Moral Outrage Is Self-Serving, Say Psychologists
reason.com
reason.com
Self-serving is not the antonym of social (emphasis mine):
> But new research suggests that professing such third-party concern—what social scientists refer to as "moral outrage"—is often a function of self-interest, wielded to assuage feelings of personal culpability for societal harms or reinforce (to the self and others) one's own status as a Very Good Person.
This book tries to argue against the idea that we think in terms of logical propositions.
Take for instance this example Steven Pinker in this lecture[1] presents a logical problem which stumps a lot of people. However, when people are presented with a 'real world' version of the problem they do a lot better. Phillip Johnson-Laird uses the same example and some other studies to claim that it is because people think in terms of mental models and not in terms of logical/deductive propositions.
Another example:
If J Edgar Hoover was born in Russia, then he would have been a communist.
If J Edgar Hoover was a Communist then he would have been a traitor.
Therefore if J Edgar Hoover was born in Russia then he would have been a traitor.
Clearly the transitivity doesn't follow here, and this is not the only example of apparent transitivity failure, but nearly everyone can point out the logical problem with the transitivity inference in the third statement, but a lot more people would fail it if presented in abstract terms.
This has been a very ameliorating book for me. It explains many things regarding people's beliefs. When people present moral outrage, this must mean that they need to have that mental model in their minds. Take for instance if you started to work in a store, and the manager informs you of the following rule:
> If the receipt is for more than $30 worth of goods, then it must have manager's sign on it.
Most people would have no problem in understanding and following that rule. But if the rule was following:
> If the receipt is for less than $30 worth of goods, then it must have manager's sign on it.
To most people this is confusing and non-sensical. To most of us, we would try to think for a reason behind this rule. Most probably come up with the explanation 'There must be a lot of theft/fraud going on for smaller receipts', or something which explains this anomaly.
This is the same reason why everytime it snows in the middle of April, conservatives are like "Oh god, the Global Warming is killing me", and whenever there is a hot day in winter, it's the liberals who take it as a proof. Because to all people, the data which doesn't fit into their mental model is noise. And all theories which people ascribe to, somehow fit in their broader mental models.