The Moral Psychology of Poverty

This book explains the impacts of poverty by focusing on its moral-psychological dimensions. It distinguishes itself from much of the existing literature by examining the moral psychology of both absolute and relative poverty. It does so by considering the moral psychology of poverty not only for those who experience poverty, but also for those who interact with poverty and with people living in poverty. The contributions examine these issues in relation to the impact of poverty on individuals—their affective states and agency—as well as on societies. They also consider both absolute global poverty and localized relative poverty as a relationship between persons. The analysis is organized around three broad dimensions: the impacts of poverty on reasoning, decision-making, and rationality; what it means to be an agent under conditions of poverty; and the positive and negative emotional impacts of poverty, including shame, contempt, anger, admiration, pride, and hope.This volume is of interest to scholars and students in ethical, epistemic, ontological, and political philosophy, as well as those working in psychology and poverty research.