“Virtue signalling” is a phrase more de riguer among political pundits than “YOLO” was among the youth. Apparently coined by James Bartholomew in the Spectator it has since been deployed by everyone from the Daily Mail‘s professional overexposer Liz Jones to Radio 5’s resident chinscratcher Nicky Campbell. It describes, states Bartholomew, “the way in which many people say or write things to indicate that they are virtuous”. When a famous person dies, for example, one is liable to feel that one should express sadness even if one is unmoved because it might look good to others.
Bartholomew was not as original as he might like to think. The idiosyncratic economist Robin Hanson has explored the concept of “signalling” for years, going so far as to suggest that it determines most human behaviour. From posting on Facebook to selecting a new pair of trousers, we spend our lives conveying our…
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