Yes, embarrasment, along with shame, disgust, guil, compassion, self-discipline, joy, approval, and gratitude are some of the moral emotions. Emotions are to beliefs as a barometer is to the weather. The emotions usually are a readout of the underlying beliefs, our conceptions. If our values are distorted, so will be our priorities - and these guide our life. Cognitions matter. Values matter. When you hear in your mind the sounds of “Ollie’s Street,” you call it “music”; that is how you value it. Someone else, valuing those sounds differently, would call them “noise.”
Since you are a musician, and an original composer, I would respect your views regarding the sounds more than some other people’s judgment. You Intrinsically-value those sounds. When you do the same toward yourself as well as others, you are ethical. Yes, as Al Bandura has explained in his latest book, there can be "moral disengagement -enabled by any one of the six mechanisms he lists, or a combination of those.
My approach, in the first linked-essay below, THE STRUCTURE, is to show that the benefits exceed the costs if one will commit oneself to living a moral life, as measured by the comprehension of the Moral Principles offered in the essay.
It’s funny you should mention “operant conditioning.” I actually knew Fred (B.F.) Skinner, the man who did more work in this area than anyone else. He showed me around his lab at William James Hall on the campus of Harvard University. He gave me permission to reproduce one of his papers in an anthology I published.
It is a fact that if an individual becomes aware that he is being conditioned he can defy the conditioning; he can act autonomously … much as you do when you spontaneously compose some original jazz, listening to your own beat.
Yes, the STRUCTURE OF ETHICS essay encourages people to, as you say, “enrich their morality.” Does it help accomplish this goal? Should it be taught to kids in their own words?
Your review of it would help make progress toward attaining a more-ethical world.
I welcome your comments, Readers. This is a Philosophy Forum. Let’s do some. Let’s get closer to formalizing the topics, thus getting the knowledge to be more reliable, more scientific. Do you agree with M. Shermer that science makes us better people? {See reference to him in the first link below.}