Purpose. The research is aimed at determining the influence of negative ethical emotions on social life and the activity of the individual, which involves solving the following problems: a) to find out approaches to the typology of ethical emotions, b) to highlight individual negative ethical emotions and to determine their ability to influence human behaviour. Theoretical basis. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the recognition of the significant influence of negative emotions on human activity (...) in society. In this regard, it is proposed to consider them as a complex multidisciplinary phenomenon, which is predetermined by both social and personal factors of origin and has a certain specificity of objectification. Originality. The authors determined that in addition to destructive effects on a person of negative emotions, they can also have a constructive effect on person’s behaviour, due primarily to the fact that a person does not want to experience these emotions and therefore tries to avoid situations they cause. Conclusions. The ethical emotions of guilt, embarrassment, anger, disgust and contempt can affect, through the cognitive aspect of the emotional process, the decision-making process of people when they predict situations in which they risk to feel such emotions. So the emotion of guilt creates a constructive setup aimed at correcting inappropriate social norms of human behaviour. The emotion of embarrassment motivates a person to behave more benevolently in society in order to integrate in it and get its approval, thus encouraging the person to adhere to social and moral agreements and norms. The emotion of anger motivates a person to act to eliminate injustice, herewith not only in relation to himself, but also in relation to others. Rejecting those people who cause moral and social aversion, society creates a system of punishments and rewards that acts as a strong deterrent to the socio-cultural behaviour. The emotion of contempt performs the function of preventing punishment in relation to the despised individual. (shrink)

I have a theory of the emotions that many people find unflattering. I contend that all emotions, as such, are negative and neither life-enhancing nor truth-connected. In this essay, I present this theory and my reasons for it.

Background: -/- One influential view is that vulnerability to major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with a proneness to experience negative emotions in general. In contrast, blame attribution theories emphasise the importance of blaming oneself rather than others for negative events. Our previous exploratory study provided support for the attributional hypothesis that patients with remitted MDD show no overall bias towards negative emotions, but a selective bias towards emotions entailing self-blame relative to emotions that entail blaming others. (...) More specifically, we found a decreased proneness for contempt/disgust towards others relative to oneself (i.e. self-contempt bias). Here, we report a definitive test of the competing general negative versus specific attributional bias theories of MDD. Methods: -/- We compared a medication-free remitted MDD (n = 101) and a control group (n = 70) with no family or personal history of MDD on a previously validated experimental test of moral emotions. The task measures proneness to specific emotions associated with different types of self-blame (guilt, shame, self-contempt/disgust, self-indignation/anger) and blame of others (other-indignation/anger, other-contempt/disgust) whilst controlling for the intensity of unpleasantness. Results: -/- We confirmed the hypothesis that patients with MDD exhibit an increased self-contempt bias with a reduction in contempt/disgust towards others. Furthermore, they also showed a decreased proneness for indignation/anger towards others. Conclusions: -/- This corroborates the prediction that vulnerability to MDD is associated with an imbalance of specific self- and other-blaming emotions rather than a general increase in negative emotions. This has important implications for neurocognitive models and calls for novel focussed interventions to rebalance blame in MDD. (shrink)

Negative emotions are often thought to lack value—they’re pernicious, inherently unpleasant, and inconsistent with human virtue. Taking anxiety as a case study, I argue that this assessment is mistaken. I begin with an account of what anxiety is: a response to uncertainty about a possible threat or challenge that brings thoughts about one’s predicament (‘I’m worried,’ ‘What should I do?’), negatively valenced feelings of concern, and a motivational tendency toward caution regarding the potential threat one faces. Given this account (...) of what anxiety is, I show it can be instrumentally valuable: in sensitizing us to uncertainty and prompting caution and risk assessment efforts, it’s an emotion that can help us better recognize and respond to uncertain threats and challenges. But anxiety can also be aretaically valuable—that is, it’s an emotion that can contribute positively to one’s character. For instance, your anxiety about how best to care for your aging mother not only prompts helpful brainstorming about what you should do, but also reflect well on you—your unease demonstrates both an admirable sensitivity and emotional attunement to what’s at stake. (shrink)

The paper explores Burke’s twofold solution to the paradox of negative emotions. His Philosophical Enquiry (1757/59) employs two models that stand on different anthropological principles: the Exercise Argument borrowed from authors like the Abbé Du Bos, guided by the principle of self-preservation, and the Sympathy Argument, propageted by notable men of lettres such as Lord Kames, ruled by the principle of sociability. Burke interlocks these two arguments through a teleologically-ordered physiology, in which the natural laws of the human body (...) and mind, secretly working in the depth of the nerve fibres, ensure both self-preservation and sociability. Utilizing both efficient and final causes throughout his Enquiry, Burke argues that the experiences of pain and terror – under certain conditions – are made agreeable (delight) by providence,so that the physiological mechanisms underlying these experiences could ensure the health and strenuousness of the nerve fibres amidst the corrupting pleasures of commercial society (Exercise Argument). Furthermore, due to the ambiguous character of this delight annexed to such experiences, they also function as exercises for our social passions (Sympathy Argument). Te 'egoistic' anthropological drive to remove the visceral uneasiness that dominates these experiences facilitates moral action when it is needed the most: when others in pain need our help. In accordance with the anthropocentric providentialism of the moderate Enlightenment, it is the design of the human frame that ensures the activities essential to our health (self-preservation) and moral conduct (sociability), a design that not only guarantees that pleasure, if exclusive and excessive, is 'inconvenient', and pain, if mitigated and harmless, is aesthetically agreeable, but also that our 'egoistic' drive to self-preservation ultimately improves sociability. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the (...) previous section. In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

This article develops the philosophical work of Joanna Macy. It argues that ecological grief is a fitting response to our ecological predicament and that much of the ‘mental ill health’ that we are now seeing is, in fact, a perfectly sane response to our ecological reality. This paper claims that all ecological emotions are grounded in love/compassion. Acceptance of these emotions reveals that everything is fine in the world as it is, providing that we accept our ecological emotions as part (...) of what is ‘in the world’. This is non-dualistic acceptance or ‘fierce’ acceptance. This paper focuses primarily on the revolutionary qualities of ecological grief: a paradoxical revolution, coming as it does from a profound process of acceptance. (shrink)

Millions of children in the United States experience parental incarcera- tion, yet it is unclear how this experience might shape social cognition. We asked children of incarcerated parents (N = 24) and children whose parents were not incarcerated (N = 58) to describe their parents. Both groups of children also rated the extent to which they agree that they feel positive and, separately, negative emotions when thinking about their parent and best friend. This approach allowed us to test between (...) two alternative hypotheses. On the one hand, cultural narratives in the United States convey negative messages about incarcerated people, and these messages could prompt children to report negativity when thinking about their incarcerated parents. On the other hand, chil- dren’s positivity toward close others is robust. Thus, when thinking about their incarcerated parents, children may report a great deal of positivity. Consistent with the latter possibility, children were more likely to describe their incarcerated parents using positive rather than negative terms. Moreover, children of incarcerated parents were more likely to agree that thinking about close others made them feel posi- tive emotions than they were to agree that thinking about close others made them feel negative emotions. A similar pattern of results emerged among children whose parents were not incarcerated. These findings demonstrate the robustness of children’s positivity and can inform debates regarding contact between incarcerated par- ents and their children. (shrink)

A growing body of work argues that we should reform problematic emotions like anxiety, anger, and shame: doing this will allow us to better harness the contributions that these emotions can make to our agency and wellbeing. But feminist philosophers worry that prescriptions to correct these inappropriate emotions will only further marginalize women, minorities, and other members of subordinated groups. While much in these debates turns on empirical questions about how we can change problematic emotion norms for the better, (...) to date, little has been done by either side to assess how we might do this, much less in ways that are responsive to the feminists’ worries. Drawing on research in cognitive science, this paper argues that though the feminists’ worries are real, the leading proposals for remedying them are inadequate. It then develops an alternative strategy for reshaping problematic emotion norms—one that’s sensitive to the feminists’ concerns. (shrink)

[Selected as EDITOR'S CHOICE] Background: Extant surveys of people’s attitudes toward human reproductive cloning focus on moral judgments alone, not emotional reactions or sentiments. This is especially important given that some (esp. Leon Kass) have argued against such cloning on the grounds that it engenders widespread negative emotions, like disgust, that provide a moral guide. Objective: To provide some data on emotional reactions to human cloning, with a focus on repugnance, given its prominence in the literature. Methods: This brief (...) mixed-method study measures the self-reported attitudes and emotions (positive or negative) toward cloning from a sample of participants in the United States. Results: Most participants condemned cloning as immoral and said it should be illegal. The most commonly reported positive sentiment was by far interest/curiosity. Negative emotions were much more varied, but anxiety was the most common. Only about a third of participants selected disgust or repugnance as something they felt and an even smaller portion had this emotion come to mind prior to seeing a list of options. Conclusions: Participants felt primarily interested and anxious about human reproductive cloning. They did not primarily feel disgust or repugnance. This provides initial empirical evidence that such a reaction is not appropriately widespread. (shrink)

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When (...) required to experience emotional response, by ‘getting into the feeling’ of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group. (shrink)

Emotions seem to be epistemically assessable: fear of an onrushing truck is epistemically justified whereas, mutatis mutandis, fear of a peanut rolling on the floor is not. But there is a difficulty in understanding why emotions are epistemically assessable. It is clear why beliefs, for instance, are epistemically assessable: epistemic assessability is, arguably, assessability with respect to likely truth, and belief is by its nature concerned with truth; truth is, we might say, belief’s “formal object.” Emotions, however, have formal objects (...) different from truth: the formal object of fear is danger, the formal object of indignation is injustice, and so on. Why, then, are emotions epistemically assessable too? Here we make a negative claim and a positive claim. On the negative side, we consider how cognitivist and perceptualist accounts of emotion may respond to this challenge, and argue against those responses. On the positive side, we develop an alternative picture of the domain of the epistemically evaluable, according to which any mental state which is constitutively evidence-responsive is epistemically assessable, regardless of whether its formal object is truth. (shrink)

The aesthetics of body and dress are in a continuous flux. The body, being the locus where fashion challenges the traditional norms, escapes from the narrow boundaries of the conventionally beautiful; the disgusting soma, in the realm of Negative Aesthetics, takes its place. In this paper, I attempt to define what is disgusting fashion and how can contribute to the deliberation of the body from the restricting margins of the aesthetically beautiful. The distorted imagery of the feminine soma is (...) the center of the analysis of the non-beautiful as an aesthetically pleasing phenomenon. Different examples of repulsive clothing are analyzed from a philosophical point of view, in order to understand the relation between the negative emotional responses towards disgusting fashion and its aesthetic value. -/- . (shrink)

Slurs’ meaning is highly unstable. A slurring utterance like ‘Hey, F, where have you been?’ (where F is a slur) may receive a wide array of interpretations depending on various contextual factors such as the speaker’s social identity, their relationship to the target group, tone of voice, and more. Standard semantic, pragmatic, and non-content theories of slurs have proposed different mechanisms to account for some or all types of variability observed, but without providing a unified framework that allows us to (...) understand how different contextual factors simultaneously influence slurs’ interpretation. To address this issue, I argue that slurs convey dimensional qualities such as, e.g., ‘negative valence, neutral arousal, high dominance’ instead of discrete emotional categories such as ‘contempt’. Then, I translate this hypothesis into a game-theoretic model of slurs’ interpretation inspired by Heather Burnett’s pioneering work on identity construction. This new model, called ‘Affective Meaning Games’ (AMG), captures the variability of slurs and integrates pragmatic reasoning within an independently motivated psychological understanding of emotional states. (shrink)

Our emotional states affect how we perceive the world. If I am stressed, annoyed, or irritated, I might experience the sound of children laughing and screaming as they play around the house in a negative manner — it is unpleasant, loud, piercing, and so on. Yet, if I’m in a relaxed, happy, loving mood, the very same sounds might be experienced as pleasant, playful, warm, and so on. The sounds being made by the children are the same in both (...) cases, but how they are experienced differs. The auditory experience is affected by the emotional state that I am in. I perceive the sounds differently depending on how I’m feeling. Although this might at first seem to be a trivial observation, it certainly is not. We take for granted that our perceptual experiences give rise to justified beliefs and knowledge. Thus, if my perceptual experience of an object can differ based on my emotional state, and I take my perceptual experience to justify my beliefs and even lead to knowledge, then we might have a problem. If emotions — which are not fixed and in large part uncontrolled — affect our ability to accurately perceive the world, then they may undermine the justified beliefs and knowledge gained on the basis of our perceptual experience of the world. My goal here is to explore this potential problem. -/- I consider how we might understand the effect that emotions have on the justification of our perceptual beliefs about the world, beliefs that we acquire from a variety of sensory modalities — audition, gustation olfaction, and so on. I take the problem to be associated with one of two forms of perceptual influence: penetration or multisensory integration. In any given perceptual moment there are multiple sensory modalities and mental states at play, each affecting the overall experience. Whether we understand the influence of emotion on perception as a form of non-perceptual penetration or a form of non-visual sensory perception of the inner body — interoception — the potential epistemological difficulties remain: how can we be said to acquire justified beliefs and knowledge on the basis of such influenced perceptual experience. As has been the norm, only the five exteroceptive senses of vision, audition, olfaction, taste and touch are typically discussed in the context of sensory perception. However, as I argue, there is strong reason to accept the claim that emotional experience is a form of interoception, and that interoception ought to be considered when discussing sensory perception. In this way, then, I propose that clarifying the role played by interoception in sense perception across modalities is necessary if we are to make progress on the epistemological problems at hand. (shrink)

Why do people seemingly want to be scared by movies and feel pity for fictional characters when they avoid situations in real life that arouse these same negative emotions? Although the domain of relevant artworks encompasses far more than just tragedy, the general problem is typically called the paradox of tragedy. The paradox boils down to a simple question: If people avoid pain then why do people want to experience art that is painful? I discuss six popular solutions to (...) the paradox: conversion, control, compensatory, meta-response, catharsis, and rich experience theories. (shrink)

Why is it that we respond emotionally to plays, movies, and novels and feel moved by characters and situations that we know do not exist? This question, which constitutes the kernel of the debate on »the paradox of fiction«, speaks to the perennial themes of philosophy, and remains of interest to this day. But does this question entail a paradox? A significant group of analytic philosophers have indeed thought so. Since the publication of Colin Radford's celebrated paper »How Can We (...) Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?« (1975), the number of proposals to solve, explain, reformulate, dismiss or even revitalize this apparent paradox has continued to proliferate. In line with recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, in this paper I will argue against the sustainability of the paradox, claiming that the only reasonable way to continue our discussions about it consists in using it as a heuristic tool to shed light on problems regarding our involvement with fiction. Against this background, I will then focus on one of the problems related to how our emotional responses to fiction contribute to our appreciation of it. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first section shows the parallel evolution of the paradox of fiction and the analytic philosophy of emotion. Here I claim that, although the paradox is epistemically flawed, since one of its premises is rooted in a limited view on the emotions typical of early cognitiv-ism, the discussions it provokes are still epistemically useful. As Robert Stecker (2011, 295), among others, has pointed out, the paradox was formulated during the heyday of cognitive theories of the emotions in which emotion necessarily requires belief. Today, however, only few authors would endorse this premise. If emotion does not always require belief (as the majority of authors in the contemporary debate admit), let alone belief about the existence of the object towards which it is directed, then there is no reason to speak of a paradox. From this first conclusion, however, it does not follow that the paradox is completely without use from the epistemic point of view. A glimpse at the topics touched on during the discussions about how to solve, reformulate, or negate the paradox reveals their value in shedding light on the interrelation between emotion and fiction. The second section elaborates a phenomenologically inspired cognitive account of the emotions by focusing on their cognitive bases, their influence on Emotion in the Appreciation of Fiction 205 cognitions, and their cognitive function. In this model, emotions are responsible for indicating values, for showing what matters to us, and for being appropriate to their objects. My claim is that this view applies not only to reality, but also to our involvement with fiction. In the final section I draw on this account to focus on one kind of appreciation of fiction which necessarily requires our emotional involvement. Following an idea put forward by Susan Feagin (1996, 1), I employ the concept of »appre-ciation« to refer to a set of abilities exercised with the aim of extracting value from the work. There is a long tradition in aesthetics that condemns any focus on the emotions in the appreciation of art and fiction, and defends the necessity of aesthetic appreciation without emotional influence. To refer to this negative attitude towards the emotions, I will borrow an expression coined by Susan Feagin (2013, 636), who refers to »the intellectualized view of appreciation«. Against this widespread view, I will argue that some aspects of the fiction can only be appreciated with the help of our emotions. The cognitive approach developed in the previous section can explain how the emotions might in fact play a significant role in the appreciation of art and fiction. Attention will be paid to three activities involved in appreciation, for all of which emotion is crucial: processing relevant information about the fictional world, understanding aspects of it, and becoming acquainted with the values it presents. My aim here is to argue that there are particular aspects of the fictional world that can only be appreciated if recipients have the appropriate emotions. (shrink)

The assumption that positive affect leads to a better performance in simple cognitive tasks has become well established. We address the question whether positive and negative emotions differentially influence performance in complex problem-solving in the same way. Emotions were induced by positive or negative feedback in 74 participants who had to manage a computer-simulated complex problem-solving scenario. Results show that overall scenario performance is not affected, but positive and negative emotions elicit distinguishable problem-solving strategies: Participants with (...) class='Hi'>negative emotions are more focused on the seeking and use of information. We discuss methodological requirements for investigating emotion influences in complex and dynamic cognitive tasks. (shrink)

Memes on the internet are created content to express knowledge, entertain, ridicule, and self-actualize. The purpose of this study was to assess the emotional response to memes and their link to the profile of Filipino teachers-in-training. The descriptive-correlation research method was used in this study. A questionnaire-checklist was utilized to assess the effects of online memes on the emotions of teachers-in-training. The data was treated using frequency counts, percentages, and the average weighted mean. The association between profile and the emotional (...) response to Internet Memes was investigated using Pearson-r (Pearson Product Moment of Correlation) and Chi-square. The outcomes of this study revealed that teachers-in-training are mostly females who concentrate in Enhanced General Education and spend 4-6 hours on social media. Teachers-in-training whose gender is female has a higher emotional response (whether positive or negative) to memes than their counterparts. The number of hours spent on social media has no bearing on the Teachers-in Training emotional responses to memes. Respondents who are specializing in Enhanced General Education have the highest positive emotional response to memes. However, there is no significant connection between negative emotional responses to memes and specialization. (shrink)

The assumption that positive affect leads to a better performance in simple cognitive tasks has become well established. We address the question whether positive and negative emotions differentially influence performance in complex problem-solving in the same way. Emotions were induced by positive or negative feedback in 74 participants who had to manage a computer-simulated complex problem-solving scenario. Results show that overall scenario performance is not affected, but positive and negative emotions elicit distinguishable problem-solving strategies: Participants with (...) class='Hi'>negative emotions are more focused on the seeking and use of information. We discuss methodological requirements for investigating emotion influences in complex and dynamic cognitive tasks. (shrink)

The paper argues that while the Serbian society and political elite are known for treating their country’s accession to the EU in terms of pragmatic utility maximisation, they generally conceive of Serbian relations with Russia, contrariwise, as an identity-laden issue. To prove it, the author analyses Serbia’s behaviour toward Russia along the features of emotion-driven cooperation, found in the literature on identity and emotions in foreign policy. In particular, the paper focuses on Serbians’ especially strong friendliness vis-à-vis Russia, the (...) parallel existence of the Other (the West) in their identity and the particularly strong intensity of their attraction to Russia during Serbia-West conflicts, the reinforcement of their affection to Russia by national traumas, the endurance of the affection’s strength despite conflicting rational interests and negative experiences in bilateral interaction, the frequent occurrence of references to Russia in Serbia’s domestic discourse and decisional justifications and a large use of historical analogies concerning Russia. Finally, the author ponders over the implications of the existent configuration of emotional and pragmatic forces in Serbian politics for the country’s current and future conduct toward Russia and the EU. (shrink)

We describe music in terms of emotion. How should we understand this? Some say that emotion descriptions should be understood literally. Let us call those views “literalist.” By contrast “nonliteralists” deny this and say that such descriptions are typically metaphorical.1 This issue about the linguistic description of music is connected with a central issue about the na- ture of music. That issue is whether there is any essential connection between music and emotion. According to what we can (...) call “emotion theories,” it is essential to music to be somehow related to real emotion. Prominent examples of such theories are these: it is the main function of all or most music to express emotions, to arouse emotions, or to represent emotions. 2 In my view, such theories have little plausibility, and they face a battery of powerful objections. In particular, these theories are objectionable on the grounds that essential features of emotion preclude such essential relations between music and emotion. 3 Yet to argue against various specific emotion theories of music, of which there is a large variety, does not address the reasons that draw people to emotion theories. I think that there are two main reasons. The first is that the most obvious explanation of why we describe music in emotion terms is that emotions, or relations to emotions, are part of what music is. The second reason is introspective, or phenomenological—that much music moves us when we listen to it, so it seems that music generates emotions in us, which we project onto the music when we describe it in emotion terms. In this article, my negative purpose is to dissolve these two reasons. My positive purpose is to argue for a particular nonliteralist view of linguistic descriptions of music in terms of emotion, a.. (shrink)

How is ethical knowledge possible? One of the most promising answers is the moral sense view: we can acquire ethical knowledge through emotional experience. But this view faces a serious problem. Emotions are unreliable guides to ethical truth, frequently failing to fit the ethical status of their objects. This threatens to render the habit of basing ethical beliefs on emotions too unreliable to yield knowledge. I offer a new solution to this problem, with practical implications for how we approach ethical (...) decision-making. I argue that an agent can have a reliable belief-forming habit despite having unreliable emotions, so long as she is suitably attentive to defeaters. In moderately virtuous agents, unfitting ethical emotions are frequently accompanied by warning signs, such as negative metaemotions, epistemic feelings, moods, and social cues. An agent who cultivates the attentional skill of noticing these signs can prevent many of her unfitting emotions from translating into false beliefs. For a moderately virtuous agent with this skill, the habit of basing ethical beliefs on emotions will be reliable. The upshot is that emotion-based ethical knowledge is possible even for people whose emotions are unreliable, but only if we cultivate the skill of spotting defeaters. (shrink)

According to theoretical work on epistemic injustice, baseless discrediting of the knowledge of people with marginalized social identities is a central driver of prejudice and discrimination. Discrediting of knowledge may sometimes be subtle, but it is pernicious, inducing chronic stress and coping strategies such as emotional avoidance. In this research, we sought to deepen the understanding of epistemic injustice’s impact by examining emotional responses to being discredited and assessing if marginalized social group membership predicts these responses. We conducted a novel (...) series of three experiments (Total N = 1690) in which participants (1) shared their factual knowledge about how a game worked or their personal feelings about the game; (2) received discrediting feedback (invalidating remarks), validating feedback (affirming remarks), or insulting feedback (general negative social evaluation); and then (3) reported their affect. In all three studies, on average, affective responses to discrediting feedback were less negative than to insulting feedback, and more negative than to validating feedback. Participants who shared their knowledge reported more negative affect after discrediting feedback than participants who shared their feelings. There were consistent individual differences, including a twice-replicated finding of reduced negative affect after receiving discrediting and insulting feedback for Black men compared to White men and women and Black women. Black men’s race-based traumatic symptom scores predicted their affective responses to discrediting and insulting feedback, suggesting that experience with discrimination contributed to the emotional processing of a key aspect of epistemic injustice: remarks conveying baseless discrediting of knowledge. (shrink)

This study delved into the realm of emotional presence and its potential impact on students' academic performance within collaborative online learning environments. While emotions were recognized as influential factors in the learning process, the specific relationship between emotional presence and cognitive outcomes remained elusive, particularly in the context of virtual classrooms. This research addressed a critical gap by investigating the relationships between emotional presence and students’ academic achievements in online classes. An exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach incorporating both quantitative and qualitative (...) components was used. Fifty (50) senior high school students engaged in online learning were selected through the purposive sampling technique. Quantitative findings revealed that emotions did not exhibit a significant correlation with students' academic achievements in the online learning environment. However, insights from the qualitative analysis shed light on the emotional experiences of students, indicating negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, and disappointment. Despite these challenging emotions, students were still capable of achieving favorable academic outcomes. In conclusion, while the emotional presence of students may have been predominantly negative, their academic achievements in online learning environments remained satisfactory. This suggested that learners could effectively navigate and succeed within the virtual classroom setting, even in the face of emotional challenges. Educators were encouraged to create supportive online learning environments that highly addressed students' emotional needs alongside their educational requirements. By fostering emotional well-being, teachers could enhance the overall learning experience and promote positive outcomes in virtual education. (shrink)

Emotional labor can be defined as a form of emotional regulation in which employees have to display certain emotions as part of their work and promote organizational goals. Such organizational control of emotions can lead to suppression of feelings through emotional dissonance, altered relational perceptions, changed communication patterns, and other negative and counterproductive personal and work effects including stress, demotivation and exhaustion. Emotional labor involves managing feelings and emotions to meet the demands of a job. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13203.30248.

The vast literature on negative treatment of outgroups and favoritism toward ingroups provides many local insights but is largely fragmented, lacking an overarching framework that might provide a unified overview and guide conceptual integration. As a result, it remains unclear where different local perspectives conflict, how they may reinforce one another, and where they leave gaps in our knowledge of the phenomena. Our aim is to start constructing a framework to help remedy this situation. We first identify a few (...) key ideas for creating a theoretical roadmap for this complex territory, namely the principles of etiological functionalism and the dual inheritance theory of human evolution. We show how a “molecular” approach to emotions fits into this picture, and use it to illuminate emotions that shape intergroup relations. Finally, we weave the pieces together into the beginnings of a systematic taxonomy of the emotions involved in social interactions, both hostile and friendly. While it is but a start, we have developed the argument in a way that illustrates how the foundational principles of our proposed framework can be extended to accommodate further cases. (shrink)

Most people tend to be suspicious of the role of emotions in the management of change, given those historical precedents or experiences in political communities, such as in fascist states. In these historical and experiential contexts, emotions are seen as political vectors that encourage an unthinking and uncritical political community. Martha Nussbaum, dubbed as the philosopher of emotions or feelings, has suggested that good political principles or policies are also realizable, if intently worked out to persist and to remain stable (...) or institutionalized, over time. For example, a policy such as the redistribution of wealth requires thinking on how a community could be driven to care for people to whom they were ordinarily indifferent, by a thoughtful and constructive analysis and subsequent re-programming of the inherent emotions which forge citizens together. In this study, the focus is the imperative cultivation of positive emotions as a potential tool for human survival, as communities battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. It is posited that material conditions are waning, and humanity requires compassion; the poor needs help for their survival. Researches, however, have shown that extending alms is not easy. Not too different from other animals, human beings are narrow and shallow in their area of existential concern: caring for those nearer them, and largely indifferent to those farther away. This assumption considered, the policy challenge is to zero in on civic emotions that might cultivate the element of compassion and concern to a larger community radius. This paper also highlights preliminary proposals on how to overcome negative emotions, i.e. fear, disgust, and shame, which the study posits as hindrances antithetical to the formation of constructive civic emotions needed for human survival. (shrink)

By adopting social exchange theory and the affect-infusion-model, the hypothesis is made that emotional intelligence (EI) will have an impact on three perceptions of trustworthiness – ability, integrity and benevolence – at the beginning of a relationship. It was also hypothesized that additional information would gradually displace EI in forming the above perceptions. The results reveal that EI initially does not contribute to any of the perceptions of trustworthiness. As more information is revealed EI has an impact on the perception (...) of benevolence, but not on the perceptions of ability and integrity. This impact was observed to be negative when the nature of the information was negative. On the other hand, information alone was shown to have a significant impact on the perceptions of ability and integrity, but not on the perception of benevolence. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are addressed. (shrink)

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The (...) results of Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning. (shrink)

This article investigates the impact of different emotions on trust decisions taking into account the experience of betrayal. Thus, an experiment was created that included one betrayal group and one control group. Participants in the betrayal group experienced more intense feelings governed by negative emotions than participants in the control group did. Moreover, participants in the betrayal group significantly lowered their trust of another stranger. On the other hand, we found some evidence that neuroticism exaggerated the relationship between experienced (...) betrayal and subsequent trust. (shrink)

This paper testifies the crucial importance of Philosophy for Children for Emotional Growth. It begins by establishing the open ended character of emotional processes, showing how feminist philosophers have criticized the fixed conception of negative valence of certain emotions, and how, ultimately, the normative structure of emotions is open to modification. Then, it shows how talking about emotional processes and emotional situations can foster emotional growth once we understand that the acquisition of language and emotional vocabulary is one way (...) to best capture the openended character of emotions. Finally, attention is turned to Philosophy for Children. Taking as an illustration the emotion of hope and its importance to inquiry, the paper concludes by examining in what way P4C both benefits and reinforces the previous insights about emotion theory. (shrink)

Examining the significance of the General’s enlightenment in the Platform Sutra, this article clarifies the fundamental role that emotions play in the development of one’s spiritual understanding. In order to do so, this article emphasizes that the way to enlightenment implicit in the story of the General and the Master involves first granting negative emotions a means for productive expression. By acting as a preparatory measure for calming the mind and surrendering control over it, human passions become a necessary, (...) antecedent condition to wisdom—a conclusion that this article argues is a major, and sometimes underappreciated, lesson embedded in the teachings of the Sixth Patriarch. (shrink)

A narrative review of the major evidence concerning the relationship between emotional regulation and depression was conducted. The literature demonstrates a mediating role of emotional regulation in the development of depression and physical illness. Literature suggests in fact that the employment of adaptive emotional regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal) causes a reduction of stress-elicited emotions leading to physical disorders. Conversely, dysfunctional emotional regulation strategies and, in particular, rumination and emotion suppression appear to be influential in the pathogenesis of depression and (...) physiological disease. More specifically, the evidence suggests that depression and rumination affect both cognitive (e.g., impaired ability to process negative information) and neurobiological mechanisms (e.g., hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis overactivation and higher rates of cortisol production). Understanding the factors that govern the variety of health outcomes that different people experience following exposure to stress has important implications for the development of effective emotion-regulation interventional approaches (e.g., mindfulness-based therapy, emotion-focused therapy, and emotion regulation therapy). (shrink)

It is frequently argued that research findings in empirical moral psychology spell trouble for Kantian ethics. Sometimes the charge is merely that Kantianism is mistaken about the role of emotions in human action, but it has also been argued that empirical moral psychology ‘debunks’ Kantian ethics as the product of precisely the emotion-driven processes it fails to acknowledge. In this essay I argue for a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is that the ‘debunking’ argument (...) against Kantian ethics is invalid because it begs the central question. The positive thesis is that, because the empirical facts about human moral psychology are morally significant, Kantians can and should wholeheartedly embrace the current interest in this area of empirical research. As Kant himself emphasized, it is an indirect, imperfect duty to use available knowledge of morally relevant empirical psychological conditions and to put this in the service of moral agency. (shrink)

Testimonial injustices occur when individuals from particular social groups are systematically and persistently given less credibility in their claims merely because of their group identity. Recent “pluralistic” approaches to folk psychology, by taking into account the role of stereotypes in how we understand others, have the power to explain how and why cases of testimonial injustice occur. If how we make sense of others’ behavior depends on assumptions about how individuals from certain groups think and act, this can explain why (...) speakers are given different degrees of credibility depending on their group identity. For example, if people assume that women are more emotional than men, they will systematically give less credibility to women’s claims. This explanation involves three empirical claims: people assume that women are more emotional than men, people assume that emotionality hinders credibility, and people give less credibility to women’s claims. While extant studies provide some support for and, no study to date has directly tested. In two different studies, we tested all these three claims. The results from both studies provide support for, as we found significant negative correlations between emotionality and credibility attributions. However, in contrast to what some accounts of folk psychology posit, we did not find any significant difference in people’s attributions of emotionality and credibility towards women versus men speakers. We hope that our studies here pave the way for further empirical studies testing the phenomenon of testimonial injustice in a context-sensitive way, in order to have a better understanding of the conditions in which testimonial injustices are likely to happen. (shrink)

Empathy is essential in story comprehension as it requires understanding of the emotions and intentions of the characters. We evaluated the sensitivity of an emotional perspective-taking task using Aesop’s Fables in relation to empathy. Participants (N = 301) were presented with 15 short fables and were asked to rate the intensity of the emotions they would feel (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, joy, trust, and anticipation) by adopting the perspective of one of the characters (offender, victim) or the observer’s perspective. (...) A data-driven approach revealed that participants’ responses were aligned with the characters’ intentions, suggesting successful emotional perspective-taking. Participants sympathized with the victim rather than the offender, demonstrating affective sharing processes. Further, participants with higher empathy scores exhibited stronger negative emotions from the victim’s perspective, independently of their level of distress. Our task was not influenced by gender effects. We suggest that the Aesop’s Fables task could provide an indirect instrument to study empathy. (shrink)

Antti Kauppinen Les philosophes se sont efforcés de montrer que nous devons être vertueux pour être heureux. Mais tant que nous nous en tenons à la compréhension moderne du bonheur comme quelque chose de vécu par un sujet – et je soutiens contre les eudaimonistes contemporains que nous devrions effectivement le faire – il peut au mieux exister un lien de causalité contingent entre la vertu et le bonheur. Néanmoins, nous avons de bonnes raisons de penser qu’être vertueux est non (...) accidentellement propice au bonheur. Pourquoi? Premièrement, le bonheur est, sommairement, la condition expérientielle de jouir d’états phénoménaux affectifs principalement positifs concernant des choses qui sont subjectivement importantes pour nous. Je soutiens que ce sentimentalisme à propos du bonheur a plusieurs avantages par rapport à la conception de Daniel Haybron comme état émotionnel. Deuxièmement, dans la mesure où nous sommes vertueux, nous pouvons identifier correctement ce qui vaut la peine d’être fait dans notre situation particulière et nous la poursuivrons habilement. En même temps, nous ne sommes pas dérangés par des choses qui ne valent pas la peine d’être prises en charge ou de s’inquiéter. Par conséquent, les personnes vertueuses sont susceptibles de profiter d’émotions positives centrales liées au succès et à l’approbation des autres, et d’éviter les émotions négatives communes liées à la comparaison sociale ou à l’avarice. Bien que leur bonheur soit encore en partie une question de chance, il l’est dans une moindre mesure que pour le reste d’entre nous. (shrink)

Les émotions ont souvent été considérées comme une menace pour la moralité et la rationalité ; dans la tradition romantique, les passions étaient placées au centre de l'individualité humaine et de la vie morale. Cette ambivalence a conduit à une ambiguïté entre les termes des émotions pour les vices et les vertus. Spinoza déclare que les systèmes éthiques fondés sur l'auto-préservation tiennent également compte des éléments sociaux et culturels. Spinoza nous dit que le bonheur est le pouvoir d'être libéré de (...) la tyrannie des émotions négatives. Le bonheur n'est pas une récompense pour la vertu : c'est la vertu elle-même. Les sentiments sont nécessaires étant une expression mentale des émotions. À ce niveau, il est possible pour les émotions, à travers les sentiments, de prendre soin de son soi. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29121.07527. (shrink)

Bodily (dis)pleasures and emotions share the striking property of being valenced, i.e. they are positive or negative. What is valence? How do bodily (dis)pleasures and emotions relate to one another? This chapter assesses the prospects of two popular theses regarding the relation between bodily (dis)pleasures and emotions in light of what we can reasonably think about valence. According to the first thesis, the valence of bodily (dis)pleasures is explanatory prior vis-à-vis the valence of emotions. According to the second, emotions (...) contain bodily (dis)pleasures. I argue that bodily (dis)pleasures are intentional states whose valence is to be understood in terms of evaluative experience, and bring to light the similarities and dissimilarities between their intentional structure and that of emotions. On this backdrop, I offer reasons to conclude that we should adopt neither of the two theses. (shrink)

This essay argues that there are concrete emotion regulation practices described, but not developed, in Kierkegaard’s Christian Discourses. These practices—such as attentiveness to emotion, attentional deployment, and cognitive reappraisal—help the reader to regulate her emotions, to get rid of negative, unwanted emotions such as worry, and to cultivate and nourish positive emotions such as faith, gratitude, and trust. An examination of the Discourses also expose Kierkegaard’s understanding of the emotions; his view is akin to a perceptual theory (...) of the emotions that closely connects emotions and concerns. In particular, this analysis unearths two main regulatory strategies located in the Discourses, strategies that closely resemble present-day psychological accounts of emotion regulation. I conclude that contemporary research reinforces Kierkegaard’s philosophical analysis of emotions and emotion-regulation strategies. Drawing on this research provides the most persuasive interpretation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the emotions and emotion-regulation strategies. Additionally, present-day research clarifies the otherwise elusive, opaque strategies he describes. Finally, my analysis demonstrates that Kierkegaard’s work can uniquely contribute to the present-day psychological research by emphasizing the need for diachronic regulation strategies, while the contemporary literature overwhelmingly focuses on synchronic strategies. (shrink)

Whether intentional suppression of an unpleasant or unwanted memory reduces the ability to recall that memory subsequently is a contested issue in contemporary memory research. Building on findings that similar processes are recruited when individuals remember the past and imagine the future, we measured the effects of thought suppression on memory for imagined future scenarios. Thought suppression reduced the ability to recall emotionally negative scenarios, but not those that were emotionally positive. This finding suggests that intentionally avoiding thoughts about (...) emotionally negative episodes may inhibit representations of those memories, progressively reducing their availability to recall. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which Cordwainer Smith’s short story “Under Old Earth” problematizes emotions, who/what has them, and who/what is granted moral status. Most importantly, however, “Under Old Earth” questions the primacy of happiness in human society, especially where happiness is understood as the absence of other (negative) emotions. As such, “Under Old Earth” challenges the notion, widely held in contemporary ethics, that our moral obligation to one another is mediated through the goal of the attainment of (...) happiness. Through this challenge, Smith’s short story speaks directly to the current understanding of emotion in the field of AI, and complicates what the goal of affective computing should be. (shrink)

One way of understanding Kant’s views about moral emotions is the cultivation view. On this view, emotions play a role in Kantian morality provided they are properly cultivated. I evince a sceptical position about the cultivation view. First, I show that the textual evidence in support of cultivation is ambiguous. I then provide an account of emotions in Kant’s theory that explains both his positive and negative views about them. Emotions capture our attention such that they both disrupt the (...) mind’s composure and serve as a surrogate for reason. As such, Kant cannot recommend that we cultivate our emotions. (shrink)

The brain is considered to be the primary generator and regulator of emotions; however, afferent signals originating throughout the body are detected by the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and brainstem, and, in turn, can modulate emotional processes. During stress and negative emotional states, levels of cardiorespiratory coherence (CRC) decrease, and a shift occurs toward sympathetic dominance. In contrast, CRC levels increase during more positive emotional states, and a shift occurs toward parasympathetic dominance. Te dynamic changes in CRC that accompany (...) different emotions can provide insights into how the activity of the limbic system and afferent feedback manifest as emotions. The authors propose that the brainstem and CRC are involved in important feedback mechanisms that modulate emotions and higher cortical areas. That mechanism may be one of many mechanisms that underlie the physiological and neurological changes that are experienced during pranayama and meditation and may support the use of those techniques to treat various mood disorders and reduce stress. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the functioning of thought experiments in ethics. We will demonstrate that although many thought experiments in ethics can be reconstructed as arguments, according to the thesis defended by John Norton, its reconstructed version does not have the same epistemic force. We will argue that the reconstructed versions are not capable of bringing the same type of understanding in relation to thought experiments, which have an explanatory advantage that arguments do not have. Therefore, arguments are not (...) a sufficient condition for solving problems within ethics and also within thought experiments in this area. We will argue that emotions can be one of the non-argumentative factors that can produce negative and positive interference on thought experimenters and thought experiment, which cannot be demonstrated accurately in the reconstructed version. In this way, the reconstructed version is not able to convey an adequate understanding of emotions and other influences. Finally, we will elaborate on two thought experiments that demonstrate the need to use emotions in moral actions based on the criticism produced by Flávio Williges against traditional moral theories. These thought experiments can be reconstructed as arguments, but without giving us the same understanding that thought experiments are capable of. (shrink)

Introduction: A general trend in the psychological literature suggests that guilt contributes to morality more than shame does. Unlike shame-prone individuals, guilt-prone individuals internalize the causality of negative events, attribute responsibility in the first person, and engage in responsible behavior. However, it is not known how guilt- and shame-proneness interact with the attribution of responsibility to others. -/- Methods: In two Web-based experiments, participants reported their attributions of moral culpability (i.e., responsibility, causality, punishment and decision-making) about morally ambiguous acts (...) of killing in different conditions. In Study 1 the vignettes were presented in the 1st person, while in Study 2 in the 3rd person. To test proneness to guilt and shame, we utilized the GASP scale, which differentiates between the affective and behavioral components of each emotion. Statistical analyses were performed in Matlab and R. -/- Results: We found that guilt- and shame-proneness were associated with the severity of attributions in both the first and the third person, but the effect was strong only in the guilt case (both subtypes) and shame-affect case, and not in the shame-behavior case. We call this the Moralizing Effect. -/- Discussion: We wonder whether our finding that guilt-prone people tend to attribute a higher degree of culpability to others is really consistent with the view that guilt motivates people to choose the “moral paths in life”. This echoes views about the harmful aspects of guilt, which have been expressed historically in philosophy, for example, by Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

In this study, we examine some factors of the subjective emotional influences that may affect volunteers’ likelihood to respond negatively to requests for favors.

The present study aims to examine the relationship between the cortical midline structures (CMS), which have been regarded to be associated with selfhood, and moral decision making processes at the neural level. Traditional moral psychological studies have suggested the role of moral self as the moderator of moral cognition, so activity of moral self would present at the neural level. The present study examined the interaction between the CMS and other moral-related regions by conducting psycho-physiological interaction analysis of functional images (...) acquired while 16 subjects were solving moral dilemmas. Furthermore, we performed Granger causality analysis to demonstrate the direction of influences between activities in the regions in moral decision-making. We first demonstrate there are significant positive interactions between two central CMS seed regions—i.e., the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)—and brain regions associated with moral functioning including the cerebellum, brainstem, midbrain, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula (AI); on the other hand, the posterior insula (PI) showed significant negative interaction with the seed regions. Second, several significant Granger causality was found from CMS to insula regions particularly under the moral-personal condition. Furthermore, significant dominant influence from the AI to PI was reported. Moral psychological implications of these findings are discussed. The present study demonstrated the significant interaction and influence between the CMS and morality-related regions while subject were solving moral dilemmas. Given that, activity in the CMS is significantly involved in human moral functioning. (shrink)