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Virtue signalling is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a Morality viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character, frequently used to suggest that the person is Hypocrisy the cause or belief in question. An accusation of virtue signalling can be applied to both individuals and companies.
Virtue signalling often describes behaviour meant to gain social approval without taking meaningful action, such as in greenwashing, where companies exaggerate their environmental commitments. On social media, large movements such as Blackout Tuesday were accused of lacking substance, and celebrities or public figures are frequently charged with virtue signalling when their actions seem disconnected from their public stances. However, some argue that these expressions of outrage or moral alignment may reflect genuine concern, and that accusing others of virtue signalling can itself be a form of signalling. This inverse concept has been described as vice signalling and refers to the public promotion of negative or controversial views to appear tough, pragmatic, or rebellious, often for political or social capital.
The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left. (2026). 9780190900151, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190900151 It is similar to the idea of grandstanding. One practice sometimes cited as an example of virtue signalling is greenwashing, when a company deceptively claims or suggests that its products or policies are more environmentally friendly than they actually are. Some sustainability advocates have suggested ecological virtue signalling by corporations is not necessarily negative, as long as it is accompanied by taking responsibility for past environmental harms. Merriam-Webster editor Emily Brewster has likened virtue signalling to the term humblebragging.
British journalist James Bartholomew claims to have originated the pejorative usage of the term "virtue signalling" in 2015. He wrote in The Spectator that:
Blackout Tuesday, a 2020 collective action that was ostensibly intended to combat racism and police brutality mainly by businesses and celebrities through social media in response to the killings of several Black people by police officers, was criticized as a form of virtue signalling for the initiative's "lack of clarity and direction".
In 2024, the pro-Palestinian political slogan "All Eyes on Rafah" went viral after an AI-generated image of the phrase was shared on social media. Some users criticized the campaign as a form of virtue signalling and compared it to Blackout Tuesday, and believed that it would be more important for people to post actual pictures of Rafah.
A vice-signaller boasts about sneaking meat into a vegetarian meal. He will rush on to social media to denounce as a "snowflake" any woman who objects to receiving rape threats, or any minority unhappy at a racist joke ... Vice-signallers have understood that there is money to be made in the outrage economy by playing the villain. Perhaps, secretly, they buy their clothes at the zero-waste shop and help out at the local food bank, but cannot be caught doing so lest their image is destroyed.
Stephen Bush, also in the Financial Times, describes vice signalling as "ostentatious displays of authoritarianism designed to reassure voters that you are 'tough' on crime or immigration", and that it "risks sending what is, in a democracy, the most dangerous signal of all: that politicians do not really care about their electorate’s concerns, other than as a device to win and to hold on to their own power". In particular, Bush cited Donald Trump's Mexican border wall pledge and Boris Johnson's Rwanda asylum plan.
Examples of vice signalling have been described as "showing you are tough, hard-headed, a dealer in uncomfortable truths, and, above all, that you live in 'the real world'", in a way that goes beyond what actual pragmatism requires, or to "a public display of immorality, intended to create a community based on cruelty and disregard for others, which is proud of it at the same time".
According to Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, "a vice signaler is trying to look bad—but not to everyone. A vice signaler typically violates moral or other standards of an out-group precisely in order to look good to the fellow members of some in-group...The moral commitments of the in-group are basically irrelevant: all that matters is owning the enemy."
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