Abstract: Moral emotion, an important research area of Psychology, is an emotional experience which results from people’s judgment of one’s own or other’s behavior and thought based on certain moral standards. It is a complex emotion, including disgust, empathy, guilt, shame, etc. Moral purity and moral compensation constitute typical behaviors people would exhibit under the influence of moral emotions. Behavior recalled paradigm, physical goods or picture stimulus paradigm and situation settings paradigm are the main psychological research paradigms of moral emotions. Future research may focus on the role of positive moral emotions in moral development, the impact of moral emotions on group behavior and the value of moral emotions in different cultural backgrounds.

Key words: moral emotions, purity behavior, compensation behavior