Do Moral Emotions Drive and Regulate Human Social Behaviour - Essay Example

Moral emotions Recent studies in cognitive and neurobiological sciences highlight a significant connection between emotion and moral judgement. Moral emotions play a big role in shaping intuitive moral judgement. Research and theory on the function of emotion and regulation within morality have attracted significant attention in the last decade. Much of the researches have centred on the function of moral emotions in directing moral behaviour. Research on the divergences between embarrassment, shame, and guilt and their connection to moral behaviour can be perceived on the connection of the outlined emotions with negative emotionality and regulation. Studies on moral judgment have emphasized the function of emotion in moral judgment. All utilitarian judgments appear to necessitate utilitarian reasoning; however, additional cognitive control may be required in the face of countervailing emotional responses. The paper explores claims that moral emotions drive and regulate human social behaviour. The paper concludes that moral emotions play a significant role in driving and regulating social behaviour. Introduction The function of emotion within moral psychology has for long periods been at the heart of philosophical dispute. Largely, people’s emotions do not always prevent individuals from contemplating morally reprehensible actions, feelings of shame and guilt, which characteristically compel to stop short of immoral action. Indeed, psychopaths who do not have the capacity for empathy and guilt frequently fail to inhibit violent tendencies. Perceived moral violations usually trigger contempt, anger, shame, or disgust. Emotion usually yields to moralization; indeed, neuroscientific studies demonstrate that emotional structures can be recruited when making moral judgments. Research has demonstrated that emotions and cognition are highly interconnected processes; indeed, neural mechanisms underpinning emotion regulation may be analogous to those directing cognitive processes. Emotion and cognition work hand in hand to shape impressions of situations and impacting behaviour (Deblinger & Runyon, 2005). Definitions of ‘moral emotion’ Morality represents the behaviour that emerges from a collection of emotions and predispositions to action that evolved to support the distinct form of human cooperation. Moral emotions may be connected to the interests or welfare of the society as a whole, or individuals other than the agent. Moral emotion avail the motivational force the energy and power to do good and avert bad things. Moral emotions influence the connection between moral behaviour and moral standards. Morality represents a code of values and customs that shape social conduct. Philosophers usually categorize morality into “normative” and “descriptive” types. The connection between moral standards and moral decisions, and/or, moral behaviour may be impacted in significant ways by moral emotions. Moral standards shape an individual’s knowledge and internalization of moral norms and conventions. Individual’s moral standards may be shaped by universal moral laws, as well as cultural proscriptions. Moral emotions can be regarded as feeling state typified by individual appraisal of a stimulus through alterations in bodily sensations, and displays of expressive gestures. Morality represents an individual’s sensitivity to, and knowledge of, and what can be considered right and wrong. The concerns underpinning social emotions remain socially constructed as they encompass social rules and norms. Moral emotions represent emotions, which remain inherently connected to the interests or welfare of the society as a whole or of individuals other than the agent. As such, moral emotions can be easily evoked by the notion of moral violations within the context of interpersonal events, and shape moral behaviour. Examples of moral emotions include shame, regret, guilt, embarrassment, contempt, anger, gratitude, envy, admiration, sympathy, disgust, and empathy. Guilt vs. sympathy Research on moral emotions has conventionally focused on two core emotions, namely: guilt and sympathy. However, additional moral emotions have been theorized owing to shift away from reasoning. Four families on moral emotions have emerged, namely: self-conscious family (shame, guilt, and embarrassment), condemning family (anger, contempt, and disgust), suffering family (compassion), and praising family (elevation and gratitude). Each emotion manifests elicitors and action tendencies, which culminate to moral emotion. Some of self-conscious emotions including guilt and shame represent self-evaluative components considered fundamental. Guilt-feelings can be considered morally valuable since they are pertinent to being a morally autonomous person. The core difference between guilt and shame lies in the level of focus on the self, whereby guilt focuses on particular elements of an individual’s behaviour while shame generates a condemnation of an individual’s entire self. Tangney et al., unearthed that guilt and shame remain differentially connected to empathy, whereby guilt manifest a positive correlation to self-reported personal distress (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). Embarrassment, shame, and jealousy represent some of moral emotions that mainly hinge on other people’s feelings, thoughts, or actions as recalled experienced, anticipated or imagined at first hand. Each of the outlined emotions derives its defining quality from the inherent relation to social concerns. For instance, shame, guilt, pride, and embarrassment represent self-conscious emotions triggered by self-evaluation and self-reflection, which may be explicit, or implicit (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). Moral self-conscious emotions avail immediate punishment or reinforcement of behaviour, which makes feelings such as shame, embarrassment, and pride moral barometers availing immediate and salient feedback on the individual’s moral and social acceptability. Self-conscious moral emotions can exercise a strong impact on moral choice and behaviour by availing critical feedback regarding anticipated behaviour and actual behaviour. Morality remains one of the most sophisticated features of human judgment, mind, and behaviour. Individuals contravening ethical rules and civil rights may, in so doing, threaten other’s individual liberty. Research in moral psychology has centred on the interconnection between reason and emotion in the course of moral judgment. The “dual-process” approach to the mind has inspired significant research on moral judgment, which has made psychologists reconsider the conventionally dominant approaches to moral judgments, which emphasize the significance of reason (Eisenberg, 2000). Emotions can be analyzed into components features encompassing an eliciting event, a facial expression, physiological changes, phenomenological experiences, and motivation or action tendency. Disinterested elicitors encompass emotion such as fear and happiness manifest essentially when good or bad things happen to the self (Leeming & Boyle, 2004). The emotions can also manifest when good or bad things occur to an individual; however, such reactions necessitate that the self be related to the other, or to identify temporarily with the other. Prosocial action tendencies, on the other hand, mainly motivate some form of action as a response to the eliciting event (Andrews, Brewin, Rose, & Kirk, 2000). The emotion usually places the individual into a motivational and cognitive state, whereby there is a heightened tendency to involve in goal-related actions (such as comforting, affiliation, revenge). Debate reigns on whether a set of “basic” emotions can be assembled, or whether emotions can be considered as scripts or collection of components, which can be mixed and matched. Research studies have provided an overwhelming evidence for a connection between emotion and moral judgment. Present evidence favours the conclusion that moral judgments are emotional in nature and interrelate (Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2006). Indeed, emotions co-occur with moral judgments; research findings indicate that brain scans add empirical support to theoretical intuition that emotions may be triggered when individuals respond to a broad range of morally significant events. Social learning and social cognition theories highlight that the self, acting in certain situations, acts as the bridge to comprehending the connection between moral reasoning and moral behaviour (Daryl & Keith, 2011). Research has shown that emotions foster adaptive relational actions to generate and sustain social relationships. Emotions act as immediate motivational proxies for adaptive value of relationships and relational strategies. Moral emotions represent a core element of human moral apparatus, impacting the connection between moral standards and moral behaviour (Elison, Lennon, & Pulos, 2006). In humans, moral emotions including shame, guilt, embarrassment, compassion, gratitude, pride, outrage at unjust treatment, and fear of negative appraisal evaluation by others are strong motivators for individuals to act in socially favourable way. The outlined emotions or sentiments enable individuals to speedily grasp the moral implications of social interactions, and act to improve their personal reputations and probability of future social cooperation. Moral emotions can be perceived as manifestations of evolutionary-based neuro-moral drives such as fairness/equity, community, authority, no-harm, and purity. Moral emotions seek to enforce moral values by relating negative intentions and seeking to punish “cheaters” who contravene the established values (Cushman et al., 2006). The “altruistic punishment” can be regarded as a manifestation of the moral drive for equity and fairness. Social intuitionist model coincided with a fresh approach to probing morality pioneered by Green et al. who paired modern neuroimaging techniques with classic philosophical moral dilemmas, which demonstrate that emotions play a big role in moral judgment than initially thought. With regard to the regulation of human behaviour, the bulk of moral codes extend far beyond the concerns of harm and justice, which have conventionally been the focus of cognitive developmental tradition in moral judgment (Blair, 1995). An increasing body of work has indicated that moral codes highlight several other domains including respect for authority, purity, and group royalty (Gramzow & Tangney, 1992). For instance, disgust, an emotion likely to safeguard individuals from contacting dangerous pathogens, has strong connections to social, moral, and political judgments. Traditional theories of moral development highlight the function of controlled cognition, whereby cognitive processing can be linked to utilitarian (or consequentialist) moral judgment directing seeking the betterment of the society. Morality can be considered innate to the human brain. Studies have highlighted a “neuro-moral” network responding to moral dilemmas based at the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Neurobiological evidence has highlighted the presence of automatic “prosocial” mechanisms relating to identification with other individuals (Wheatley & Haidt, 2005). Evaluation of the claim that moral emotions drive and regulate human social behaviour Self-conscious emotions are theorized to have evolved for the function of regulating approach and inhibition tendencies, which carry the potential of threatening social relations. Self-conscious emotions encompass embarrassment, guilt, shame, and pride, which involve intricate appraisals of how an individual’s behaviours have been evaluated by self and others. Recent conceptualizations of self-conscious emotions have explored how self-conscious regulate social behaviour in ways that foster social harmony (Smith, Webster, Parrot, & Eyre, 2002). Although self-conscious emotions may be considered disruptive, self-conscious emotions have now been theorized as fundamentally engaged in the regulation of social behaviour (Fiske, 2002). Most studies on moral emotions are descriptive in nature, typifying the elicitors, display of self-conscious emotion, and experience. Some of the studies, such as Beer, J. S., et al. (2003) compared the social regulation function of self-conscious emotions of healthy participants with neuropsychological population (patients with orbitofrontal lesion) typified by selective regulatory deficits (Beer et al., 2003). The study findings indicated that deficient behaviour regulation may be linked to inappropriate self-conscious emotions that reinforce maladaptive behaviour. Emotions can be regulated by situational selection or situation modification with a focus in averting or generating emotional responses in oneself. Explicit emotional regulation encompasses conscious effort directed altering an individual’s emotional state, which requires some degree of awareness of one’s state and insight into what might alter change it. Emotion regulation forms one of the determinants of whether empathic arousal results in sympathy or personal distress (Athota, 2013). The core notion centres on the fact that unregulated empathic response may be so compelling that the individual focuses on relieving his or her circumstance, instead of other problems. Largely, research on human happiness has conventionally been linked to positive and negative emotions, instead of its underpinning moral emotions. The capability to understand and control emotions, in self and others rests on an individual’s emotional competence. Psychological and moral component remain inherently linked to emotional regulatory fit. Largely, individuals pursue consistency among moral emotions and behaviour. The absence of consistency among moral emotions and behaviour may yield to incongruity, which is uncomfortable, and individuals may pursue a reduction of dissonance to spotlight consistency by responding with empathy (Skoe, Eisenberg, & Cumberland, 2002). Morally significant emotions such as compassion, gratitude, and empathy can possess considerable positive influence on human wellbeing. Emotional regulatory fit can be linked to empathy, which represents the capability to experience emotions and events. Empathy is a critical component for emotional and social wellbeing. Psychologists have asserted that negative emotions are the centre of morality and critical for moral learning, the development of conscience, and the sustenance of societal values. Negative emotions regarding self can be transmuted and attributed to the properties or actions of other and social structures (Greene & Haidt, 2002). Since shame and guilt may constitute several negative emotions, the attributions may be transmuted into variations and combinations of anger (Prinz, 2006). Individuals making external attributions for negative emotional arousal and internal attributions directed towards self for positive emotional experiences. Individuals experiencing positive emotions to others within the local situation become committed to moral codes and structures. In the event that individuals experience positive emotions owing to satisfying moral expectations, they are likely to experience positive emotions for their moral conduct and express positive emotions for social conduct. Individuals experiencing negative emotional arousal as an outcome of sanction by others for not satisfying cultural codes, or as a result of internal self-monitoring, the individual’s negative emotional arousal may face repression (Hoglund & Nicholas, 1995). Conclusion Emotions influence the moral judgments that people make given that negative emotions can lead individuals to negative moral appraisal. This assertion implies that individuals can form the belief that something is morally wrong on the basis of experiencing a negative emotion directed towards the action. Moral judgments might be connected and casually linked to emotional responses devoid of involving emotional responses. Recent research in the neurobiological and cognitive sciences has highlighted a significant relationship between moral judgment and emotion. This has shaped the view that emotions are the origin of intuitive moral judgments that people make. Nevertheless, despite the wealth of the correlation data between morality and emotion, the present neurological, behavioural, evolutionary, and developmental evidence is inadequate to demonstrate that emotion is essential for making moral judgments. 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