Outrage is motivated and nuanced

In our letter, we examined the claim that “misinformation exploits outrage”, proposed by McLoughlin and colleagues (1). We suggest that this is a passive characterization of outrage, and that an accurate picture of outrage should consider how individuals can leverage it actively and for positive ends. We also suggest that the heterogeneity in their findings indicate the need for a more nuanced conclusion, especially considering that in some studies outrage predicted higher sharing of trustworthy news than misinformation, and that other emotions were usually stronger predictors of sharing misinformation without reading.