Hijacked by Outrage: How Moral Contagion Fuels Misinformation

The spread of emotionally charged moral content has become a feature of digital discourse in this society. It can foster great relationships and civic engagement but plays a massive role in spreading misinformation among the masses, mostly around topics crucial to our society, such as politics and healthcare. The little platforms have revolutionized how individuals interact with information, which oftentimes is misinformation or not the whole truth. The spread of misinformation around vaccines and political events is rarely neutral and usually has adverse motivations for individuals.

Moral Contagion: It is profoundly shaped by where content infused with strong, moral, emotional language will spread rapidly and motivate a strong emotional response, which tends to spread quickly and gains perceived credibility. The psychological process that underlies moral contagion — attention, memory, social identity, and emotional arousal is central to understanding how misinformation takes root within people’s minds. As we integrate cognitive and affective science, we can see how moralized misinformation affects the masses and why it is so potent. (Martel, Pennycook & Rand, 2020).

How Social Influence and Moral Language Drive Misinformation

Misinformation survives within society by reinforcing adverse claims. Individuals are more likely to share false claims when they resonate with their fears or group values. (Ciialdini & Goldstein, 2004). This is the case in anti-vaccine rhetoric, which usually frames refusal as a moral obligation to protect their kids or their bodily autonomy, just as it is for political narratives such as claims that elections were fraudulent or that immigrants are stealing jobs. However, there is a lot of research supporting the opposite. (Van Bavel et. al, 2021). The bandwagon effect is when overly liked or shared posts gain credibility due to social validation versus actual fact-based information, further exacerbating moral contagion.

Cognitive Biases: Why Moralized Misinformation Sticks

Moral contagion is most effective because cognitive heuristics drive it. This simplifies complex decisions but can lead to errors in judgment. The Illusory truth effect exhibits how constant exposure to misinformation increases its perceived truthfulness. (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). When moral emotion is involved with repetition, stories about the government, corruption, or vaccine danger become more confident in false beliefs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, resistance to the vaccine was framed as moral resistance to authoritarianism and reinforced confirmation bias. Individuals tried to find content that justified their skepticism. Still, they were met with half-truths and limited research, which was then spread to strengthen the argument that vaccines were unnecessary (Pennycook & Rand, 2019).

Affective Neuroscience: The Brain's Role in Moral Contagion

Studies have shown that emotionally charged content usually engages with the amygdala and heightened memory encoding, making it more likely to be retained and shared (Lindquist et al.,2016). The research supports that your emotions influence intentional biases, leading individuals to prioritize the information that gets them more riled up/emotional. Affective neuroscience explains the mechanisms of why emotionally charged misinformation captures and resists any correction or proof. Content that elicits anger or moral outrage activates the amygdala, increasing salience and retention (Lindquist & Barrett, 2012). At the same time, emotional arousal reduces the activity in the prefrontal cortex, which controls critical thinking and self-regulation. The correlation between emotional reactivity and cognitive inhibition explains why users are drawn to create fake news headlines and perpetuate them throughout social media. Researchers feel that they are drawn to develop fake news so that they can push propaganda and feel validated by sharing it. Cognitive reappraisal can help mitigate these effects but has not been encouraged by the design of fast-paced social media environments (Gross & John, 2003).

In conclusion, Moral Contagion continuously plays a central role in spreading misinformation by hijacking common sense, cognitive shortcuts, and emotional responses. It transforms information by creating emotionally charged behaviors that lead to overly pushed propaganda and create fear and doubt throughout society.

References

Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004). Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 591–621.

Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348-362.

Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(3), 106-131.

Lindquist, K. A., MacCormack, J. K., & Shablack, H. (2016). The role of language in emotion: Predictions from psychological constructionism. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1953.

Martel, C., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 5(1), 47.

Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Fighting misinformation on social media using “truth” ratings. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(2), 128-134.

Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018). Prior exposure increases the perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(12), 1865- 1880.

Van Bavel, J. J., Rathje, S., Harris, E., Robertson, C., & Sternisko, A. (2021). How social media shapes polarization. Trends in cognitive sciences, 25(11), 913–916. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.07.013