If Being Virtuous Feels Easy, It Could Be Junk
Although no one likes to admit to doing it, virtue signaling is a practice that is a natural part of being a human. Yet, in this essay, philosopher Jimmy Alfonso Licon advises caution by comparing the practice to the culinary equivalent of junk food–tempting but counterproductive.
Junk food refers to high-calorie, ultra-processed food engineered for immediate gratification with minimal nutritional value. Eaten occasionally, it is harmless, but when consumed chronically, it corrodes health and taste alike. Something similar occurs with moral outrage that costs little and serves mostly for display.
Virtue signaling satisfies a primal need to demonstrate one's own sincere moral convictions, but it is performed at a cost.
Moral condemnation is a social technology for sustaining cooperation, enforcing norms, and punishing wrongdoers. Across societies, punishing violators signals one’s trustworthiness, loyalty to shared values, and a willingness to bear personal costs for the common good. These traits are reputational assets: useful for identifying someone as a reliable partner and discouraging others from defecting. Yet this raises a puzzle: Why do people still express outrage when doing so is costly, risky, and apparently invisible—when anonymity rules out social reward? (How is it costly? Well, for one thing, it can incentivize other people to retaliate.)
Moral psychologists Jillian Jordan and David Rand have a 2020 reputation heuristics account that offers a viable answer: because most of human life occurs in social settings where reputations matter. As such, our minds are calibrated to assume that moral behavior will—sooner or later—be observed and evaluated. And even when direct observation is uncertain, the reputational logic persists as a default heuristic: Act as though others are watching because they, very well, could be.
"Outrage provided the emotional reward of feeling righteous without the slower, costlier work of responsibility or repair."
In a series of experiments with more than 8,000 participants, Jordan and Rand found that people expressed greater moral outrage when they were unable to signal virtue through helping behavior. When opportunities to give, share, or otherwise act pro-socially were removed, participants compensated with moral condemnation, which is a lower-cost way to display moral commitment. When those opportunities were restored, expressions of outrage declined.
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
