[1][2] Tappolet's research interests revolve around the field of ethics, with a particular focus on metaethics, moral psychology, and emotion theory.

[3] Tappolet served as the President of the Société Analytique de Philosophie (SOPHA) from 2012 to 2015 and the Canadian Philosophical Association (CPA) from 2020 to 2022.

[2][6] She was invited as the Distinguished Visiting professor in the Centre for Moral and Political Philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2019.

[10] As its Founding Director she supervised this center’s transformation into an interuniversity research cluster funded by the FRQ, the Centre de Recherche en Éthique (CRÉ), which she directed until 2021.

[23] In her recent 2022 work, she argued that art, such as music and literature, plays a central role in the regulation and education of emotions.

[21] Together with Mauro Rossi, Tappolet examined the relation between emotions, psychological happiness, well-being, and virtue, proposing an argument to the effect that, assuming an Aristotelian account of virtues as involving emotional dispositions, being virtuous can contribute to one's well-being, though only when the external conditions are favorable.

Psychological happiness, they argued, is characterized by a positive balance of affective states, i.e., emotions, moods, and sensory pleasures.

She has shown that this kind of Sentimentalism is compatible with Value Realism, that is, the thesis that evaluative features are objective properties of the world.

[15][21] In normative ethics, Tappolet has argued for a pluralistic consequentialism, according to which one ought to promote a plurality of goods, including well-being, autonomy, and justice.

"[15] According to Charlie Kurth, Haley Crosby, and Jack Basse's book review, Tappolet "provides a rich, provocative, and highly accessible defense of a perceptual theory of emotion.

Tappolet's latest illustration, defense, and application of her version of the Perceptual Theory (…) provide comfort to the model's supporters and pause for thought for its opponents.

It is a model of clarity and rigor and evinces a deep understanding of emotions, values, reasons, responsibility, and agency.