#Science: Study Proves That The Guiltier Someone Feels About His Own Conduct, The More Readily He Will Leap at the Chance to Express Moral Outrage at a Third Party

"Hypocrisy," a guy not named Alexander Pope said,* "is the tribute vice pays to virtue," and apparently hypocritical virtue-signalling and scapegoat-blaming are the dirty coins this tribute is paid in.

Interesting article by Elizabeth Nolan Brown about a study done about people's tendencies to express moral outrage.

The study set up participants in different groups reading articles. Some groups read articles in which it was suggested that they themselves might be contributing to some social ill. Other groups read articles about that social ill, without any implication that they themselves might be contributing to it.

The findings?

People who were primed to feeling guilt about their own contribution to a social ill were much more likely to express moral outrage at a third party, when that third party was offered up as a potential scapegoat. The group not feeling any particular guilt about the social ill didn't leap at the opportunity to shout their moral indignation at a third party.

Furthermore, the study found that those made to feel guilty, who then shouted at a third-party scapegoat for doing what they themselves felt guilty about doing, then felt that wonderful warm sense of smug self-satisfaction at their own moral perfection come flooding back into them.

Like, what do I mean?

Oh, say you were a pampered Hollywood bitchboy who sometimes pumped a lot of CO2 into the air by having a woman who'd flown 7500 miles to pluck your eyebrows, and the eyebrows of some of your swell Hollywood chums.**

Knowing your own complicity in Destroying the Earth with CO2, and feeling a threat to your ego's belief that you are the Most Wonderfully Virtuous Person in the World, you might attempt to pay an Indulgence for your Sins in the form of screaming about other people's sinfulness, like, who knows, narrating documentaries about the dangers of Global Warming.

And having done so, you would then no longer feel guilty about your sins, but would go back to feeling the way you want to feel: So fucking smug you need to be punched a hundred paces just to get you within a country mile of reality.

Now, consider all the cocksuckers you see on social media constantly screaming about third parties' horrible "normalizing" of racism, sexism, whateverism, global warming, "consumerism and greed," etc.:

Knowing the findings of this study, what guesses would you make about such persons' own feelings of sinfulness?

* Commenter Atilla says this wasn't Pope, but was instead La Rochefoucauld, and Google says he's right.

** Note that DiCaprio has denied he actually flew the woman out -- she seems to have flown herself out. The original claim he flew her out was -- get this -- more #FakeNews.

However, she knew that by poisoning the earth and killing polar bears with CO2, The Invisible Killer, she stood to recoup a fortune by charging celebrities lots of money for their eyebrow-trimming.

And she knew celebrities she worked on would be fine with that. Any guilt they felt over the transaction involving God Knows how many dead polar bears could be easily cured by saying a few unkind words about Trump.

Oh: I will keep this study in mind as I scan over the various bitchily self-righteous scoldings of the alleged True Sacred Heart Super-Principled Conservative League.

It may occur to me wonder: How "conservative" are people who always feel the need to scream at others for not being conservative enough to support Hillary Clinton?

posted by Ace at 04:20 PM

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