Open research questions in Emotions and Moral Behavior

What the literature leaves open

• The lack of a clear understanding of social anger's imperatival intentionality. The need for a new analysis of generic social anger. The requirement for a rebuttal of objections against the thesis that social anger is imperatival.

  Social anger and moral resentment as imperative attitudes: the AAA account · 2026 · DOI

• The paper identifies a gap in the literature on affective injustice and the moral psychology of affective beings. It argues that attending to affective self-respect contributes to our understanding of how we can be wronged in affective regards.

  Affective self-respect and affective injustice · 2026 · DOI

• further research could investigate the impact of other emotions on decision-making, - future studies could use different decision problems, - research could explore the neural basis of emotion-induced decision-making

  Guilt emotion and decision-making under uncertainty · 2025 · DOI

• While emotional experiences and cognitive beliefs heavily influence human sexuality, the specific roles of emotion regulation strategies and sexual attitudes in predicting sexual shame remain underexplored.

  Differential Associations of Emotion Regulation Strategies and Sexual Attitudes with Sexual Shame: A Generalized Additive Model Analysis · 2026 · DOI

• The paper identifies a gap in the understanding of how moral emotions influence decision-making under risk. Prior studies have focused on the impact of fear and anger on risk assessment, but the impact of guilt is not well understood.

  Guilt emotion and decision-making under uncertainty · 2025 · DOI

• We begin to address this gap in the literature by examining the relationship between frames, emotion, and sentiment in individual claimsmaking.

  Political Claimsmaking and Emotional Expression · 2025 · DOI

• r = R-'(c - k - Pp) This equation has not been studied in simulations or empirical studies, but it might provide an approach to identifying people's desires for certain roles to confirm status characteristics, personality traits, or moods after events have created a certain self- impression.

  Affect control theory: Concepts and model · 1987 · DOI

• Just as with biological evolution, social evolution is not characterized by an unidirectional upward movement.

  On the Interaction of Opposites in Psychological Processes · 1987 · DOI

• The study faced challenges in recruiting a large, diverse sample of participants. The use of a preexisting data set limited the generalizability of the findings. The study required the development of a novel experimental paradigm to examine moral guilt reactions to violence.

  Sex differences in moral guilt reactions to justified and unjustified violence: insights from psychology and neuroscience · 2026 · DOI

• Despite a wealth of empirical evidence documenting psychological and neurological sex differences in empathy, guilt, and reactions to violence, no research has explicitly tied these literatures together. There is a need for studies that examine the relationships between empathy, guilt, violence reaction, and the effect of sex thereon.

  Sex differences in moral guilt reactions to justified and unjustified violence: insights from psychology and neuroscience · 2026 · DOI

• Impact StatementAwe, an emotion of increasing interest, has been studied with fMRI and peripheral physiology - but few studies have used electroencephalography (EEG).

  Complexity as a Potential Neurophysiological Correlate of Awe · 2026 · DOI

• The study faced challenges in measuring emotional expression in online comments. The use of a large-language model as a measuring instrument introduced potential bias or error. The study's sample was limited to the author's Facebook profile, which may not be generalizable to other populations.

  Sardonic Vigilance: Emotional Self-Discipline and Politics-Over-Missiles Reactivity in Ukraine's Wartime Online Professional Stratum · 2026 · DOI

• Future research could explore the generalizability of the study's findings to other populations and contexts. Further research could investigate the implications of the study's findings for the development of social media strategies in wartime and crisis contexts.

  Sardonic Vigilance: Emotional Self-Discipline and Politics-Over-Missiles Reactivity in Ukraine's Wartime Online Professional Stratum · 2026 · DOI

• Future research should examine the influence of facial cues on pain perception in real-life settings. Future research should investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the perception of pain and emotions. Future research should examine the implications of the findings for healthcare providers and patients.

  Pain Outweighs Negative Emotions in the Perception of Facial Configuration Sequences · 2026 · DOI

• The sample size was limited to 135 college students in Study 1 and 116 college students in Study 2. The study only used two types of touch and did not investigate other forms of affective touch.

  Could Affective Touch Alleviate the Negative Effects of Social Exclusion? · 2026 · DOI

• Originality/value While the harmful effects of destructive leadership are well-documented, little is known about the threatening nature of DT leaders, triggering fear and defensive responses.

  Between fear and fascination: threat- and fascination-related affective responses to Dark Triad leaders and their motivational consequences · 2026 · DOI

• , 2019; Galla & Duckworth, 2015), the extent to which empathic responding in crisis negotiators operates in this manner remains an open empirical question. While the findings raise the possibility that trained empathic responding may be relatively robust under conditions of reduced self-reg- ulatory capacity, further research is required before drawing conclusions for training or practice.

  Ego depletion and empathy: exploring self-regulatory resource depletion in hostage and crisis negotiators · 2026 · DOI

• Limitations to this study stem from methodological, empirical, and theoretical considerations. Limitations set by the study’s methodology include the relatively small sample size, which fluctuated due to subject actors not always being able to hit all semi-scripted data points in the dialogue designed to maximize ecological validity, as well as a technological failure of one agency’s installed recording equipment, and the ECCS’s responsiveness to verbally communicated empathy only. With an average sample size of 31 across all measured variables tested, Experiment 2 is at an increased risk of reporting false negatives and missing an authentically present, a priori hypothesized effect (i.e., in the form of a type II error). The elaborate and timeconsuming experimental research design, along with the focus on a sample of the rare and restricted population of police crisis negotiators, limited the sample size possible for the research. Having said this, the number of participants included follows the tradition of more than 20 years of ego depletion research, whose landmark studies have often relied on sample sizes of comparable, and even smaller statistical power, with inter-subject designs of sample sizes between 50 and 100 participants (Ainsworth et al., 2014; Baumeister et al., 1998; DeWall et al., 2007; Muraven et al., 1998; Osgood & Muraven, 2015; Thompson & Campbell, 2004). According to Thompson and Campbell (2004), a sample of 22 participants will detect a small effect at 0.20 powered at 0.8 (beta 0.2). Still, despite sufficient statistical power, the relatively small sample size (and the geographical limitation of the sample to Germany) limits the study’s external validity to a generalizability of within the population of German crisis negotiators. Conclusions drawn for similar populations in other nations or beyond this specific population remain suggestive in nature and call for further research with larger and less geographically restricted samples to be conducted. In addition, variability in the effectiveness of ego depletion manipulations represents a further methodological consideration. Prior research has demonstrated that commonly used depletion paradigms, such as the letter-crossing task, can yield substantially different effect sizes depending on their specific implementation. For example, the inclusion or 1 3B.

  Ego depletion and empathy: exploring self-regulatory resource depletion in hostage and crisis negotiators · 2026 · DOI

• Future research could explore the implications of the author's alternative understanding of trust. Further study could examine the role of reactive feelings in different types of relationships. Research could investigate the strategies for building and maintaining trust in light of the paper's findings.

  Breaking Trust and Relocating Reactive Feelings · 2026 · DOI

• The prevailing view that reactive feelings are inherent to trust is problematic. There is a need for an alternative understanding of trust. The paper identifies a gap in the literature regarding the nature of trust and reactive feelings.

  Breaking Trust and Relocating Reactive Feelings · 2026 · DOI

• Further analysis of the role of gratitude in international relations. Examination of the impact of social media on the expression and demand for gratitude in political contexts.

  Thankful Enough? Gratitude and Ingratitude in Politics · 2026 · DOI

• Future research could investigate the role of lyrics in music-elicited tears in different cultures. Future research could examine the relationship between lyrics and musical characteristics in evoking emotions. Future research could develop music therapy programs that use lyrics to evoke emotions in listeners.

  Song Lyrics That Make Us Cry · 2026 · DOI

• There is a gap in research on the lyrics of tear-eliciting songs. Prior research has focused on personal associations, situational factors, and musical characteristics, but not on the lyrics themselves.

  Song Lyrics That Make Us Cry · 2026 · DOI

• Thus, future research should explore the relationship between context and crying manner in greater detail, considering both negative and positive crying situations. Future research should examine whether similar patterns emerge across diverse cultural contexts. , just moist eyes versus tears flowing down the cheek) indicate that crying intensity is closely linked to personality traits and mood recovery outcomes (Gračanin & Vingerhoets, 2024), suggesting that crying manner and intensity are intertwined aspects of emotional expression that should be examined together.

  Does the Crying Manner Affect Social Support Intentions? The Moderating Role of Unhelpful Social Beliefs About Crying · 2026 · DOI

• Prior research has focused primarily on the role of CU traits. There is a need to investigate the relationship between each psychopathic trait and facial emotion recognition.

  Emotion Recognition in a Community Sample of Children: Unpacking the Contribution of Psychopathic Traits · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Emotions and Moral Behavior

• A circumplex model of affect. · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 1980 · 12,170 citations
• Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 1983 · 8,022 citations
• Measuring emotion: The self-assessment manikin and the semantic differential · Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry · 1994 · 7,765 citations
• An argument for basic emotions · Cognition & Emotion · 1992 · 6,468 citations
• Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect. · Psychological Review · 1987 · 5,019 citations
• Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. · Psychological Review · 2003 · 4,047 citations
• Mood and memory. · American Psychologist · 1981 · 4,032 citations
• Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations · Annual Review of Psychology · 1982 · 4,009 citations
• Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state. · Psychological Review · 1962 · 3,901 citations
• Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences · Psychophysiology · 2002 · 3,535 citations

Most recent work

• SΔϕ-59 — Affective Cost Orientation Index · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
• Emotions, ethics, relations: a conversation on research in war · International Feminist Journal of Politics · 2026
• Between fear and fascination: threat- and fascination-related affective responses to Dark Triad leaders and their motivational consequences · Journal of Managerial Psychology · 2026
• Two more elephants in the room: autistic psychiatrists and autistic shame · The British Journal of Psychiatry · 2026
• Seeing Anger Without Self-Blame and its Association with Depression: Insights from a Morphed Face Study · Cognitive Therapy and Research · 2026
• Turning the envious boss into a friend or a foe: The emotional and behavioral reactions to being envied by one’s supervisor and its impact on leader–member exchange. · Journal of Applied Psychology · 2026
• Maternal Meta-Emotion Philosophy Across Cultures: How Beijing Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, and European American Mothers Make Sense of Dismissing Children’s Negative Emotions · Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology · 2026
• Relational affect and authenticity in themed space: China’s “Uniquely Henan” · Tourist Studies · 2026
• Identity-Based Irrationality and the Goal-Directed Theory of Emotions · Emotion Review · 2026
• Emotional Self-Dissonance · Emotion Review · 2026

Related topics in Psychology