Nothing More than Feelings? The Role of Emotions in Moral Judgment

There is a powerful tradition that views emotions as harmful to the process of moral judgment and decision-making. Stemming from the writings of Kant and others, who viewed emotions as undependable forces that are largely outside of our control, this view has had a large influence on moral psychology. It is argued that this tradition is based on a definition of emotion that is no longer tenable given recent evidence concerning emotional processes. Rather, emotions are often reliable reflections of moral beliefs, and are open to conscious regulatory control, enabling the individual to use emotional responses to serve moral goals. In support of this, evidence is reviewed demonstrating the features of emotion-specifically the empathic response-that make it advantageous for the process of moral judgment. These features are then organized into a theoretical framework of moral judgment that describes the dialectic between affect and moral reasoning, thus allowing emotions to re-enter the arena of the study of moral reasoning and moral judgment.