Distinguishing Moral Outrage and Empathetic Anger: Advancing the Triadic Appraisal Framework of Situational Crisis Communication Theory

Rongting Niu (Ph.D. candidate), Nicholas Eng, and Yan Jin. (Forthcoming). "Distinguishing Moral Outrage and Empathetic Anger: Advancing the Triadic Appraisal Framework of Situational Crisis Communication Theory.” Journal of Public Relations Research. Abstract: This study expands the triadic appraisal framework of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) with a 3 (crisis type: human-error vs. management misconduct vs. scansis) × 2 (organizational information-giving strategy type: instructing vs. adjusting) between-subjects online experiment among U.S. adults (N = 482). Moral outrage and empathetic anger were found distinct forms of third-party anger, driven by different triggers. The adjusting strategy led to significantly lower organizational reputation damage than the instructing strategy in the management misconduct crisis, but not in the human error or scansis crisis. Punishment intentions were found to vary as a function of crisis type and organizational response strategy.