Lloyd Bonafide
2017-03-02 00:08:39 UTC
It's obvious that Liberals have guilt issues...
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/01/moral-outrage-is-self-serving
When people publicly rage about perceived injustices that don't affect
them personally, we tend to assume this expression is rooted in
altruisma "disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of
others." But new research suggests that professing such third-party
concernwhat 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.
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
constructionmoral outrage as the purview of the especially
righteousis "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:
Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases
moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who
read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change
"reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental
destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the
respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire
"to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that
target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop
labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common
consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level
of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the
exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results
showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a
third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased
guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study
participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of
man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than
those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an
opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party.
However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical
corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to
express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group.
Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar
guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express
moral outrage.
"The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers"
inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate
their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans
for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having
"significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the
blame-China articlethat is, when they weren't given an out in the
form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group
wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group
when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by
various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these
groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation
article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate
harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral
character ratings," the authors found.
Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert
their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated
context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all
participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt"
(i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group")
about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific
conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was
given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe
what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed
by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found
that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to
assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at
corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the
neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound
up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low
in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to
marginally more moral outrage at corporations.
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."
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/01/moral-outrage-is-self-serving
When people publicly rage about perceived injustices that don't affect
them personally, we tend to assume this expression is rooted in
altruisma "disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of
others." But new research suggests that professing such third-party
concernwhat 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.
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
constructionmoral outrage as the purview of the especially
righteousis "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:
Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases
moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who
read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change
"reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental
destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the
respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire
"to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that
target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop
labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common
consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level
of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the
exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results
showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a
third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased
guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study
participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of
man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than
those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an
opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party.
However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical
corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to
express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group.
Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar
guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express
moral outrage.
"The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers"
inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate
their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans
for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having
"significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the
blame-China articlethat is, when they weren't given an out in the
form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group
wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group
when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by
various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these
groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation
article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate
harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral
character ratings," the authors found.
Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert
their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated
context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all
participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt"
(i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group")
about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific
conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was
given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe
what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed
by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found
that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to
assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at
corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the
neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound
up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low
in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to
marginally more moral outrage at corporations.
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."