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Science & Technology |
Moral Outrage Is Self-Serving, Say Psychologists |
2024-03-02 |
[Reason] When people publicly rage about perceived injustices that don't affect them personally, we tend to assume this expression is rooted in altruism—a "disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others." There is no altruism. In fact George Price - the man who invented evolutionary game theory (EGT) - suicided upon proving its nonexistence. But new research suggests that professing such third-party concern—what social scientists refer to as "moral outrage"—is often a function of self-interest, wielded to assuage feelings of personal culpability for societal harms or reinforce (to the self and others) one's own status as a Very Good Person. in evolutionary biology terms "an advertisement of quality" Outrage expressed "on behalf of the victim of [a perceived] moral violation" is often thought of as "a prosocial emotion" rooted in "a desire to restore justice by fighting on behalf of the victimized," explain Bowdoin psychology professor Zachary Rothschild and University of Southern Mississippi psychology professor Lucas A. Keefer in the latest edition of Motivation and Emotion. Yet this conventional construction—moral outrage as the purview of the especially righteous—is "called into question" by research on guilt, they say. Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one's sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt ?nds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one's actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group's moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing. These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity. To test this guilt-to-outrage-to-moral-reaffirmation premise, Rothschild and Keefer conducted five separate studies assessing the relationships between anger, empathy, identity, individual and collective guilt, self perception, and the expression of moral outrage. For each study, a new group of respondents (solicited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk program) were presented with a fabricated news article about either labor exploitation in developing countries or climate change. For studies using the climate-change article, half of participants read that the biggest driver of man-made climate change was American consumers, while the others read that Chinese consumers were most to blame. With the labor exploitation article, participants in one study were primed to think about small ways in which they might be contributing to child labor, labor trafficking, and poor working conditions in "sweatshops"; in another, they learned about poor conditions in factories making Apple products and the company's failure to stop this. After exposure to their respective articles, study participants were given a series of short surveys and exercises to assess their levels of things like personal guilt, collective guilt, anger at third parties ("multinational corporations," "international oil companies") involved in the environmental destruction/labor exploitation, desire to see someone punished, and belief in personal moral standing, as well as baseline beliefs about the topics in question and positive or negative affect. Here's the gist of Rothschild and Keefer's findings:
These findings held true even accounting for things such as respondents political ideology, general affect, and background feelings about the issues. Ultimately, the results of Rothschild and Keefer's five studies were "consistent with recent research showing that outgroup-directed moral outrage can be elicited in response to perceived threats to the ingroup's moral status," write the authors. The findings also suggest that "outrage driven by moral identity concerns serves to compensate for the threat of personal or collective immorality" and the cognitive dissonance that it might elicit, and expose a "link between guilt and self-serving expressions of outrage that reflect a kind of 'moral hypocrisy,' or at least a non-moral form of anger with a moral facade." |
Posted by:Grom the Reflective |
#14 Another confirmation during Conspiracy Theorists Month. So no shit, back in the day there I was getting my first hours on highway driving. Thought, "How cool would it be if vehicles could talk to each other, coordinate, and call out warnings. Five minutes into the first online game lobby, had a straight decision that would have been a really, reallly bad idea. |
Posted by: swksvolFF 2024-03-02 21:34 |
#13 In australia they are now coming for our gas stoves also |
Posted by: Anon1 2024-03-02 19:56 |
#12 Unabomber ted k nailed it in his manifesto. A true ruined genius. Moral outrage rewards a person for expressing their aggressive hostility which would otherwise be censured Same, cry-bullying It is about being praised for and enjoying the expression of hostile aggression It is self-indulgent, a sweet moral treat. BLM burning down buildings and getting bailed out, not arrested, praised as crusaders against racism It is the most vile of human psychology, the scum at the bottom of the barrel, the dishonest thief of praise for evil acts |
Posted by: Anon1 2024-03-02 19:55 |
#11 see if this one works. |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-03-02 15:30 |
#10 well, yeah. |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-03-02 12:44 |
#9 #s 7,8 nailed it. |
Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-03-02 08:10 |
#8 Children run down their siblings to feel better about themselves. Some never grow out of it. |
Posted by: Bobby 2024-03-02 08:04 |
#7 Anytime someone gets involved in other's lives, it's from feeling superior. You wouldn't do it if you felt inferior. |
Posted by: ed in texas 2024-03-02 08:04 |
#6 "Don't get mad - get even..." |
Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-03-02 07:20 |
#5 These professors should be glad I did not participate in this study. I love my gas stove, gas hot water heater, gas furnace, gas cars.. My moral outrage is against those trying to take them away. |
Posted by: Airandee 2024-03-02 06:04 |
#4 ^Exactamo |
Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-03-02 01:59 |
#3 They pretend to be decent people by being outraged about shit no one cares about to make themselves feel better as in truth they are evil, horrible people. |
Posted by: DarthVader 2024-03-02 01:25 |
#2 Psychologists are self-serving say moral people Sounds like some nihilists (liberals) are preparing to sway public opinion. |
Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2024-03-02 00:56 |
#1 See how they feel about this University of Florida fires all DEI employees in compliance with state law |
Posted by: Skidmark 2024-03-02 00:10 |