What Leads to Evocation of Moral Outrage? Exploring the Role of Personal Morality

Anger is usually evoked when an individual perceives that his/her moral standard or principle has been violated. This has been termed as “moral outrage. ” However, some researchers have suggested that anger at an immoral act is personal because increased anger was reported only when harm was undeservedly inflicted upon the self or an in-group member even if the act was judged to be a moral violation. In this study, on the basis of the assumption that moral outrage is a conditional emotional reaction that is evoked only in individuals high in morality, we attempted to examine whether personal morality elicited moral outrage. Japanese participants were asked to read a fictitious newspaper article describing a case of abduction. The abducted victim was described as Japanese for half of the participants, and as Slovenian for the other half. Immediately after reading the article, anger, the perception of the wrongness of the abduction, and personal morality was assessed. We found that anger was increased only in the Japanese abductee condition, regardless of whether the level of self-reported morality was low or high. We discuss the possibility that personal anger is an exceedingly prevalent emotion and the question as to why no evidence of moral outrage was found