Emotion and Moral Judgment

Moral Judgment and Moral Behavior

Before surveying theories and evidence, it is important to distinguish between moral judgment and moral behavior. Moral behavior includes any behavior that we would praise as morally good. Moral judgments are judgments that assess the moral significance of something—judgments about what is right or wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral. It should be clear from this distinction that there can be moral behaviors without moral judgments. For [Page 301]example, a person might rush to save a drowning child without first reflecting on whether it is the right thing to do. Conversely, there can be moral judgments without moral behavior. A person might realize that it is wrong to cheat but give in to that temptation.

This entry will focus on moral judgments, not behaviors, but it is important to note that emotions have been implicated in both. Researchers who study altruistic behavior widely assume that we are impelled to help others at personal expense because of our emotions. The principal affective response implicated in altruistic motivation is empathy or empathetic concern, which involves either feeling a negative emotion akin to one you observe in another party or feeling bad about another person's suffering. The term sympathy is sometimes used for responses of the latter kind, where the felt emotion does not match the observed emotion. Daniel Batson has shown that when people experience this kind of emotional connection with another party, they do not simply act to alleviate their own discomfort but rather work to help the person in need. When this happens, a person can be said to have an altruistic motivation for the altruistic behavior, meaning that the person is not motivated by an explicit desire to advance self-interest. In this situation, the actor need not make a moral judgment that helping is good; it is enough to recognize that someone else is in harm's way.

Emotional responses may also play a role in so-called virtuous behavior, independent of moral judgments. Building on this idea, Aristotle developed an influential approach to ethics, which is now known as virtue theory, according to which the goal of morality should be the cultivation of good character traits rather than the internalization of moral rules. Good traits may include generosity, friendliness, courage, self-respect, among others. Aristotle and many of his followers think of these traits as involving emotion regulation. For example, courage may involve having enough fear to avoid being foolhardy but not so much as to be a coward. Thus, emotions are implicated in morality in this view, but virtue is presumed to be achieved without explicit moral judgments: For example, the virtuous person does not act courageously because she judges that courage is good but rather because she has trained her emotions to make practical decisions that are courageous when courage is called for.

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