Two younger sons of two fathers, one in the Prodigal Son parable and the other, Jacob, son of Isaac, each acquires his inheritance before the father’s death and is resented by an older brother. In both instances, heaven so directs events as to mitigate fraternal discord.

This chapter of the handbook asks whether, and in what ways, emotions can be designated as “moral”. Several emotions have been shown to be associated with moral judgments or moral behaviors. But more than association must be shown if we label some emotions characteristically moral. The author guides the reader through a voluminous literature and applies two criteria to test the moral credentials of emotions. The first criterion is whether the emotion is significantly elicited by moral stimuli; the second is whether it has significant community-benefiting consequences. This second criterion, less often used in past analyses, tries to capture the fact that moral norms, judgments, and decisions are all intended to benefit the community, so moral emotions should too. From this analysis, the author concludes that anger clearly meets the criteria, contempt and disgust less so. Guilt passes easily, and shame fares better than some may expect. Among the positive candidates, compassion and empathy both meet the criteria but are somewhat difficult to separate. Finally, elevation and awe have numerous prosocial consequences, but awe is rarely triggered by moral stimuli.

Chapter 1 introduces our idea that group-based inequality is in large part the result of anger constraints placed on disadvantaged groups. We use research in social psychology to understand how public expressions of anger are reserved for the powerful. We develop a theory of how group-based social hierarchies in society are maintained by instituting rules of who can express anger and who cannot. We provide several examples of how United States race relations between Black Americans and whites exemplify this “anger rule.”

Chapter 2 develops our theoretical argument of how an “anger rule” has been applied to Black Americans. Throughout American history, we make clear that Black political anger has been depicted as menacing. Special rules, laws, and devices have been instituted to keep what American society considers a dangerous form of emotional expression from being unleashed. Society has neutralized this anger by applying an angry feeling rule to Black Americans. If they break this rule by voicing anger, they will be penalized. This punishment takes different forms throughout American history, such as the brutality inflicted upon enslaved Black Americans, the lynching of Black Americans, the mass incarceration of Black men and women, and denying federal assistance to Black families. In this chapter, we focus on another penalty – electoral defeat. We theorize that whites invested in this anger rule will punish Black politicians for expressing anger. We also contend that Black Americans navigate this anger rule by strategically rallying behind Black politicians who constrain their anger in political spaces dominated by whites. However, in Black spaces, we argue that this anger has a home among Black Americans.

Chapter 5 determines whether the Black public shares Black politicians’ awareness of the anger rule. We accomplish this task by examining if Black Americans express less political and racial anger in the presence of whites relative to Black Americans. Analyzing data from 2004 to 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) along with the ANES cumulative file, we find that Black survey respondents report significantly less political anger than white respondents. This difference magnifies when Black Americans are in the presence of a white interviewer. These findings indicate that Black Americans recognize that their group must limit their anger in the presence of whites. It is this knowledge that, we believe, motivates Black Americans to be more willing to give Black politicians an emotional pass when they fail to express anger about politics.

Chapter 3 explores the emotional rhetoric of elected public officials. We examine the presidential speeches of two Democratic presidents – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. We find that Obama’s speeches are more positive than Clinton’s and less negative as well. The use of anger depends on the target (i.e., issue). Consistent with our theoretical argument, Obama expressed significantly less anger about race relations compared to Bill Clinton. We look even further at the differences between Black and white politicians by examining floor speeches of members of the United States House of Representatives. Most Black Members of Congress are elected in majority (or plurality) minority districts. Therefore, we would not expect for them to be as constrained by anger, particularly about race, as Obama. We find that to be the case. Black Democratic members of Congress convey more anger about race relations than white Democratic members of Congress. These findings suggest that Black politicians limit their anger when whites are a substantial number of the voting population, but Black elected officials and candidates abandon this rule when the electorate has a substantial number of Black voters.

Chapter 4 investigates if whites apply an “anger penalty” to a Black politician relative to a white politician. We examine if an angry Black Democrat politician is racially handicapped among racially prejudiced whites. We test our predictions using several survey experiments on adult national samples of whites. We uncover evidence of an anger penalty in that racially prejudiced whites evaluate an angry Black Democrat politician more unfavorably than a non-angry Black Democrat politician and an angry white Democrat politician. Additionally, we find a similar effect among whites oriented to supporting group-based social hierarchies (i.e., having a social dominance orientation). In another study, we examine if this anger penalty depends on the issue. We expect an anger penalty is greater when the issue implicates Black Americans than if it is unrelated to the group. The findings show that racially prejudiced whites penalize a Black politician only when the anger is related to a racialized issue and not when the issue is unrelated to race. In our final experimental study, we examine whether a Black female politician’s anger is treated differently than a Black male’s; the anger penalty does not appear to be conditioned on gender.

This chapter discusses two Middle English Charlemagne romances, The Siege of Milan and The Sultan of Babylon, to illuminate post-1291 anxieties about royal politics, Christian infighting, and God’s will and support. It brings these romances into conversation with two main bodies of literary and historical material. The first consists of writings that polemically engage with the question of whether English and French kings should prioritize domestic affairs or crusading activity. The second consists of poems, letters, and chronicles that, written by Christians following crusading defeats, feature wrathful rebukes of God and threats of conversion to Islam. I draw on this latter corpus to offer a new interpretation of the literary motif of the “afflicted Muslim” who vents his military frustration on his “gods,” arguing that such depictions should be understood as projections of Latin Christian anxieties about God’s lack of support to the crusading enterprise.

This chapter proposes that early modern women essayists invoked anger to negotiate new modes of publicity in the nascent public sphere. By reading the writings of Jane Anger, Rachel Speght, and Margaret Cavendish alongside the history of humanist education, it shows that anger’s original object was not misogyny writ large, but the rhetorical training that limited women’s access to privileged protocols of speaking and writing. By the end of the early modern period, it argues, anger dissipates as the rise of salon conversation and letter writing expand the field in which literacy can be displayed, weakening rhetoric’s grip on the republic of letters.

Violence is common and is a public health issue. Forensic psychiatrists offer treatment for the small amount of violence that is due to mental disorder. It is essential to distinguish between meaningful explanations and causes. Violence is not a unitary concept. Evidence for the specific causal associations between mental illness and violence is reviewed. Anger, anxiety, moral and amoral actions are reviewed including intoxication and withdrawal, deception, antisocial personality and psychopathy, and a range of mental illnesses and developmental disorders. Social and developmental factors are also important. Memes, media and social contagion influence the forms of violence. Court reports and treatments are considered critically in relation to violence.

The chapter answers the question ‘Why has the rule of law become so fragile?’ as set up by the 2023 Nine Dots Prize competition. It shows how the liberal narrative of the rule of law is built on repressing the political elements of the legal system. Using Jungian psychoanalysis to analyse the crises of the rule of law, the author shows that the more we repress democratic politics from the legal system, the more the politics will strike back as ‘shadow’ in a distorted, anti-democratic form. The chapter also deepens the analysis of how DWE works politically with anger, preventing it from turning into ‘free-floating rage’ that can be exploited by authoritarian populism. It introduces the notion of ‘critical feeling’ to complement ‘critical thinking’ in contemporary academia.