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The Case for Being Skeptical of Moral Outrage
If, as the research shows, our moral outrage is highly sensitive to actions but not consequences, we might want to treat feelings of moral outrage—whether others’ or our own—skeptically. Photograph by Vjacheslav_Kozyrev / FlickrThe episode last month at the Lincoln Memorial, involving the boys from Covington Catholic High School, and a Native American man, was like so many Internet-born controversies before it: It spawned vituperative reactions, reactions to the reactions, and sweeping meta-analyses of the reactions to the reactions. Altogether it was exactly the type of politically charged commotion that nobody could seem to resist weighing in on. Yet at the heart of it was a misinterpreted, arguably meaningless event driven by an emotion that social media is making more and more familiar to all of us: moral outrage.Moral outrage is the powerful impulse we feel to condemn bad behavior, and it serves the important role of holding wrongdoers accountable and reinforcing social norms. Yet moral outrage, at least on Twitter and other similar platforms, appears no more effective at reinforcing social norms than it is at driving people to theatrically overreact to the behavior of strangers. After…Read More…
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Is Morality Hard-Wired Into Our Brains?
“Conscience,” by the neurophilosopher Patricia S. Churchland, traces moral behavior to early brain developments in mammals.
