#Moral outrage in the #digital age | Nature Human Behaviour
▻https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0213-3
Before the #internet existed, gossip served a purpose of spreading news about who could be trusted within local social networks4. By this logic, information should be shared as a function of its ability to reinforce trust and cooperation within the community. But online platforms have profoundly changed the incentives of information sharing. Because they compete for our attention to generate advertising revenue, their algorithms promote content that is most likely to be shared, regardless of whether it benefits those who share it — or is even true.
Research on virality shows that people are more likely to share content that elicits moral emotions such as outrage5. Because outrageous content generates more revenue through viral sharing, natural selection-like forces may favour ‘supernormal’ stimuli that trigger much stronger outrage responses than do transgressions we typically encounter in everyday life. Supporting this hypothesis, there is evidence that immoral acts encountered online incite stronger moral outrage than immoral acts encountered in person or via traditional forms of media (Fig. 2b).
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Digital media might alter the subjective experience of outrage in several ways. By increasing the frequency and extremity of triggering stimuli, one possible long-term consequence of digital media is ‘outrage fatigue’: constant exposure to outrageous news could diminish the overall intensity of outrage experiences, or cause people to experience outrage more selectively to reduce emotional and attentional demands. On the other hand, studies have shown that venting anger begets more anger6. If digital media makes it easier to express outrage, this could intensify subsequent experiences of outrage. Future research is necessary to resolve these possibilities.