Emotion and Morality: A Tasting Menu

Abstract

In recent years, moral psychology has undergone a renaissance characterized by two dramatic changes (Haidt, 2007). First, the scientific study of morality has become a broad, interdisciplinary enterprise, drawing on insights and methods from philosophy, neuroscience, economics, anthropology, biology, and all quarters of psychology. Second, emotion now plays a central role in moral psychology research. This special section on Emotion and Morality is a testament to the ingenuity, openmindedness, and energy that has infused this field. Today’s moral psychology is quintessentially experimental, trying new things. In this spirit, the present volume is itself an experiment. The new moral psychology is exciting, not because of the longstanding questions it has definitively answered, but because of the novel questions it is asking. The canonical format of the review volume, however, threatens to make a weakness of this strength. With this in mind, the present volume, rather than collecting ten or so lengthy review articles, presents a tasting menu of concentrated ideas. This volume’s contributors were asked to prepare for the readers of Emotion Review an “amuse-bouche”—a short article presenting a new question, an intriguing observation, a morsel of new data, a prediction about the future of the field, etc. My hope is that this non-traditional, more prospective format will stimulate new research by giving readers dots that invite connecting. Lest we sacrifice all depth for breadth, this volume begins with three longer theoretical pieces, to anchor and complement the thirty bite-sized articles here assembled. Daniel Batson (2011) hypothesizes that moral problems arise, not primarily from poor moral judgment, but from lack of moral motivation, which may in turn arise from a lack of genuine moral emotion. Horberg, Oveis, and Keltner (2011) provide a framework for organizing moral emotion, arguing that distinct moral emotions amplify different kinds of moral judgments. Finally, Sherman and Haidt (2011) present a theory of the “cuteness response” as a humanizing moral emotion and the functional opposite of moral disgust. The next four articles, like the two preceding, present functional frameworks that explain what different moral emotions do and the relations among them. Robert Frank (2011) recapitulates the argument made in his path-breaking book Passions within reason (1988), according to which moral emotions facilitate solutions to social problems that can only be solved through the subversion of narrow self-interest. Chapman and Anderson (2011b) distinguish different moral emotions based on their eliciting appraisals and argue that the causal arrows run both ways, with emotions influencing appraisals as well. Gray and Wegner (2011) present a two-dimensional framework for organizing moral individuals (and the emotions they elicit) based on the valences of their actions and their levels of agency. Finally, Fiery Cushman (2011) relates a scientific parable underscoring the value of functional thinking in moral psychology. The articles that follow carry the functionalist banner while focusing on specific moral emotions. Simone Schnall (2011) argues that feelings related to cleanliness influence both moral and non-moral behaviors and may have their functional origins in the grooming behaviors of non-human primates. Pizarro, Inbar, and Helion (2011) ask whether moral disgust is a moral emotion and argue that the evidence for disgust as a moralizing emotion is weaker than some researchers assume. Royzman and Kurzban (2011b) challenge Chapman et al.’s (2009) claim that moral disgust is truly (non-metaphorically) disgust. In a lively exchange, Chapman and Anderson (2011a) respond and Royzman and Kurzban (2011a) press their critique further. In the spirit of Robert Frank (1988, 2011), Valdesolo and DeSteno (2011) argue that some morally unappealing emotions such as jealousy may play indirect roles in promoting social welfare and thus stabilize moral systems. Finally, Adina Roskies (2011) poses a puzzle about empathy based on apparently contradictory lessons from studies of psychopathy and autism. The next six articles examine (or resist examining) moral emotions within a dual-process framework (Sloman, 1996; Chaiken & Trope, 1999) according to which automatic and controlled processes exert distinctive, and in some cases competing, influences on moral judgment. Van den Bos, Muller, and Damen (2011) document effects of behavioral disinhibition on