Decisions that negatively affect others, but that have adhered to all the requirements of rational self-interest, have been seen to result in serious emotional consequences for the decision makers. This regret, reluctance, and guilt, we argue, demonstrate the power of the justice motive.

Good decisions aren’t always rational.

When we apologize for something we’ve done, make amends, or change a behavior that doesn’t align with our values, guilt — not shame — is most often the driving force. We feel guilty when we hold up something we’ve done or failed to do against our values and find they don’t match up. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but one that’s helpful. The psychological discomfort, something similar to cognitive dissonance, is what motivates meaningful change. Guilt is just as powerful as shame, but its influence is positive, while shame’s is destructive. In fact, in my research I found that shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better.

This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.

The making of decisions, as everyone knows from personal experience, is a burdensome task. Offsetting the exhilaration that may result from correct and successful decision and the relief that follows the termination of a struggle to determine issues is the depression that comes from failure, or error of decision, and the frustration which ensues from uncertainty.

Our decisions are driven by feelings, sometimes (although not always) backed up by logic and reason.

The impact of the human tragedies I've reported on is that, more often than not, I'll be angry. I want to know why is this child dying? These are not acts of God; they're results of respectable politicians' decisions.

Every economic decision has a moral consequence.

Being guilty tends to engender feelings of guilt.

When you have an emotional reaction to what you see, you are judging. That is your signal that you have an issue inside of yourself - with yourself - not with the other person. If you react to evil, look inside yourself for the very thing that so agitates you, and you will find it. If it were not there, you will simply discern, act appropriately, and move on.

In the emotion of the moment, people often say and do reckless things. For the individual, that can have deep ramifications. But when it is a single individual acting unreasonably in the throes of emotion in the face of sorrow, then the consequences are borne by only that person and his family. But when the government behaves recklessly in response to a tragedy, the consequences can be felt by everyone. This is especially true when politicians get in on the act. We can think back no further than July of 1996, when a plane carrying several hundred people suddenly and mysteriously crashed off the coast of Long Island. Within days, Congress had passed emergency legislation calling for costly new security measures, including a controversial “screening” method which calls for airlines to arbitrarily detain passengers just because the person meets certain criteria which border on racist and xenophobic.

“Now sometimes I just feel guilty about the other side of the coin, that we’ve created this life, not only a big responsibility, but it also can be very negative,” she added.

The morally defining nature of intentions can be further illustrated by any number of choices we make in daily living. Most of us might be said, for example, to "allow" the poor in our cities and towns to go hungry because we fail to do enough to help them- spending our time and our money in other pursuits, such as family and friends. We may even fully forsee or know that our failure to do more for the poor will mean that some persons will go hungry. While our choices in such cases indubitably say something about who we are, they do not say the same thing about us as would plotting intentionally to starve others. To seek out to starve another person is to endorse that objective, intelligently choose it, and freely will it. By contrast, the occurrence or nonoccurrence of unintended side effects, even ones we foresee as absolutely inevitable (as with the hungry person left unfed), necessarily say less about our success or failure in effecting our free will and intelligence in the free world.
imply put, we live as human beings in a world where we must make choices and take actions that, even when entirely legitimate and good, necessarily harm or damage or impinge upon other goods. And this happens at both the individual and the societal level. In choosing to spend a weekend with family, it may unavoidably mean that some persons in the soup kitchen will go hungry. In choosing to spend additional money on a prescription drug care program that primarily benefits the elderly, we as a society may know with crystalline clarity that we will not be able to increase spending on education for the young. With so many varied and diverse goods to pursue in this life, we cannot help but make choices in pursuit of legitimate and upright aims that also entail inevitable, if unwanted, negative consequences for other instances of human goods.

I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.