Chapter 13 - The Moral Identity, Status, Moral Emotions, and the Normative Order

Abstract

Moral emotions that actors experience serve as an important mechanism that simultaneously preserves and reinforces the self–society relationship. While there are patterned regularities in human action, there are also patterned regularities in people's responses to their actions as reflected in their emotional reactions to what they do. Because individual action is oriented toward the accomplishment of individually held goals, the pattern of which constitutes social structure, the valence of one's emotional arousal signals how well an actor is doing vis-à-vis his or her goals. This chapter examines how the moral self as expressed in one's moral identity guides behavior in interaction and influences reports of moral emotions, both of which serve to uphold the normative order. Three types of moral emotions are examined: the other-critical emotion of anger, the other-suffering emotion of empathy, and the self-critical emotions of shame and guilt. Data is collected from over 500 undergraduate students at a large southwestern university. The results provide information as to how actors' moral identities, together with the structural position of the self and others in the situation, influence actors' emotional reactions to their behavior.