Anastasiia Grigorev

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

You know, it actually dates back to the 18th century maritime drill, women and children first.

And as you mentioned, it was deeply popularized by the Titanic.

And a couple of years ago, my collaborators and I noticed that, you know, there is a lot of reporting going on about various tragic events in the world, and they're pretty diverse.

But the thing that cuts across a lot of them is that they indeed tend to highlight women and children.

So on the one hand, it could be that it's just a force of journalistic habit because it's such a popular phrase.

But from a psychologist's point of view, where we're interested, is there something morally, psychologically consequential that's going on when we actually hear that phrase?

That's right.

Now, moral outrage became all the rage, so to speak, within the psychology recently, and in part because it's very relevant in the media spaces.

It relates to news virality.

When people feel morally outraged, they are more likely to share various news stories.

And so it can amplify the impact of the stories.

So that's partly why we thought it would be a relevant phenomenon here.

But what's interesting about moral outrage is that it's this extreme emotional reaction to immoral acts that's actually targeted at the perpetrators.

So it makes people make pretty strong judgments about perpetrators, thinking of them as these really horrible people.

It also calls for really extreme punishments for the perpetrators.

Yeah, so that's what we're curious about too, right?

There could be different explanations for why women and children seem to have this special moral pull.

You know, one thing that people will sometimes highlight is that, well, it's not really women and children, it's really about civilians.