Emotions And Moral Behavior

Comprehensively examining the relationship between cognition and emotion, this authoritative handbook brings together leading investigators from multiple psychological subdisciplines. Biological underpinnings of the cognition-emotion interface are reviewed, including the role of neurotransmitters and hormones. Contributors explore how key cognitive processes -- such as attention, learning, and memory -- shape emotional phenomena, and vice versa. Individual differences in areas where cognition and emotion interact -- such as agreeableness and emotional intelligence -- are addressed. The volume also analyzes the roles of cognition and emotion in anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, and other psychological disorders.

The relationship of emotions, ethics, and authenticity constitutes a nexus of philosophical and psychological problems with wide interdisciplinary relevance. What is the proper role of emotions in moral behavior and theory; are emotions reliable guides to our authentic personal values; and finally; what does it mean to be authentic in one's emotions, assuming that there is such thing as emotional authenticity in the first place? The various contributions of this book seek to answer these vexing but rarely discussed questions, offering a broad intellectual tour that ranges from philosophy to psychology, sociology, and gender studies.

An informal yet rigorous exploration of human emotions in all their complexity and subtlety. Why do we cry at the movies? What is the best way to manage destructive feelings such as jealousy? Although emotions pervade our lives, their nature, causes, and effects have only recently been studied by social scientists and philosophers. Despite growing scientific interest in the subject, empirical findings have not yet caught up with our intuitive knowledge. In this book Aaron Ben-Ze'ev carries out what he calls "a careful search for general patterns in the primeval jungle of emotions." In an engaging, informal style he draws on a variety of theoretical approaches and popular sources to produce a coherent account of emotions in all their subtlety. All of the ideas are illustrated with examples drawn from everyday life. The book is organized into two parts. The first presents an overall conceptual framework for understanding emotions. It looks at the typical characteristics and components of emotions, distinguishes emotions from other affective phenomena, classifies the emotions, and covers such related issues as emotional intelligence, regulating emotions, and emotions and morality. The second part discusses individual emotions, including envy, jealousy, pleasure-in-others'-misfortune, pity, compassion, anger, hate, disgust, love, sexual desire, happiness, sadness, pride, regret, and shame. The text is laced with insightful and often amusing quotations from sources ranging from Mae West to Montesquieu.

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.

Organizations experience immoral behavior quite often. For example, one can think of the Madoff investment scandal and the increasing rate of frauds in companies during the last years. In order to prevent employees from behaving immoral, it is important to know what drives (im)moral behavior. This work explores the effect of emotions on moral behavior. Specifically, the emotion disgust is chosen to explore this relationship. To investigate the effect of disgust on moral behavior an experiment is conducted. This experiment has two conditions. In the experimental condition disgust is evoked by a movieclip and in the control condition no specific emotions are evoked. After the watching the movie clip participants had to complete a math task on which they could cheat. Cheating is considered as an important indicator for immoral behavior. The results show a trend that suggests that individuals who experience disgust behave less moral than individuals in a neutral emotional state. This work thus explores what drives (im)moral behavior and is interesting for managers who are interested in the effect of emotions on moral behavior.

Shortlisted for the British Psychological Society Book Award (Academic Monograph category) 2014! A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2013! Psychological research shows that our emotions and feelings often guide the moral decisions we make about our own lives and the social groups to which we belong. But should we be concerned that our important moral judgments can be swayed by "hot" passions, such as anger, disgust, guilt, shame and sympathy? Aren’t these feelings irrational and counterproductive? Using a functional conflict theory of emotions (FCT), Giner-Sorolla proposes that each emotion serves a number of different functions, sometimes inappropriately, and that moral emotions in particular are intimately tied to problems faced by the individuals in a group, and by groups interacting with each other. Specifically, the author suggests that these emotions help us, as individuals and group members, to: Appraise developments in the environment Learn through association Regulate our own behavior Communicate convincingly with others. Drawing on extensive research, including many studies from the author’s own lab, this book shows why emotions work to encourage reasonable moral behaviour, and why they sometimes fail. This is the first single-authored volume in the field of psychology dedicated to a separate examination of the major moral and positive emotions. As such, the book is ideal reading for researchers, postgraduates and undergraduates of social psychology, sociology, philosophy and politics.

Moral behavior is subject to socially accepted moral norms and also has a pervasive influence on organizational performance. With the emergence of ethical issues found in organizations, practitioners and scholars pay increasing attention to ethics management. Therefore, workplace moral behavior (e.g., pro-social behavior and organizational citizenship behavior - OCB) and immoral behavior (e.g., interpersonal abusive behavior, deviant/counterproductive behavior, and unethical pro-organizational behavior) have also received substantial research interests over the past decades. To date, the most common framework used to study moral behavior has been the cognitive approach, with abundant evidence demonstrating that emotion and cognition are the two core elements in generating and influencing workplace (im)moral behavior. However, limited studies have been conducted to explore the emotional/cognitive processes or integrative moral emotion-cognition system relevant to workplace moral behavior. Despite our knowledge of the antecedents and consequences of workplace (im)moral behaviors, more research on the generating mechanism, influencing mechanism, transformation mechanism, and governance strategies is needed. For example, it is unclear how exhibiting (im)moral behavior in the workplace would impact the actor’s and the third-party observer’s emotions, thoughts, feelings, and subsequent behavior. Besides, the question of whether ethical/unethical leader behavior would trigger a “trickle-down effect” is underdeveloped, which refers to the fact that how the behavior or perception of the top leaders affects employees from top to bottom along the formal vertical power chain. In addition, we have little knowledge on when, how, and why the ethical employees (the so-called “good soldiers”) would engage in workplace immoral behavior, and vice-versa.

This comprehensive and cutting-edge volume maps out the terrain of moral psychology, a dynamic and evolving area of research. In 57 concise chapters, leading authorities and up-and-coming scholars explore fundamental issues and current controversies. The volume systematically reviews the empirical evidence base and presents influential theories of moral judgment and behavior. It is organized around the key questions that must be addressed for a complete understanding of the moral mind.