What kind of an emotion is regret? What difference does it make whether, how, and why we experience it, and how does this experience shape our current and future thoughts, decisions, goals? Under what conditions is regret appropriate? Is it always one kind of experience, or does it vary, based on who is doing the regretting, and why? How is regret different from other backward-looking emotions? In The Moral Psychology of Regret, scholars from several disciplines—including philosophy, gender studies, disability studies, law, and neuroscience—come together to address these and other questions related to this ubiquitous emotion that so many of us seem to dread. And while regret has been somewhat under-theorized as a subject worthy of serious and careful attention, this volume is offered with the intent of expanding the discourse on regret as an emotion of great moral significance that underwrites how we understand ourselves and each other.

This book provides an introduction to the major findings, challenges and debates regarding disgust as a moral emotion, and brings together scholarship from multiple disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, anthropology and law.

Philosophers and psychologists come together to think systematically about the nature and value of guilt, looking at the biological origins and psychological nature of guilt, and then discussing the culturally enriched conceptions of this vital moral emotion.

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

This volume provides readers with the state-of-the-art in research on gratitude. It does so in the form of sixteen never-before published articles on the emotion by leading voices in philosophy and the sciences of the mind.

The feeling that one can’t get over a moral wrong is challenging even in the best of circumstances. This volume considers challenges to forgiveness in the most difficult circumstances. It explores forgiveness in criminal justice contexts, under oppression, after genocide, when the victim is dead or when bystanders disagree, when many different negative reactions abound, and when anger and resentment seem preferable and important. The book gathers together a diverse assembly of authors with publication and expertise in forgiveness, while centering the work of new voices in the field and pursuing new lines of inquiry grounded in empirical literature. Some scholars consider how forgiveness influences and is influenced by our other mental states and emotions, while other authors explore the moral value of the emotions attendant upon forgiveness in particularly challenging contexts. Some authors critically assess and advance applications of the standard view of forgiveness predominant in Anglophone philosophy of forgiveness as the overcoming of resentment, while others offer rejections of basic aspects of the standard view, such as what sorts of feelings are compatible with forgiving. The book offers new directions for inquiry into forgiveness, and shows that the moral psychology of forgiveness continues to enjoy challenges to its theoretical structure and its practical possibilities.

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.

In this volume the epistemological, psychological moral and educative dimensions are examined from both philosophical and psychological perspectives.

By bringing the work of philosophers and psychologists together this volume is an interdisciplinary, though predominantly philosophical, exploration of an often discussed but rarely researched emotion; admiration. By exploring the moral psychology of admiration the volume examines the nature of this emotion, how it relates to other emotions such as wonder, envy and pride and what role admiration plays in our moral lives. As to the latter, a strong focus is on the potential link between admiration, emulation and the improvement of our characters, as well as of society as a whole.

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.