Emotions shape our mental and social lives, but their relation to morality is problematic: are they sources of moral knowledge, or obstacles to morality? Fourteen original articles by leading scholars in moral psychology and philosophy of mind explore the relation between emotions and practical rationality, value, autonomy, and moral identity.

Take an in depth look at how emotions relate to adolescents’ decision making, reasoning, and behavior in morally relevant situations. It provides a summary of current research on emotions, morality, and adaptive behaviors. Furthermore, it discusses new approaches to research on emotions, morality, and socially adaptive behavior in adolescence. By doing so, the articles provide new insights into adolescents’ emotional and moral development and show how emotions contribute to the way adolescents negotiate, resolve, and adapt to the moral and social conflicts that inevitably occur in their everyday lives. By integrating innovative perspectives from developmental, educational, and clinical research, this volume has much to offer for researchers, youth practitioners, and educators. This is the 136th volume of New Directions for Youth Development, the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series dedicated to bringing together everyone concerned with helping young people, including scholars, practitioners, and people from different disciplines and professions.

This volume brings together philosophical perspectives on emotions, imagination, and moral reasoning with contributions from neuroscience, cognition, social psychology, developmental psychology, and abnormal psychology. It discusses the implications for philosophy from experimental work in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences, and shows what cognitive scientists and neuroscientists can learn from philosophical perspectives.

Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are merely expressing our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defence of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behaviour and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values.

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.

Universities teach courses in ethics, but do they teach students how to be ethical in practice? Lisa Kretz’s Ethics, Emotion, Education, and Empowerment explores the ways that philosophical ethics are currently taught and argues that dominant approaches fail to adequately support ethical action, in part because emotions are all too often ignored or repressed in university classrooms. In isolation, abstract theoretical content fails to motivate. The ability to reason through an ethical dilemma does not, by itself, of necessity impact ethical action. Empowered action requires intentional emotional engagement. Kretz argues that part of the reason affective pedagogy fails to get sufficient uptake is due to the operations of oppression. There is a long history of the reason-emotion dualism undermining recognition of the necessary and valuable epistemic roles emotions play in moral life, and serving as a political tactic to undermine the experience of oppressed groups. This impoverishes ethical pedagogy because it is to the detriment of their ability to teach ethics in a comprehensive way and strips the potential of supporting students to enact their own reflectively held ethical beliefs and values. Using the example of the environmental crisis, Kretz makes a case for supporting students as engaged activists aware of their capacity to ethically change the world.

This volume is a comprehensive roadmap to the burgeoning area of affective sciences, which now spans several disciplines. The Handbook brings together, for the first time, the various strands of inquiry and latest research in the scientific study of the relationship between the mechanisms of the brain and the psychology of mind. In recent years, scientists have made considerable advances in understanding how brain processes shape emotions and are changed by human emotion. Drawing on a wide range of neuroimaging techniques, neuropsychological assessment, and clinical research, scientists are beginning to understand the biological mechanisms for emotions. As a result, researchers are gaining insight into such compelling questions as: How do people experience life emotionally? Why do people respond so differently to the same experiences? What can the face tell us about internal states? How does emotion in significant social relationships influence health? Are there basic emotions common to all humans? This volume brings together the most eminent scholars in the field to present, in sixty original chapters, the latest research and theories in the field. The book is divided into ten sections: Neuroscience; Autonomic Psychophysiology; Genetics and Development; Expression; Components of Emotion; Personality; Emotion and Social Processes; Adaptation, Culture, and Evolution; Emotion and Psychopathology; and Emotion and Health. This major new volume will be an invaluable resource for researchers that will define affective sciences for the next decade.

A mood is defined as the prevailing psychological state (habitual or relatively temporary). It is further defined as a feeling, state or prolonged emotion that influences the whole of one's psychic life. It can relate to passion or feeling; humour; as a melancholy mood or a suppliant mood. Mood can and does affect perceived health, personal confidence, one's perceptions of the world around us and our actions based on those perceptions. Moods can and do change often although mood swings of a sharp nature may be a symptom of underlying disease. Moods may signify happiness, anger, tension, or anxiety. Chronic periods of any mood state may be an indicator of a disorder as well. This new book gathers important research from throughout the world in this rapidly changing field.

Provides a systematic framework for understanding and shaping moral action Taking Moral Action offers a timely and comprehensive overview of the emerging field of moral psychology, introducing readers to one of the most vibrant areas of research in contemporary psychology. With an inclusive and interdisciplinary approach, authors Chuck Huff and Almut Furchert incorporate a wide range of scholarly traditions, philosophical theories, empirical findings, and practical moral writings to explore the complex network of influences, contexts, and processes involved in producing and structuring moral action. Integrating key empirical and theoretical literature, this unique volume helps readers grasp the different aspects of both habitual and intentional acts of moral action. Thematically organized chapters examine moral action in contexts such as evolution, moral ecology, personality, moral identity and the self, moral reason, moral emotion, and more. Each chapter features a discussion of how neuroscience underlies or supports the influence and process addressed. Throughout the book, historical stories of moral action and examples of humanistic and experiential traditions of moral formation highlight what is possible, relevant, and appropriate in taking moral action in a variety of settings. Explores the relationships between moral psychology, empirical psychology, philosophy, and theology Considers the various ways that individuals experience and construct moral identity Emphasizes the practical application of the science of morality in service of moral good Reviews cultural, organizational, group, and social influences to investigate how individuals actively shape their moral environment Discusses the role of emotions in morality and considers if individuals can change or train their emotional responses Taking Moral Action is essential reading for those new to the field and experienced practitioners alike. Containing extensive references and links to further readings, Taking Moral Action is also an excellent textbook for college and university courses in areas such as psychology, ethics, theology, philosophy, anthropology, and neuroscience.