> “What the researchers found is that participants’ expressions of moral outrage were mostly independent from their empathy for the victims of the transgression

> “What the researchers found is that participants’ expressions of moral outrage were mostly independent from their empathy for the victims of the transgressions. What triggered moral outrage in their study was whether a particular behavior seemed intrinsically wrong—that is, wrong even if it didn’t harm anyone.” This is one of the problems with moral outrage in today’s internet context. It’s easy to stir up outrage over very little, and then snowball that outrage into a huge debacle over something that ends up being distanced and deceptive. We can just point a finger at someone and assert they are morally guilty without hesitation as long as enough of our peers support it. This is a system like 1600s Salem where someone could point a finger and say “She’s a witch!” out of speculation. Turns out people still love a good witch hunt, and the media/Twitter is the reverand pointing the finger at the supposed witches at a whim. We think we’ve come a long way over 400 years, but it turns out human emotion doesn’t change that quickly. Another issue with moral outrage is that once the charges are dumped on the “guilty” party it’s very hard to disprove them to the public; plus there is little retribution on the party pointing the finger to begin with. How many of those “witches” were actually witches? The internet “trials” of today are about as vigorous as the witch trials back then. I can understand why “moral outrage warriors” do what they do; they are driving away immorality and threatening forces from society and protecting and preserving the peace. Yet it turns out the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We are at the point where there is not even reaction to action, we have reaction to supposed action.