Emotional Intuitions and Moral Play

Brosnan's research on chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys provides invaluable clues to unlocking the complex nature of human morality. Elaborating upon her claims, we explore the role of emotions in basic social interactions, social regulation processes, and morality, all of which may be crucial to both human and nonhuman communities. We then turn to a conceptualization of teasing and play as forums for negotiating norms and the boundaries of acceptable behavior, and focus on the role of emotions in assessing the moral character of others. Finally, we consider points of convergence and departure between human responses to relative deprivation and those observed by Brosnan in primates. We conclude that work such as Brosnan's paves the way for fruitful collaborations between scholars of morality from diverse fields.