Rethinking Assumptions About Moral Content Selection: Moral-Emotional Content May Be Less Appealing Than Assumed

Recent work has shown that moral-emotional content spreads rapidly on social media platforms such as X (Twitter). These patterns have led to concerns that social media facilitates the spread of moral outrage – potentially exacerbating political conflict and animosity. While most past work has focused on the supply side of this phenomenon, i.e. the transmission of morally charged political content, we consider the demand side: do people actually want to see this type of content in their information environment? In this paper, we first theoretically contextualize the motivations to engage with or avoid moral-emotional content. Then, through three pre-registered studies conducted in the U.S. in 2022 and 2023, we test whether people actively choose information that includes moral-emotional elements. Contrary to our initial expectations, we find that participants do not actively select moral-emotional content compared to neutral or emotional content. Despite previous findings on transmission, our results suggest that people may not want to see this type of content in their information environment. By focusing on selection rather than transmission, the findings presented in this paper add another nuance to an ongoing debate on the prevalence and consequences of online political outrage.