Morality, strategy, and emotions: What can contemporary psychological research tell us about their relationship?

Abstract

Previous research has shown that morality matters to strategy, often through emotions. However, this research has not fully engaged with contemporary psychological research to enunciate our understanding of the relationship between morality, strategy, and emotions. This article argues that a proper engagement with contemporary psychological research usefully contributes to our understanding of the given relationship, particularly in the context of strategic studies. Specifically, contemporary psychological research highlights the importance of distinguishing among various specific emotions, explains the complicated relationship between emotion and behavior, allows for finding patterns in variance, and offers an opportunity to study the malleability of morality in strategic context. This improved understanding of the relevant relationship provides solid grounds for further research on the subject.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Colin S. Gray, Fighting talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace and Strategy (London: Praeger Security International, 2007), 106.

2 John W. Lango, The Ethics of Armed Conflict: A Cosmopolitan Just War Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 2014).

3 Jerome A. Shaffer, “An Assessment of Emotion,” American Philosophical Quarterly 20/2 (1983), 161–73.

4 Kenneth Payne, “Fighting on: Emotion and Conflict Termination,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 28, no. 3 (2015): 480–97; Lukas Milevski, “Battle and Its Emotional Effect in War Termination,” Comparative Strategy 39, no. 6 (2020): 535–48; Samuel Zilincik, “The Role of Emotions in Military Strategy,” Texas National Security Review 5, no. 2 (2022): 12–25; Jonathan Shimshoni, “Swords and Emotions: The American Civil War and Society-Centric Strategy,” Survival 64, no. 2 (2022): 141–66.

5 Colin Gray, “Moral Advantage, Strategic Advantage?,” Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 3 (2010): 333–365; David Lonsdale, “Beyond Just War: Military Strategy for the Common Good,” Journal of Military Ethics 15, no. 2, (2016): 100–121.

6 Bryce Heubner, Susan Dwyer, and Marc Hauser, “The Role of Emotion in Moral Psychology,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 1 (2009): 1–6; Elizabeth J. Horberg, Christopher Ovels, and Dacher Keltner, “Emotions as Moral Amplifiers: An Appraisal Tendency Approach to the Influences of Distinct Emotions upon Moral Judgment,” Emotion Review 3, no. 3 (2011): 237–44.

7 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (New York: Penguin Books, 1974).

8 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War; Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1979).

9 Miriam C. de Graaff, Michelle Schut, Desiree E.M. Verweij, Eric Vermetten & Ellen Giebels, “Emotional Reactions and Moral Judgment: The Effects of Morally Challenging Interactions in Military Operations,” Ethics & Behavior 26, no. 1 (2016): 14–31; Tom McDermott and Stephen Hart, “Armouring against Atrocity: Developing Ethical Strength in Small Military Units,” in Military Ethics and Leadership, ed. Peter Olsthoorn (Leiden: Brill, 2017): 16–55; Ronald C. Arkin, “The Case for Ethical Autonomy in Unmanned Systems,” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (2010): 332–341; Jurriaan van Diggelen, Jason S. Metcalfe, Karel van den Bosch, Mark Neerincx, José Kerstholt, “Role of emotions in responsible military AI,” Ethics and Information Technology 25, no. 17 (2023): 1–4.

10 David Traven, Law and Sentiment in International Politics: Ethics, Emotions, and the Evolution of the Laws of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Vesselin Popovski, “Emotions and International Law,” in Emotions in International Politics: Beyond Mainstream International Relations, eds. Yohan Ariffin, Jean-Marc Coicaud, and Vesselin Popovski (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016): 184–203.

11 Beatrice Heuser, “The Slow Rediscovery of Peace as the Ultimate War Aim,” Politique Étrangère, no. 2 (2014): xi–xii; Khaled Fattah and Karin.M. Fierke, “A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East,” European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 1 (2009): 67–93.

12 Jennifer S. Lerner, Ye Li, Piercarlo Valdesolo, and Karim S. Kassam, “Emotion and Decision Making,” Annual Review of Psychology 66, no. 1 (2015): 799–823.

13 G. Wallace and A. D. M. Walker, “Introduction,” in The Definition of Morality, eds. G. Wallace and A. D. M. Walker (London: The Camelot Press Ltd, 1970), 1–20.

14 Jonathan Haidt, “Morality,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3, no. 1 (2008): 65–72; C. H. Whiteley, ‘On Defining “Moral”‘, in The Definition of Morality, eds. G. Wallace and A. D. M. Walker (London: The Camelot Press Ltd, 1970), 22–24.

15 Horberg, Ovels, and Keltner, “Emotions as Moral Amplifiers,” 237–44.

16 Ira Roseman, “A Model of Appraisal in the Emotion System: Integrating Theory, Research, and Applications,” in Appraisal Process in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research, eds. Klaus Scherer, Angela Schorr, and Tom Johnstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001), 67.

17 Jonathan Haidt, “The Moral Emotions,” in Handbook of Affective Sciences, eds. Richard J. Davidson, Klaus R. Scherer, and Hill H. Goldsmith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 853.

18 This conceptualization of strategy has been inspired by previous scholarship on the subject, notably by the works of Colin Gray. See, for instance, Gray, Fighting Talk.

19 Hew Strachan, “The Lost Meaning of Strategy,” Survival 47, no. 3 (2005): 33–54.

20 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.

21 Ibid, Book III, Para 69–85.

22 For a more in-depth discussion of this subject, see David Cohen, “War, Moderation, and Revenge in Thucydides,” Journal of Military Ethics 5, no. 4 (2006): 270–289; Tim Rood, “Emotions in Thucydides: Revisiting the Final Battle in Syracuse Harbour,” in Emotions and Narrative in Ancient Literature and Beyond, eds. Mathieu de Bakker, Baukje van den Berg, and Jacqueline Klooster (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 381–396.

23 Matthew Kroenig, Machiavelli and the Naissance of Modern Strategy, in The New Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Hall Brands (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), 91–115; Timothy J. Lukes, “Lionizing Machiavelli,” American Political Science Review 95, no. 3 (2001): 561–575; Nicole Hochner, “Machiavelli: Love and the Economy of Emotions,” Italian Culture, 32, no. 2 (2014): 122–137.

24 Daniel J. Kapust, “Acting the Princely Style: Ethos and Pathos in Cicero’s On the Ideal Orator and Machiavelli’s The Prince,” Political Studies 58 (2010), 590–608.

25 Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on the first decade of Titus Livius, trans. Ninian H. Thomson (New York: Wilder Publications, 2015), 123, 307.

26 For Clausewitz’s emphasis on the close interaction between emotions and military power, see Nikolas Gardner, “An Object Suspended Between Three Magnets? A Closer Look at Clausewitz’s Trinity,” Military Strategy Magazine 7, no. 3 (2021): 26–31. For Clausewitz’s discussion of morality and warfare, see Paul Cornish, “Clausewitz and the Ethics of Armed Force: Five Propositions,” Journal of Military Ethics 2, no. 3 (2003): 213–226.

27 Clausewitz, On War, 138.

28 Sibylle Scheipers, Carl von Clausewitz and Moral Victories, in Moral Victories: The Ethics of Winning Wars, eds. Andrew R. Hom, Cian O’Driscoll, and Kurt Mills (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 34–51.

29 Colin Gray, “Moral Advantage, Strategic Advantage?,” 333–365; David Lonsdale, “Beyond Just War,” 100–121.

30 Payne, “Fighting on: Emotion and Conflict Termination,” 480–97; Milevski, Battle and Its Emotional Effect in War Termination,” 535–48; Zilincik, “The Role of Emotions in Military Strategy,” 12–25; Shimshoni, “Swords and Emotions,” 141–66.

31 Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism, 32–34, 94–97.

32 A nice overview of the relevant research can be found in Deanna L.Messervey and Erinn C.Squires, “Empirical Research on Military Ethical Behaviour,” in Handbook of Military Sciences 2020, ed. Anders McD Sookermany (Online, Springer, 2020): 1–19.

33 J. Peter Bradley, “Why People Make the Wrong Choices – The Psychology of Ethical Failure,” in The Moral Dimension of Asymmetrical Warfare, eds. Th.A. van Baarda and D.E.M. Verweij (Leiden: Brill, 2009): 279–311.

34 Michael H. Thomson, Barbara D. Adams, Megan M. Thompson and Joseph V. Baranski, “Impetus to Action: Moral and Ethical Decision-Making in Canadian Forces Operations,” in Ethical Decision-Making in the New Security Environment, eds. Emily J. Spencer and Daniel Lagacé-Roy (Kingston: Canadian Defence Academy Press: 121–138).

35 Graaff et al., “Emotional Reactions and Moral Judgment,” 14–31.

36 Marcus Schulzke, Pursuing Moral Warfare: Ethics in American, British, and Israeli Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2019), 44–51.

37 McDermott and Hart, “Armouring against Atrocity,” 22, 25.

38 An overview of such studies can be found in Miriam C. de Graaff, Femke D.A. den Besten, Ellen Giebels and Desiree E.M. Verweij, “Moral Judgement in War and Peacekeeping Operations: An Empirical Review,” in Military Ethics and Leadership, ed. Peter Olsthoorn (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 230–265.

39 Peter Olsthoorn, Military Ethics and Virtues: An interdisciplinary approach for the 21st century (New York: Routledge, 2011).

40 Ibid, 51.

41 Ibid, 46.

42 Ibid, 14.

43 Popovski, Emotions and International Law.

44 Neta Crawford, “The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships,” International Security 24, no. 4 (2000): 116–56.

45 Traven, Law and Sentiment in International Politics, 6.

46 Ibid, 76.

47 Nancy Sherman, “Empathy, Respect, and Humanitarian Intervention,” Ethics & International Affairs 12 (1998): 103–119.

48 Ronald C. Arkin, “The Case for Ethical Autonomy in Unmanned Systems,” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (2010): 332–341.

49 Diggelen et al., “Role of emotions in responsible military,” 1–4. James Johnson, “The AI Commander Problem: Ethical, Political, and Psychological Dilemmas of Human-Machine Interactions in AI-enabled Warfare,” Journal of Military Ethics 21, no. 3–4 (2022): 246–271.

50 Kenneth Payne, Strategy, Evolution, and War: From Apes to Artificial Intelligence (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2018).

51 Payne, Strategy, Evolution, and War, 187–189.

52 Ibid, 173–174.

53 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New: Basic Books, 1977).

54 Anthony Coates, “Culture, the Enemy and the Moral Restraint of War,” in The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions, eds. Richard Sorabji and David Rodin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 208–221.

55 Coates, “Culture, the Enemy and the Moral Restraint of War,” 214.

56 Ibid, 217.

57 Ibid.

58 Brent Steele discusses this issue in the context of collective desire for revenge. See Brent J. Steele “Revenge, Affect, and Just War,” in Just War: Authority, Tradition, and Practice, eds. Lang, Anthony F.; O’Driscoll, Cian; Williams, John (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2013), 197–212.

59 Beatrice Heuser, “The Slow Rediscovery of Peace as the Ultimate War Aim,” xi–xii.

60 Beatrice Heuser, “Defeat as Moral Victory: The Historical Experience,” in Moral Victories: The Ethics of Winning Wars, ed. Andrew R. Hom, Cian O’Driscoll, and Kurt Mills (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 63, 65.

61 Ibid, 65–66.

62 Khaled Fattah and Karin M. Fierke, “A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East,” European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 1 (2009): 67–93.

63 Laia Ballcels, Rivalry and Revenge: The Politics of Violence During Civil War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017), 38–39.

64 Daniel Philpott, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

65 Neta Crawford, “Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 1, (2003): 5–25.

66 Jerrold M. Post, “When Hatred Is Bred in the Bone: Psycho-Cultural Foundations of Contemporary Terrorism,” Political Psychology 26, no. 4 (2005), 615–636.

67 Luke Campbell and Brent J. Steele, “The scars of victory,” in Moral Victories: The Ethics of Winning Wars, eds. Andrew R. Hom, Cian O’Driscoll, and Kurt Mills (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 149.

68 Lerner et al., “Emotion and Decision Making,” 800–801.

69 Haidt, “The Moral Emotions,” 853.

70 Haidt, “The Moral Emotions,” 864.

71 Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, “Dimensions of Moral Emotions,” Emotion Review 3, no. 3, (2011): 258–260.

72 Maartje Elshout and Rob M. A. Nelissen and Ilja van Beest, “Conceptualising Humiliation,” Cognition and Emotion 31, no. 8 (2017): 1581–1594; Agneta Fischer and Eran Halperin and Daphna Canetti and Alba Jasini, “Why We Hate,” Emotion Review 10, no. 4 (2018): 309–320; Ven, Niels van de and Marcel Zeelenberg, and Rik Pieters, “Appraisal Patterns of Envy and Related Emotions,” Motivation and Emotion 36 (2012): 195–204.

73 Jennifer S. Lerner and Dacher Keltner, “Fear, Anger and Risk,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 1 (July 2001): 146–59.

74 Valerie Morkevičius, “From Anger to Action: Moral Emotions and the Invasion of Ukraine,” Ethics and International Affairs (blog), 15 March 2022, available at: https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2022/from-anger-to-action-moral-emotions-and-the-invasion-of-ukraine/.

75 Nico H. Frijda, “Emotions and Action,” in Feelings and emotions: The Amsterdam symposium, eds. Antony S. R. Manstead, Nico H. Frijda, & Agneta Fischer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 158–173.

76 Lukas Milevski, “Western strategy’s two logics: Diverging interpretations,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 46, no. 1 (2023): 180–206.

77 Nico H. Frijda, Antony S. R. Manstead, and Sacha Bem, “The Influence of Emotions on Beliefs,” in Emotions and Beliefs: How Feelings Influence Thoughts, eds. Nico H. Frijda, Antony S. R. Manstead, and Sacha Bem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 3.

78 Heubner, Dwyer, and Hauser, “The Role of Emotion in Moral Psychology,” 1, 5.

79 June P. Tangney, Jeff Stuewig, and Debra J. Mashek, “Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior,” Annual Review of Psychology 58 (2007): 347.

80 Ira J. Roseman, “Emotional Behaviors, Emotivational Goals, Emotion Strategies: Multiple Levels of Organization Integrate Variable and Consistent Responses,” Emotion Review 3, no. 4 (2011): 434–43.

81 Hand Baumgartner, Rik Pieters, and Richard P. Bagozzi, “Future-oriented emotions: Conceptualization and behavioral effects,” European Journal of Social Psychology 38 (2008): 685–696.

82 Frijda, “Emotions and Action,” 158–173.

83 Ibid, 164–168.

84 Robin Markwica, Emotional Choices: How the Logic of Affect Shapes Coercive Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

85 Agnes Moors, “Theories of emotion causation: A review,” Cognition and Emotion 23, no. 4 (2009): 625–662.

86 Batja. Mesquita, Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2022); Lisa F. Barrett, How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).

87 Tina Malti and Monika Keller, “The development of moral emotions in a cultural context,” in Emotions, aggression, and morality in children: Bridging development and psychopathology, eds. William F. Arsenio & Elizabeth A. Lemerise (American Psychological Association, 2010), 177–198. Jonathan Haidt also discusses this issue in Haidt, “Moral Emotions,” 852–870.

88 Rob Bodice, The History of Emotions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017).

89 For an excellent discussion about the aspirations of contemporary strategic studies research, see Isabelle Duyvesteyn and James E. Worrall, “Global strategic studies: a manifesto,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 3 (2017): 347–357.

90 Agnes Moors, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Klaus R. Scherer, Nico H. Frijda, “Appraisal theories of emotion: State of the art and future development,” Emotion Review 5, no. 2 (2013): 119–124.

91 Craig A. Smith and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, “Patterns of Cognitive Appraisal in Emotion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48. no. 4 (1985): 813–838; Ira J. Roseman, “A Model of Appraisal in the Emotion System: Integrating Theory, Research, and Applications,” in Appraisal Process in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research, eds. Klaus R. Scherer, Angela Schorr, and Tom Johnstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 68–91.

92 Jennifer S. Lerner and Dacher Keltner, “Fear, Anger and Risk,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 1 (July 2001): 146–59.

93 Ira Roseman and Craig A. Smith, “Appraisal Theory,” in Klaus R. Scherer, Angela Schorr, and Tom Johnstone (eds.), Appraisal Process in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001), 1–19.

94 Moors et al., “theories of emotion causation,” 625–662.

95 Moors et al., “Appraisal theories of emotion,” 121.

96 Ibid.

97 Craig A. Smith and Richard S. Lazarus, “Appraisal components, core relational themes, and the emotions,” Emotion and Cognition 7, no. 3–4 (1993), 238.

98 Henrik Nordström, Petri Laukka, Nutankumar S. Thingujam, Emery Schubert and Hillary Anger Elfenbein, “Emotion appraisal dimensions inferred from vocal expressions are consistent across cultures: a comparison between Australia and India,” Royal Society Open Science 4, 170912 (2017): 1–13.; Philippe Verduyn, Iven Van Mechelen, Francis Tuerlinckx, and Klaus Scherer, “The Relation Between Appraised Mismatch and the Duration of Negative Emotions: Evidence for Universality,” European Journal of Personality 27 (2013): 481–494; Klaus R. Scherer, “Profiles of Emotion-antecedent Appraisal: Testing Theoretical Predictions across Cultures,” Cognition & Emotion 11, 2 (1997): 113–150.

99 Ira J. Roseman, “Emotional Behaviors, Emotivational Goals, Emotion Strategies,” 435–436.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid, 437–439.

102 Ibid, 439.

103 Ibid, 441.

104 Jeremy Black, Military Strategy: A Global History (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2020); Isabelle Duyvesteyn & James E. Worrall, “Global strategic studies: a manifesto,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 3 (2017): 347–357; Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Beatrice Heuser, eds., The Cambridge History of Strategy; Volume I, From Antiquity to the American War of Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Beatrice Heuser, eds., The Cambridge History of Strategy; Volume II, From the Napoleonic Wars to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Hal Brands, ed., The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023).

105 Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review 108, no. 4 (2001): 814–34.

106 Joshua D. Greene, “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro)Science Matters for Ethics,” Ethics 124, no. 4 (2014): 695–726.

107 Heubner, Dwyer, and Hauser, “The Role of Emotion in Moral Psychology,” 1–6; Hannah A. Chapman and Adam K. Anderson, “Varieties of Moral Emotional Experience,” Emotion Review 3, no. 3 (2011): 255–57; Joshua May, “The Limits of Emotion in Moral Judgment,” in The Many Moral Rationalisms, eds. Karen Jones and Francois Schroeter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 286–306; Jesse Prinz, “Emotions, Morality, and Identity,” in Morality and Emotion, ed. Sara G. Silva (London: Routledge, 2016), 13–34.

108 Horberg, Ovels, and Keltner, “Emotions as Moral Amplifiers,” 237–44.

109 This observation is also in accordance with Nico Frijda’s “law of closure “which posits that emotions make us think in terms of certainties rather than probabilities. See Nico H. Frijda, “The Laws of Emotion,” American Psychologist 43, no. 5 (1988): 354–55.

110 Yara R. Avramaova and Yoel Inbar, “Emotion and Moral Judgment,” Wylie Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 4, no. 2 (2013): 169–78.

111 James J. Gross, “Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects,” International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory 26, no. 1 (2015):1–26.

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Notes on contributors

Samuel Zilincik

Samuel Zilincik ([email protected]) is a lecturer at University of Defence in the Czech Republic. His research interests include strategic theory, strategic practice, and the role of emotions in war. His work has appeared in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, Texas National Security Review, the RUSI Journal, and Military Strategy Magazine. He was one of the winners of the 2020 Trench Gascoigne Essay Prize and the 2018 Strategy Bridge writing contest. The current article formed a part of a dissertation submitted for a partial fulfillment of doctoral degree at Masaryk University.