A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title The Moral Psychology of Hate provides the first systematic introduction to the moral psychology of hate compiling specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars with a wide range of disciplinary orientations. In light of the recent revival of interest in emotions in academic philosophy, and the current social and political interest in hate, this volume provides arguments for and against the value of hate through a combination of empirical and philosophical methods. The authors examine hate not merely as a destructive feeling but as an emotion of great moral significance that illuminates how we understand each other and ourselves. The book will be of major interest to anyone concerned with the dynamics and the moral and political implications of this most powerful of human emotions.

Under what circumstances can love generate moral reasons for action? Are there morally appropriate ways to love? Can an occurrence of love or a failure to love constitute a moral failure? Is it better to love morally good people? This volume explores the moral dimensions of love through the lenses of political philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. It attempts to discern how various social norms affect our experience and understanding of love, how love, relates to other affective states such as emotions and desires, and how love influences and is influenced by reason. What love is affects what love ought to be. Conversely, our ideas of what love ought to be partly determined by our conception of what love is.

Few emotions have divided opinion as deeply as shame. Some scholars have argued that shame is essentially a maladaptive emotion used to oppress minorities and reinforce stigmas and traumas, an emotion that leaves the self at the mercy of powerful others. Other scholars, however, have argued that the absence of a sense of shame in a subject—their shamelessness—is tantamount to a vicious moral insensitivity. As the eleven original chapters in this collection attest, however, shame scholars are entering a new phase, one in which scholarship no longer attempts to defend one side of shame against the other, but rather accepts both faces as faithful to the phenomenon to be explained. At the core of our understanding of shame there are profound disagreements about the importance of the Other in shaping our moral identity. As this collection shows by its study of shame, the difficulty of the connection between Self, Other, and morality spans over millennia and cultures and currently animates important debates at the core of feminism and disability studies. Contributors: Mark Alfano, Alessandra Fussi, Lorenzo Greco, JeeLoo Liu, Katrine Krause-Jensen, Heidi L. Maibom, Tjeert Olthof, Imke von Maur, Alba Montes Sánchez, Raffaele Rodogno, Alessandro Salice, Krista K. Thomason, Íngrid Vendrell Ferran

Envy is a vicious and shameful response to the good fortune of others, one that ruins friendships and plagues societies—or so the common thinking goes, shaped by millennia of religious and cultural condemnation. Envy’s bad reputation is not completely unwarranted; envy can indeed motivate malicious and counterproductive behavior and may strain or even tear apart relations between people. However, that is not always the case. Investigating the complex nature of this emotion reveals that it plays important functions in social hierarchies and it can motivate one to self-improve and even to achieve moral virtue. Philosophers and psychologists in this volume explore envy’s characteristics in different cultures, spanning from small hunter-gatherer communities to large industrialized countries, to contexts as diverse as academia, marketing, artificial intelligence, and Buddhism. They explore envy’s role in both the personal and the political sphere, showing the many ways in which envy can either contribute or detract to our flourishing as individuals and as citizens of modern democracies.

Is it good to be trusting, or should we be wary of trusting others? Trust seems to be the basis of large-scale social cooperation and even of democracy itself, but in recent years many commentators and researchers have lamented the dawn of a post-trust era. Edited by David Collins, Iris Vidmar Jovanović, and Mark Alfano, The Moral Psychology of Trust examines trust from a variety of perspectives in philosophy and the social sciences. The contributors explore topics such as the nature of trust and its connection to a range of other emotions, conditions under which it is good to be trusting and trustworthy, and what role trust might play in our intellectual, moral, and political lives. The chapters apply theoretical perspectives on trust to a number of issues of current concern, including how trust can and should function in conditions of social oppression, trust and technology, trust and conspiracy theories, the place of trust in medical ethics, and the ethics of trust in a variety of interpersonal relationships.

Edited by David Rondel and Samir Chopra, The Moral Psychology of Anxiety presents new work on the causes, consequences, and value of anxiety. Straddling philosophy, psychology, clinical medicine, history, and other disciplines, the chapters in this volume explore anxiety from an impressively wide range of perspectives. The first part is more historical, exploring the meaning of anxiety in different philosophical traditions and historical periods, including ancient Chinese Confucianism, twentieth-century European existentialism, and the Roman Stoics. The second part focuses on a cluster of questions having to do with anxiety’s nature and significance: Is anxiety something biological or cultural, or perhaps both? What is at the root of anxiety? Why should human beings suffer in this way? What is the experience of anxiety like, and what, if anything, are the benefits associated with it? Does anxiety have the potential to make us more virtuous or improve the quality of our inquiry? Addressing an area where newer work in moral psychology is sorely needed, this collection and the varied perspectives it offers will be of great interest to scholars, professionals, and students across philosophy, psychology, and related fields.

In this three-volume set, an international team of experts involved in the research, management, and mitigation of hate-motivated violence examines and explains hate crimes in the United States and around the globe, drawing comparisons between countries as well as between hate crimes overall and domestic terrorism. The Psychology of Hate Crimes as Domestic Terrorism: U.S. and Global Issues takes a hard look at hate crimes both domestically and internationally, enabling readers to see similarities and disparities as well as to make the connections between hate crimes and domestic terrorism. The entries in this three-volume set discuss subjects such as the psychology and motivation in hate crimes, the cultural norms that shape tolerance of outgroups or tolerance of hate, and the fact that hate crimes are a pervasive form of domestic terrorism, as well as myriad issues of proliferation, public policy, policing, law and punishment, and prevention. The set opens with an introduction that discusses hate crime research and examines issues of identification of the bias element of hate crimes via empirical and case vignettes. The subsequent chapters discuss subjects such as the socio-demographic profiles of hate crime offenders; hate crime legislation and policy in the United States; the effects of hate crime on their victims as well as society; the incidence of hate crime in specific regions, such as Europe, the Middle East, and South America; and programs and therapeutic interventions to heal victims. Readers will also learn how specific educational approaches in communities, schools, and universities can be implemented to help prevent future escalation of hate-motivated violence.

Terrorism of the past ten years has been driven by the interface of psychology, morality, faith, religion, and politics. This modern terrorism reflects terrorists’ pursuit of their beliefs and the aggressive promotion of the exclusivity of their world-views at the expense of the lives of those who do not share them. In this sense, acts of terrorism are fueled by arguments of morality and views that are rooted in the psyches and beliefs of terrorists. Thus, it is critically important to examine the growing phenomenon of terrorism through not only a political lens, but a psychological one as well – where questions about the cognitive mappings of those who are considered terrorists are probed. The examination of the moral psychology of terrorism opens up new insights into the real threats that face the global community. This important volume brings out that discussion and seeks to understand what motivates people to kill both themselves and innocent bystanders. How can we better understand this tragic human path towards violence? Providing perspectives from several continents and academic disciplines, the editors and contributors of this work move the study of terrorism away from its traditional center in the academic worlds of political science and security studies and present a wide range of perspectives that focus on psychology, philosophy, and questions of morality, linguistics, history, religious studies, and ethics. Intended for the academic community and the general public alike, these rich presentations and analyses are sure to foster a healthier, more productive, and more effective conversation about terrorism, the minds of terrorists, and how to reach a place where this violent phenomenon is less prevalent.

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.

This volume is the first to bring together original work by leading philosophers and psychologists in an examination of the moral psychology of contempt.