Affect and Moral Understanding

Abstract

Abstract The chapter presents an overview of the relationship between affect and moral understanding in film, followed by an argument that the moral cognitive dissonance effect, by eliciting contradictory or ambiguous emotions and evaluations, can lead to enhanced moral understanding. The chapter first traces differing conceptions of affect from the cognitive/analytic and Continental branches of film and media studies. It goes on to define the various sorts of affect and to show how affect is related to moral evaluation. It then shows how emotional estrangement can lead to moral and cognitive dissonance, which in turn may lead to enhanced moral understanding. The chapter analyzes Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012) as an example of a film that elicits the contradictory emotions and evaluations that lead to such dissonance.