Moral Emotions

Social psychologists have long known that emotions influence many aspects of decision making, and a growing body of research demonstrates that this is especially true in the domain of morality. Because morality generally consists of rules guiding our treatment of other people, and because emotions are often (though not always) elicited in the context of our interactions with other people, it is possible to conceive of nearly all our emotions as serving morality in some sense. However, most researchers reserve the term moral emotions to refer to those emotions whose primary function is the preservation and motivation of moral thoughts and behaviors. In short, they are the emotions that make us care about morality.