How do we make moral judgments?  Are people cold, calculating Vulcans? Or are they affectively hot hedonists? Researchers often present morality as a war between vying ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ processes, but in this two-part blog post I argue that the distinction is a false choice. Morality is both hot and cold, but not in the way previous research leads people to believe.

Although a popular belief (and a heartwarming children’s song) hold that we all laugh in the same language, recent research has found that people are remarkably adapt at detecting local accents in the way that emotions are expressed.  In this blog, I will review research that suggests that the long-assumed universality of emotions is limited. 

Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t resist a little smile when someone else had a setback? Have you ever experienced joy when another person suffered a mishap? We’ve all probably been in that situation and we’ve all felt that joy. The German language coined the word Schadenfreude—a compound word of the German words 'Schaden' meaning 'harm' and 'Freude' meaning 'joy'—for the pleasure at the misfortunes of others and nowadays it is used as a loanword in the English language.