The Paradox Of Viral Outrage: Public Shaming Inspires Further Outrage — But Also Increases Sympathy For The Offender

By Emily Reynolds Spend any amount of time online and you’re likely to see the same patterns repeat themselves over and over again: somebody says something offensive or controversial on social media, they’re met with anger and disgust, and they either apologise or double down. For some, this cycle has become somewhat of a career, with the garnering of outrage forming the backbone of their (often incredibly tedious) public personas. But does responding to such toxic or offensive remarks, especially en masse, actually work? Or does it simply increase sympathy for the offender, no matter how bigoted their remarks were to begin with? According to research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, the latter is more likely. The paper looked at the impact of viral outrage on convincing observers that an offender is blameworthy — and found that as outrage increased, observers believed it was “more normative” to express condemnation, but simultaneously believed that outrage was excessive and felt more sympathy for the offender. Across seven studies, Takuya Sawaoka and Benoît Monin from Stanford University showed 3,406 participants offensive social media posts, such as a woman taking a selfie at a concentration camp and a man making a sexist comment about the Women’s March in 2017 — all inspired by things that had really gone viral. The number of outraged reactions was manipulated across conditions — in the non-viral outrage condition, participants ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Anger Social Twitter Source Type: blogs