Cable TV news is filled with examples of moral outrage. Hosts of news programs display high levels of
anger at some situation going on in the world.
They describe a violation of a deeply-held belief and then their emotion
bubbles to the surface. And, chances
are, you have experienced this emotion yourself when a situation crosses one of
your moral boundaries.
But, what kind of an emotion is moral outrage?
This question was explored in a paper in the October, 2013
issue of Psychological Science by Jessica
Salerno and Liana Peter-Hagene.
They explored the influence of anger and disgust on feelings
of moral outrage. The word outrage
suggests that anger is a big part of this moral feeling. And when you are experiencing moral outrage,
it certainly feels like intense anger.
These researchers suggest that what separates moral outrage
from anger, though, is disgust. They
argue that people need the combination of disgust and anger to get real moral
outrage.
In one study, participants viewed testimony and lawyers’
arguments from a murder case. The
testimony included pictures and descriptions of stab wounds from the victim’s
throat. Afterward, participants stated
whether they thought the defendant was guilty.
They rated their degree of anger and disgust as well as their sense of
moral outrage at the defendant.
People’s judgments of moral outrage were predicted by a
combination of anger and disgust. In particular, anger alone and disgust alone do
not create moral outrage. Instead, it
was important to have the combination of the two to experience moral outrage. The degree of moral outrage then influenced
people’s sense of the guilt of the defendant and their confidence in that
verdict.
The researchers also replicated the relationship between
anger, disgust and moral outrage using scenarios involving a church group
picketing a soldier’s funeral and a description of a sexual assault. Once again, the combination of anger and
disgust led to feelings of moral outrage.
This research fits with a growing body of work exploring the
role of disgust in moral judgments.
Clearly, we experience disgust when there is some situation or food that
is dirty. We extend that disgust to
situations that violate our moral beliefs.
So, things that are disgusting have the prospect to engage our moral
sense. When we combine that disgust
with anger, then we can slip into the white-hot rage that is common for moral situations.
