Moral anger accelerates misinformation sharing: evidence from experimental manipulations and hierarchical drift-diffusion modelling

Moral outrage is a powerful motivational force that drives social change and collective action. Social media has become a primary arena for the expression and amplification of moral outrage, where users' emotional reactions often translate into rapid information sharing. Yet this process also amplifies the spread of moralised misinformation, posing substantial social challenges. While moral outrage plays a central role in such dynamics, the distinct roles of its core components, moral anger and disgust, remain unclear. Grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model and moral emotion theories, our study aimed to investigate how moral anger and moral disgust interact with source credibility to influence online information sharing. Across three experiments, we systematically manipulated message features (source credibility, moral transgression severity) and participants' cognitive-affective states (attention to morality versus accuracy, moral emotional states). Results indicated greater transgression severity increased willingness to share (WTS), particularly when morality was emphasised (Study 1). While higher source credibility generally increases WTS (all studies), moral anger (not disgust) overrode credibility cues (Study 2). Drift-diffusion model revealed that anger induction accelerated decision-making and lowered decision thresholds (Study 3). These findings identify moral anger as a peripheral cue that facilitates impulsive sharing and offers insights for emotion-based misinformation interventions.