Anger at unfairness: is it moral outrage?

TLDR

Anger at unfair treatment has been termed moral outrage, yet it must be distinguished from personal anger at harm and empathic anger at seeing another harmed. The authors conducted preliminary and main experiments that manipulated appraisal conditions for personal, empathic, and moral anger. The experiments revealed personal and empathic anger but little moral outrage, and showed that participants judged unfair treatment of another as equally unfair to themselves, yet anger was evoked only by unfairness toward self or a cared‑for other, with little anger when empathic concern was absent, implying consequences for moral emotion and motivation. © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract Anger at unfair treatment has been called moral outrage. However, moral outrage—anger at the violation of a moral standard—should be distinguished from personal anger at being harmed and empathic anger at seeing another for whom one cares harmed. Across a preliminary experiment and a main experiment, both designed to manipulate the appraisal conditions for these three forms of anger, we found evidence of personal anger and empathic anger, but little evidence of moral outrage. Participants perceived unfair treatment of another, even another for whom they had not been induced to feel empathy, to be as unfair as participants perceived unfair treatment of themselves. But the appraisal conditions that evoked anger were unfair treatment of self and unfair treatment of a cared‐for other, not unfairness per se . In the absence of empathic concern, unfair treatment of another evoked little anger. Possible implications for understanding moral emotion and moral motivation are suggested. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.