to 6 (...) weeks apart. Findings indicate that moral emotional traits may be useful to consider in personnel selection as a means to reduce workplace bullying. (shrink)

Grief is often described as characterized by a particular emotional response to another person’s death. While this is true of paradigm cases, we argue that a broader notion of grief allows accommodating forms of this emotional experience that deviate from the paradigmatic case. The bulk of the paper explores such a nonparadigmatic form of grief, anticipatory-vicarious grief, which is typically triggered by pondering the inevitability of our own death. We argue that AV-grief is a particular moral emotion that (...) serves a unique function and is indissolubly linked to the practical identities of human agents. An agent’s AV-grief is about the harm that occurs to individuals whose practical identities depend on the agent. (shrink)

This paper develops an evolutionary account of shame and its moral value. In so doing, it challenges the standard thinking about shame. Typically, those who approach shame from an evolutionary perspective deny that it is a morally valuable emotion, focusing instead on its social significance. And those who see shame as morally valuable typically set aside questions about shame’s biological origins, if they see them as relevant at all. On my account, shame is an emotion that sensitizes (...) us to self-originating threats to our identities. So understood, shame is morally valuable because it brings a concern to protect our moral identities from damage that we (might) do to them. To develop my identity-driven account, I first argue that we can specify distinctly moral and social forms of shame in terms of the moral and non-moral identities that undergird them. I then show that the resulting account not only makes empirically-supported predictions, but that it also accords with the claim that shame is an evolutionary adaptation. The result is a novel account of the origins and cognitive foundations of a moral emotion. (shrink)