Darwin’s (1871/1981) observation that evolution has produced in us certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct that lack any obvious basis in individual utility is a useful springboard from which to clarify the role of emotion in moral judgment. The problem is whether a certain class of moral judgment is “constituted” or “driven by” emotion (Greene, 2008, p. 108) or merely correlated...

Three experiments investigated whether children in grades K, 2, and 4 (n = 144) view emotional comprehension as important in solving moral dilemmas. The experiments asked whether a human or an artificially intelligent machine would be best at solving different types of problems, ranging from moral and emotional to nonmoral and pragmatic. In Experiment 1, children in all age groups indicated tha...

People frequently condemn harmless sexual taboo behaviours. Based on self-affirmation theory, we predicted that providing an opportunity to self-affirm decreases the tendency to morally condemn harmless sexual taboos. In Experiment 1, we found evidence that self-affirmation decreases the moral condemnation of harmless sexual taboos and ruled out that this was due to a decrease in how disgusting...

This article explores how adolescents feel and think about contexts of moral conflict and social exclusion. We asked twelve-year-old adolescents how they would feel about intentionally harming another peer, omitting a prosocial duty, and excluding another peer. We then asked them to explain the reasoning behind their feelings and report on levels of sympathy. In all contexts, adolescents antici...

Something about the idea of acting from duty seems cold and uncaring. When taking on a moral point of view, such as forcing ourselves to act from duty, we must divorce ourselves from our subjective feelings and our emotions. In this sense, taking a moral point of view alienates people from themselves, others, and their moral theory. In " Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality...

Three experiments investigated the relationship between the presumption of harm in harmfree violations of creatural norms (taboos) and the moral emotions of anger and disgust. In Experiment 1, participants made a presumption of harm to others from taboo violations, even in conditions described as harmless and not involving other people; this presumption was predicted by anger and not disgust. E...

In recent years, a view on two key moral emotions, shame and guilt, seems to be establishing itself in some sectors of psychology, based mainly on the research of Tangney and Dearing (2004) and their “Test of Self-Conscious Affect” (TOSCA). On this view, guilt is a productive force in our moral lives, while shame is morally counterproductive and psychologically harmful. Therefore, one should cu...

Moral emotions are evolved mechanisms that function in part to optimize social relationships. We discuss two moral emotions— disgust and the “cuteness response”—which modulate social-engagement motives in opposite directions, changing the degree to which the eliciting entity is imbued with mental states (i.e., mentalized). Disgust-inducing entities are hypo-mentalized (i.e., dehumanized); cute ...

A distinctive feature of human behaviour is the widespread occurrence of cooperation among unrelated individuals. Explaining the maintenance of costly within-group cooperation is a challenge because the incentive to free ride on the efforts of other group members is expected to lead to decay of cooperation. However, the costs of cooperation can be diminished or overcome when there is competitio...

Children (n = 160, 4- to 9-year-olds; Mage  = 6.23 years, SD = 1.46) judged, justified, attributed emotions, and rated intent for hypothetical physical harm, psychological harm, and resource distribution transgressions against close friends, acquaintances, disliked peers, or bullies. Transgressions against bullies were judged more acceptable than against friends and disliked peers and less dese...