ABSTRACT
We often have the feeling that someone ought to get a reward or a punishment, that we or other people should do something, that someone does not deserve his bad or good luck, or that he has a right to act in a certain way. These oughts or obligations play a major role not only in the evaluation and determination of behavior and its consequences, but also in the fashioning of the content and the emotional quality of experience. Instances of this have been given before in regard to the psychological phenomena we have already reviewed. We saw, for example, how the attribution of pleasure and of can may be influenced by ought requirements. In a subsequent chapter we shall also see how an act of harm or of benefit may be instigated by considerations of justice and how the recipient may accept the harm if he feels that it is warranted, or accept the benefit without any feelings of gratitude if he believes it was “coming to him,” and even reject a benefit purporting to express a relationship of liking if he interprets the benefit as being offered from a sense of duty.
