A Story of Emotion: Morality and Emotion

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace." —Oscar Wilde

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Morality and Moral Emotions: A definition

When looking at the Oxford Dictionary, morality is defined as “principles concerning the distinctions between right and wrong or good and bad behaviors”; it is thus a set of rules to follow in a given society to respect the integrity of each member of the group and live in osmosis (or at least relative harmony) with each other. Unlike the Ten Commandments, morality is not set in stone; there is nowhere to go and read about those moral rules, but they oversee inter-individual relationships. Anthropologists have studied cultural differences and tried to register all the existing rules, failing yet to produce an exhaustive report. However, we have written guidelines helping us to live harmoniously in society, as from morality ensue laws, legislation, and constitutions; morality is a concept you implicitly learn about growing up in a given social structure.

Moral Behaviors

From there, "moral behaviors" are behaviors respecting morality and acting in accordance with moral standards. As imperfect human beings, our behaviors are not always in line with our moral standards; we easily slip and trip along the way. In order to enforce and arouse morality from a young age, we invented bedtime stories, punishments, and reputations. What is a fairytale if not a story meant to prompt good behaviors in children? Most of the classic tales, from the Brothers Grimm to Perrault, depict the consequences of good and bad behaviors, and each of them ends with a moral.

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What about Punishment and Reputation?

How do they contribute to enforcing moral behaviors? Let us take an example in a cooperative context: A helps B in an altruistic interaction, offering support in a time of need. Later, A finds themselves in a situation where they need help and reaches out to B asking for a hand. B refuses. What happens then? A will go and tell the other members of their social group how B acted, making B look very selfish. If selfishness brought us very far as a species, no one values selfishness in social interactions, and the other members of the group may very well turn their backs on B. A affected B’s reputation, and the group punished B. In the future, there is a lot to bet that B will try to make amends and restore their reputation.

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And Emotions?

We have morality and moral behaviors, and at some point between those two, we should have emotions of some sort, elicited by a transgression or obedience to morality and eliciting moral behaviors. The emotions involved in such contexts are very originally referred to as "moral emotions," and are defined as emotions arising from a position-taking perspective, allowing one to understand how others feel and how they see the agent. From this definition, it is clear that moral emotions are secondary emotions as to be elicited they require a developed self, a clear distinction between self and others, and an understanding of standards against which the self is gauged.

There is a need for a self to be conscious of; many emotion theorists argue that moral emotions do not emerge before 15 to 24 months of age when the self begins to be defined.

To Be Clear (and Step Away from the Jargon)

Moral emotions drive us to do good and prevent us from doing bad. They are self-conscious emotions as referring to the self, but they can be intimately linked to our relationships with others, thus also falling under the "social" categorization of emotion.

The conscience of one’s judgment over the agent’s action elicits pride, shame, embarrassment, or even guilt. Such emotions are thought to facilitate the complex journey of social interactions and relationships, allowing one to reflect on behavior in light of social norms and the differing perspective of others. But how do we differentiate them?

To be continued...