Why can new information change whether someone feels anger toward another person's action?

In the context of free will and moral responsibility, new information can alter or eliminate feelings of anger because our "reactive attitudes"—such as resentment or anger—are often contingent upon our understanding of an agent's motivations and circumstances.1

Philosopher P.F. Strawson noted that while these emotions are a natural part of human psychology, they are not always justified. When we learn new facts, we may re-evaluate the cause of an action. For instance, discovering that a driver who hit a cat was rushing a critically ill child to the hospital provides an external justification for their behavior. This aligns with attribution theory, which suggests that people interpret behavior by attributing it to either internal dispositions or external situational factors.123

Because our emotional responses are sensitive to this factual context, they are not always reliable indicators of moral responsibility; learning that an action was driven by situational necessity rather than malicious intent can lead us to temper or abandon our anger entirely.1