Is virtue signalling a vice?
Unravel the complex world of virtue signalling, a phenomenon that has sparked heated debates. Is it a vice masquerading as virtue, or a misunderstood form of social communication? Let's delve into the intricacies and implications of this controversial practice.
Signalling theory explains why virtue signalling is so powerful
Employers are looking for certain qualities (intelligence, conscientiousness, ambition) in their employees
- They select their employees on the basis of signals that are difficult to fake, such as university degrees
- In general, having the qualities that employers value makes it easier to get a degree
- People who anticipate that getting a degree would be too costly for them will opt out
- Proclaiming one’s own goodness is deeply annoying
- Virtue signalling can be easy – but why does that make it seem bad?
Who is most dedicated to the environment?
When we send virtue signals, many of the things we seek – such as friends and social status – are rival goods
- Anna and Sarah are two environmental activists who campaign for renewable energy
- They want to lobby the government to replace fossil fuels with wind turbines and solar panels
- All sources of energy (including, for example, nuclear power) should be replaced by renewables
- Sarah’s opposition to nuclear power might actually leave the environment worse off, if the government needs to temporarily replace the nuclear power plants it shut down with fossil fuel, increasing CO2 emissions
Runaway signalling
When individuals send signals to try to convince others that they are better than average, the result is often what signalling theorists call a ‘runaway’: an arms race toward more and more extreme signals
- In the moral domain, runaway signalling happens when people try to elevate their moral status by doing and believing things that not everyone else does
- This can have positive effects, expanding our domain of moral concern to issues that would otherwise be conveniently ignored, but it can often lead people to hold beliefs that are disconnected from reality
People want to appear good, because it wins them friends and social status.
But what prevents someone from pretending to be a good person, reaping all the social benefits, and not following through?
- Throughout human evolution, being able to discriminate true allies (who stick with you no matter what) from fair-weather friends (who abandon you when you fall ill) could make the difference between life and death
- Evolution designed our brain to make us good at small-scale interaction, but we are not very good (or especially concerned) at evaluating the large-scale social effects of things
Human altruism is ineffective
The concrete impact of an altruistic act (how much it actually helps other people) is often dissociated from the signal it sends about what kind of person we are
- To convince people that you are good, the most persuasive signal you can send is often not what will actually produce the most good
- From this perspective, it is unsurprising that human altruistic is very ineffective – as revealed by what charities people donate to and psychology experiments