What is Moral about Moral Outrage

In this paper we critically review the extant literature on outrage to show that some of the assumptions of the working definitions on outrage are not widely shared, hindering thus cumulative progress of research on this topic. We identify the issue of the disinterestedness of the experiencer of the emotion as a key barrier to understand the moral character of outrage and other emotions. By examining the challenges that this requirement brings, we show that a different characterization of moral emotion is needed. We propose an alternative analysis of outrage, based on a socio-constructionist perspective on emotions. The social norms that underpin the expression, negotiation and prognosis of moral anger allow a richer characterization of the moral character of emotions in general. The constitutive role of social norms is highlighted to show how these ideas can help advance the empirical research on outrage.