Moral emotions are a variety of social emotion that are involved in forming and communicating moral judgments and decisions, and in motivating behavioral responses to one's own and others' moral behavior.[122][123][124] While moral reasoning has been the focus of most study of morality dating all the way back to Plato and Aristotle, the emotive side of morality was historically looked upon with disdain in early moral psychology research.[122] However, in the last 30–40 years, there has been a rise in a new front of research: moral emotions as the basis for moral behavior.[124] This development began with a focus on empathy and guilt, but has since moved on to encompass new scholarship on emotions such as anger, shame, disgust, awe, and elevation. While different moral transgressions have been linked to different emotional reactions, bodily reactions to such transgressions are not too different and can be characterized by some felt activations in the gut area as well as the head area
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