We explore the self-reported propensity for virtue signaling of environmentalism and community-minded messages. Evolutionary psychologists have not paid much attention to virtue signaling, although it has implications for social relationships, in-group/out-group dynamics, status, mate choice, and kinship. We tested three hypotheses regarding sex differences in samples ( N = 20,423) obtained in 2020 from Canada, Japan, and the USA. First, across all samples, we hypothesized that both sexes use environmentalism and community-mindedness to engage in virtue signaling, which was supported. Second, we hypothesized that conspicuous ethical consumption, as a form of virtue signaling, is performed more by women than by men, which was not supported. Contrary to our prediction, men reported higher engagement in conspicuous ethical consumption, suggesting that status motives may have a strong role in their virtue signaling behaviors. Third, we hypothesized that known sex differences in the Big Five personality traits are linked to virtue signaling. That is, typically, women are reported to score higher than men in neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, while men score higher on openness than women. Our findings partially support this pattern. Last, we report on intercultural differences. We close with a discussion of the usefulness of studying virtue signaling from an evolutionary perspective.
Fisher et al. (Thu,) studied this question.