The psychology behind our moral outrage
All In The Mind
ABC Australia
4.5 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Politics, war, abortion, gun control — why do some topics make us so outraged?
One theory is that our preoccupation with preventing harm is to blame.
So today, we examine how humans developed morality, why we differ in what we consider right and wrong, and how that drives us to moral outrage.
And after all of that, we'll find out how to have better conversations with people you disagree with (even if you're feeling outraged).
If you want to hear more about that, check out The skills supercommunicators use, which you can learn too.
This episode first aired in January 2025.
Guest:
Dr Kurt GrayProfessor in Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillDirector, Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral UnderstandingAuthor, Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground
Credits:
- Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar
- Senior producer: James Bullen
- Producer: Rose Kerr
- Sound engineer: Roi Huberman
More information:
Lethal Mass Partisanship: Prevalence, Correlates, & Electoral Contingencies
The transcript for this episode can be found on its original webpage.
You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | ABC Listen, Podcasts, Radio, News, Music and more. |
| 0:08.9 | Hello, it's Lisa Leong from This Working Life, |
| 0:11.9 | helping to make your work life better, |
| 0:14.1 | with advice from the world's top experts, |
| 0:16.6 | like psychotherapist Esther Perel. |
| 0:19.0 | Many conflicts are about power. |
| 0:20.8 | Paro is when I dismiss what you're bringing up. |
| 0:23.1 | Paro is when I magnify a problem. |
| 0:25.8 | And Professor Adam Grant. |
| 0:27.7 | We need to take our critics and our cheerleaders and turn them into coaches. |
| 0:31.7 | Free coaching! |
| 0:33.3 | Search for This Working Life on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:38.8 | Hey there, a heads up. This episode is one from our archives. |
| 0:43.6 | There is just something about youth that makes you think you're invincible. |
| 0:48.8 | Kirk Gray was a pretty typical teenager in that he thought he was invincible, |
| 0:53.2 | especially behind the wheel of a car. |
| 0:55.9 | So when he and some friends were running late to the movies one night, he hit the gas. |
| 1:01.4 | So I had just rained, and I had gotten my driver's license not long ago, and it was dark, |
| 1:07.6 | so I was rushing up the road. I wasn't paying a lot of attention |
| 1:11.2 | because the music was blasting |
| 1:13.3 | and we were talking about high school gossip. |
| 1:16.2 | And I was just about to blow by the exit |
... |
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