Conspicuous Compunction

This paper develops a theory of virtue signalling: what it is, how it works, and how to evaluate it. On the margins, should we do more of it or less? Some accounts of virtue signalling hold that performative moralising is mostly bad, as it leads to moral grandstanding; others defend virtue signalling for providing good evidence and/or motivation. I show that none of these accounts adequately capture the core features of virtue signalling and develop an alternative in a broadly Veblenian spirit: virtue signalling is a form of conspicuous compunction, governed by a logic of costly signalling. The problem is that under modern social conditions, signalling virtue is often not particularly costly. To stabilise the signal, public moralisers can thus become stuck in an arms race of conceptual innovation and normative escalation.