MORAL OUTRAGE - TERRITORIALITY IN HUMAN GUISE

Moral outrage is a response to the behavior of others, never one's own . It is a response to infringements or transgressions on what people p erceive to be the immunities they, or others with whom they identify, can expect on the basis of their rights and privileges and what they u nderstand to be their reasonable expectations regarding the behavior o f others. A person's culturally defined social identities and the righ ts and privileges that go with them in relationships to which those id entities can be party make up the contents of that person's social per sona and also constitute that person's social territory. Infringements of rights and privileges in the social and symbolic worlds in which h umans live are the equivalent of encroachments on territory among anim als, and moral outrage can be understood as the human expression of wh at we perceive as territorial behavior in animals. As emotion, outrage is affected by such clinical processes as displacement, rationalizati on, projection, and reaction formation. Outrage has an essential role in the maintenance of viable social groups, but it also exacerbates co nflict among people who perceive one another as ''others.''