Jazmin Sidney

Doctoral Thesis

We tend to blame people less for the wrongs they commit while emotional. However, empirical research has demonstrated that although we consider emotion to mitigate blame, we do not consider emotion to mitigate praise. That is, we do not praise people less for the good deeds they commit while emotional. Current research has suggested that this blame/praise asymmetry is a result of our good true self bias. This is the bias we have to assume people are good ‘deep down inside’. This bias inclines us to assume that negative emotional actions do not reflect a person’s true self, but that positive emotional actions do. However, this explanation faces a central problem. Clearly, we often do blame people fully, so what causes the good true self bias to sometimes be in effect and sometimes not? Regarding the issue at hand, the question of importance is why emotions in particular ‘trigger’ the good true self bias. This leads to another problem. Not all emotions reduce blame. For instance, envy and boredom usually do not make one less blameworthy for their actions. But why do these emotions then stand as exceptions to the good true self bias?

Many other questions are left unanswered by the good true self bias explanation. For example, it is clear that different emotions reduce blame to different degrees. Anger is more blame-reducing than grumpiness in some obvious sense. But why is this the case? The most intuitive way to explain relative blame-reduction on a good true self bias account would be that the more negative an action is, the less we blame, since the more negative an action is, the less it would reflect the presumed good true self. But this is untenable as an explanation. First, it is false: the worse an action is, the more we blame, and second, it does not explain why different emotions could be differently blame-reducing for the same action. Anger can mitigate blame for murder, but grumpiness certainly can’t. A final unanswered question is that theoretical and empirical work has thus far only considered how we blame and praise when negatively-valenced emotions, like anger and fear, lead to morally wrong actions and when positively-valenced emotions, like empathy and sympathy, lead to morally right actions. But what happens when negatively-valenced emotions lead to morally right actions and when positively-valenced emotions lead to morally wrong actions? Does the asymmetry still stand, and if not, why?

My PhD project, which is generously funded by the Neurophilosophy Scholarship from The Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences - LMU, will answer these questions through both theoretical and empirical methods.