Virtue Signaling: The ¡SCIENCE!

A very dank social psychology study has found evidence that virtue signaling is real, and is distinct from virtue alone.

Theories that reject the existence of altruism presume that emotional benefits serve as ulterior motives for doing good deeds. These theories argue that even in the absence of material and reputational benefits, individuals reap utility from the feelings associated with doing good. In response to this normative view of altruism, this article examines the descriptive question of whether laypeople penalize emotional prosocial actors. Six studies find that emotion serves as a positive signal of moral character, despite the intrapsychic benefits associated with it. This is true when emotion motivates prosocial behavior (Studies 1, 2, 3, and 5) and when emotion is a positive outcome of prosocial behavior (i.e., “warm glow”; Studies 4, 5, and 6). Emotional actors are considered to be moral because people believe emotion provides an honest and direct signal that the actor feels a genuine concern for others. Consequently, prosocial actors who are motivated by the expectation of emotional rewards are judged differently than prosocial actors who are motivated by other benefits, such as reputational or material rewards (Study 6). These results suggest that laypeople do not view altruism as incompatible with all benefits to the self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

That’s a lotta 888 academic jargon to say “shitlib virtue signaling is self-serving because it feels good and because the more emotionally incontinent the signaling, the better others judge the signaler’s moral character”.

Virtue signaling isn’t an empty insult; it has teeth (and really gets under the skin of shitlibs accused of it) precisely because virtue signaling provides emotional and reputational rewards to shitlibs with or without attachment to actual virtuous deeds. It’s essentially a feelz and status whoring free lunch, and what post-America NEET can resist that?

It’s why, for example, John Scalzi and Donna Zuckerberg — two notorious antiracism, anti-White virtue signalers — can hypocritically live in 98% White neighborhoods and still enjoy the respect and admiration of a fair number of like-minded anti-White signalers.

But the moral posturing good times are about to end for anti-White leftoids. A small army of meme-generating realtalkers that shocks and awes way above its numbers takes sadistic pleasure in exposing the hypocrisy and double-talk of the virtue signalers, and over time that rising riptide of bad PR will inevitably reduce the emotional rewards of signaling and blur the general public’s faulty perception that sanctimonious anti-White emotionalism is a positive indicator of the signaler’s moral worth.

PS There’s a PUA/Game lesson hidden in this study. I’ll leave identification and discussion of that lesson as an exercise for the reader.