That’s so wrong! The guilt reducing effects of moral outrage

Moral outrage is motivated by a desire to defend moral standards. The current study sought to examine the possibility that the expression of moral outrage also decreases unrelated guilt and feelings of guilt motivate the expression of moral outrage. The expression of moral outrage may decrease guilt because moral outrage has a moral cleansing effect which removes the blemish of past moral transgressions. Participants (N=89) were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: the outrage condition (guilt; moral outrage) the no-outrage condition (guilt; no moral outrage) or the control condition (no guilt; moral outrage). Guilt was assessed with the PANAS (Watson et al., 1988) and a guilt appraisal item before and after the expression of moral outrage. A mixed factorial ANOVA using the PANAS guilt item revealed that both participants who were and participants who were not given the opportunity to express moral outrage experienced a significant decrease in guilt. This suggests that the results were driven by guilt decreasing over time. A between groups t-test found that no more moral outrage was expressed when participants were primed to feel guilt than when they were not primed to feel guilt. Implications of this finding are discussed.