Moral Outrage is Self Serving

I've had my suspicions. Apparently so have a couple of psychologists and they decided to do a few studies.

Perpetually raging about the world's injustices? You're probably overcompensating.

We've seen it aplenty over the past political season and it continues to bleed over after it is done. While it is just not nice to paint with a broad brush, it is important to know that this is also not a paint all by number application either.

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.

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."

Sound familiar?

reason.com...

Very interesting read.

a reply to: JinMI

Mentioning the ills of moral outrage, especially on ATS, is going to be a hard sell.

I'm sure that like most things, it served a very useful purpose back in the tribal days, for reinforcing social norms and keeping everyone on the same page, but now in the age of telecommunications, it's somehow transformed into the most lazy and pointless variety of pitchfork waving in human history.

I do believe that this phenomenon has been readily exploited today by those in the know; manufactured "controversy" does everything from sell movie tickets to dictate political leaning. Insidious.

a reply to: Unresponsible

For now lets just be thankful that it is metaphorical and virtual pitchfork waving.

Moral Outrage..... ? perhaps it's a righteous indignation stirred by the need to be an individual. A self reward and narcissistic behavioral difference against commonality. Which ironically HAS become common place.

And then the mellow crowd. Used to be by design, now it's due to age....lol. A lot of things are responsible for the conditions that give rise to this detached behavior. Population density and the urban stress of close quarters. We used to deal with it by implementing an 'attitude adjustment' but now everyone wants to just shoot instead, or hide behind the Law. Our schools have been gutted.... where do they expect a child to get a 'moral compass' ? Parental involvement does not seem possible with some working adults. .....then there's drugs....
It might just be the beginning signs of decay in our country and social beliefs. Then again, George Putnum was exposing the debauchery of the day back in the 50's

We do have a high population of idle people.
And an idle population of high people.

You don't really need a study to come to this conclusion. One of the big clues for me is how inconsistent the morally outraged always are. For example, they rage about racism and then in the same breath broadly generalize and demonize white people.

originally posted by: TheBulk
You don't really need a study to come to this conclusion. One of the big clues for me is how inconsistent the morally outraged always are. For example, they rage about racism and then in the same breath broadly generalize and demonize white people.

And there you have it folks. There's the proof right there.

a reply to: jtma508

Unfortunately for some thick headed people, they think you cannot be racist towards white people.

Everytime I read or hear a story of racism, I look to see if the accuser is being racist first. My experience is it's around 70% of the time.

Think about it... To think something is racist when race is not explicitly brought up, means you are thinking about race. More than likely you have racist tendencies. .... But, we are human afterall

Graffik

originally posted by: TheBulk
You don't really need a study to come to this conclusion. One of the big clues for me is how inconsistent the morally outraged always are. For example, they rage about racism and then in the same breath broadly generalize and demonize white people.

Going to have to agree with you there. A good friend of mine managed to be "morally outraged" about lots of things yet when I challenged her to either go volunteer for an organization or question her charity donations it always turned out she was all talk and no action.

So contrived outrage.

Which when pointed out how blatant it was on her part sent her into foaming spasms.

Needless to say it was a short lived friendship mostly due to her continually trying to engage me in these repetitive conversations. I just didn't see the point if you weren't willing to be actively part of a solution. I may not agree with protests like the infamous "kitty riot" against Trump, but those folks DID get off their bums and go show up, misguided as I think it was, they have my respect doing "something".

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