Moral Emotions and Repair

People often categorize their emotions into positive and negative, with “happiness” and its derivatives being positive and “sadness,” “fear,” “disgust,” and “anger” being negative. While it’s easy to think of these emotions in terms of valence (or how good they might make us feel), this delineation is not conducive in helping us navigate relationships and the world around us. US Americans have difficulties accepting these negative emotions, which can greatly impact our ability to discuss and make sense of them. As such, it’s probably time to start thinking of our emotions in terms of “helpful” or “not helpful.” That distinction allows for more nuance than “positive or negative,” and it helps us know what to do about that emotion. However, even if we make that shift, US Americans have a harder time accepting anger, guilt, and shame than many of the other “negative” emotions. If you’ve ever wondered what the reason for that is, it’s because anger, guilt, and shame are considered “moral emotions.”

Moral emotions communicate information about our judgments, values, morals, and ways of being, and there are three moral emotions that we most often manage: shame, guilt, and anger. People have a hard time talking about these emotions because they are rarely discussed in a helpful light and only ever shared when they are negative or unhelpful. Because these emotions are moral in nature, we think of them as judgments about our character, so we tend to act as though they are private and personal rather than deeply informative about our relationships and how we manage them. However, as you may know from personal experience, these are the emotions that get in the way of our relationships the most. How many of us have said something they didn’t mean out of anger? What about times when we’ve allowed ourselves to take on too much because we felt guilty about saying no?

Moral emotions communicate information about our judgments, values, morals, and ways of being, and there are three moral emotions that we most often manage: shame, guilt, and anger. People have a hard time talking about these emotions because they are rarely discussed in a helpful light and only ever shared when they are negative or unhelpful. Because these emotions are moral in nature, we think of them as judgments about our character, so we tend to act as though they are private and personal rather than deeply informative about our relationships and how we manage them. However, as you may know from personal experience, these are the emotions that get in the way of our relationships the most. How many of us have said something they didn’t mean out of anger? What about times when we’ve allowed ourselves to take on too much because we felt guilty about saying no?

Moral emotions communicate information about our judgments, values, morals, and ways of being, and there are three moral emotions that we most often manage: shame, guilt, and anger. People have a hard time talking about these emotions because they are rarely discussed in a helpful light and only ever shared when they are negative or unhelpful. Because these emotions are moral in nature, we think of them as judgments about our character, so we tend to act as though they are private and personal rather than deeply informative about our relationships and how we manage them. However, as you may know from personal experience, these are the emotions that get in the way of our relationships the most. How many of us have said something they didn’t mean out of anger? What about times when we’ve allowed ourselves to take on too much because we felt guilty about saying no?

You might be wondering: how do we use these emotions in a helpful way? Well, let’s start with the purpose of each emotion. While emotions are neutral (rather than positive or negative), they give us goals for how to interact with others. Once we understand that goal, we can choose to respond to that emotion in a way that focuses on repair rather than harm.

The goal of anger is to ensure that our boundaries are not crossed and that we can remain safe from threats; in the case of moral emotions, those threats might be against our value systems or ideas about the world. Anger can be used to help repair relationships in which we feel violated because we can address feelings of safety. If we can talk with the other party about the boundary violation, then we can work towards a place of mutual safety and increased cooperation. If we cannot have that conversation or if the boundary continues being violated, anger informs us that we must make a choice about how to engage with that person.

Guilt, in a healthy form, informs us that we’ve made a mistake and that something about the way in which we have behaved goes against our moral code or has harmed someone about whom we care. We can use that feeling of guilt to help us make amends and recognize the behavior that caused that emotion, which leads to us taking responsibility and accountability for our actions.

Shame is a little trickier, to be certain. It gives us the sense that something about us is wrong rather than our behavior. I’ll be honest and say that, often, that’s not helpful; however, shame often covers feelings of sadness and anger, and these emotions are helpful in working towards repair. Additionally, when we feel shame, it is because others have told us that something is incorrect, and, as children, we cannot differentiate shame from guilt. As such, we learn cultural values from shame, and we can remember what shame feels like. We can use that experience to find a different way to communicate our values by making sure that we empathize with others and do our best to avoid that feeling of shame.

So, in summary, moral emotions are the feelings that communicate our boundaries and values with ourselves and others. The biggest moral emotions we experience are anger, guilt, and shame, and we don’t talk about them often because they’re hard to feel and experience in the United States’ culture. However, moral emotions offer a huge reservoir of repair if we can learn how to access them. Allow yourself to be angry at a boundary crossing, make sense of guilt when you make a mistake, and grow after shame. These emotions provide healthy information that we can use to deepen our relationships with others, and they deserve to have a place among joy, sadness, fear, disgust, and surprise.