https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073917714870 Emotion Review 1–14 © The Author(s) 2017 ISSN 1754-0739 DOI: 10.1177/1754073917714870 journals.sagepub.com/home/er What may be called the “family” of hostile emotions—namely, emotions involving ill will against somebody—is quite large: anger, resentment, indignation, contempt, and disgust, to name just the most obvious ones, belong to this family. Although “anger” is often used to refer to most of those emo- tions, especially resentment and indignation, and the latter terms are used interchangeably, we suggest that each of these emo- tions is qualified by specific belief and goal components. Belief–desire theories of emotions have already been proposed (e.g., Reisenzein, 2009), and cognitive-motivational “anato- mies” already exist for many emotions (e.g., Lazarus, 1991; Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988). However, we believe that much work is still needed to identify the distinctive features of each emotion. We aim to show that a belief–goal analysis is a useful means for identifying both the common core of kin emotions and nota- ble differences among them. To identify a family of emotions, we focus on a particular domain of emotional experience (in this case, hostility concerned with others’ behavior and attitudes), single out the basic beliefs and goals that are pertinent to this domain, and define the “cognitive space” of the emotions result- ing from these mental constituents. To identify the specific cog- nitive space of each possible member of the family, we try to ascertain whether there may exist a compound of beliefs and goals that does not completely overlap with another compound in the same family. We will restrict our treatment to anger, resentment, and indignation, which are particularly difficult to disentangle from one another. We will only consider their necessary and suffi- cient belief–goal compounds, neglecting other cognitive-moti- vational components which in natural contexts may enrich the constitutive compounds. Before analyzing each emotion, we need to define two basic concepts, those of harm and wrong, which are crucial for under- standing the differences between anger and its “cousins.” Harm Versus Wrong A harm is here defined as a material or immaterial damage caused by something or someone to something or someone. The efficient causes can be human agents as well as nonhuman animals or physical forces and environmental conditions. The harmed entities or victims can be human agents, nonhuman animals, or physical objects. The efficient causes may coincide with the victims. When victims are endowed with goals, the harm implies a frustration, that is, the thwarting of some of their goals. For inducing an emotional reaction in a victim, the Anger and Its Cousins Maria Miceli Cristiano Castelfranchi Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy, Italy Abstract The widespread assumption that anger is a response to wrongdoing and motivates people to sanction it, as well as the lack of distinction between resentment and indignation, obscure notable differences among these three emotions in terms of their specific beliefs, goals, and action tendencies, their nonmoral or moral character, and the kinds of moral claim implied. We provide a cognitive-motivational analysis of anger, resentment, and indignation, showing that, while sharing a common core, they are distinguishable from one another because they comprise nonoverlapping belief–goal compounds. We also emphasize the usefulness of applying a belief–goal analysis to kin emotions because, by comparison, one can sharpen the analysis and identify the distinctive features of each of them. Keywords anger, harmdoing, indignation, resentment, sense of justice, wrongdoing Author note: We are grateful to Yochi Cohen-Charash and two anonymous reviewers for their precious comments and suggestions, which have substantially helped us to clarify and refine our work. Corresponding author: Maria Miceli, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy (ISTC-CNR), Via San Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185 Roma, Italy. Email: maria.miceli@istc.cnr.it 714870EMR 0 0 10.1177/1754073917714870Emotion ReviewMiceli & Castelfranchi Anger and Its Cousins research-article 2017 ARTICLE