Moral emotions in politics – how they unite, how they divide

Liberal democracy is struggling with the challenge of citizens indifference and detachment from politics, while anti-system politicians are overemotionalising policy issues which furthers polarisation in society. The normative stance of MORES is that both under- and overemotionalisation of politics should be avoided.

The former leads to the affective disconnect of citizens from politics, while the latter spurs tribal politics and hampers deliberation both extremes threaten democracy.MORES argues that moral emotions and moralised political identities a conceptual innovation of the project have a practical value in dealing with the challenges of affective politics.

Moral emotions are linked to the interests or welfare of society or at least of persons other than the subject itself. They can unite people towards common causes or split them along moralised political identities.

MORES applies a horizontally wide research logic to build a normative-analytical framework to inform democratic decision-making on how moral emotions should interact with values, policies and political practices.

MORES will create state-of-the-art methods and generate new empirical data on (1) the type of moral emotions triggered by political actions and phenomena such as campaigns, leadership styles and illiberal politics; (2) the role of moral emotions in forging moralised political identities; (3) the effect of moral emotions on political behaviour such as policy support and civic activism; and (4) the contextual social phenomena, including digital universes, of the moral emotions-politics nexus.Through research engagement with key stakeholders, MORES will create several innovative tools including a method for policymakers to measure the emotional valence of policies, games to strengthen citizens political-emotional resilience both in real-life and metaverses, and policy ideas to embed citizens moral-emotional needs in policymaking towards bolstering trust in democratic governance.