I think it’s especially interesting that we “buy” a moral reputation through very public, symbolic actions and “spend” this moral reputation by being an asshole to people. I would like to see the opposite study done—if people who perform less public moral actions then choose to forgo the more public moral actions.
Hypothesis: The opposite effect would happen—people would become more willing to publicly signal after doing something genuinely nice. Why? Because they just went through all the effort to be moral, and nobody knows! So they feel entitled to a bit of moral grandstanding.
I think it’s especially interesting that we “buy” a moral reputation through very public, symbolic actions and “spend” this moral reputation by being an asshole to people. I would like to see the opposite study done—if people who perform less public moral actions then choose to forgo the more public moral actions.
Hypothesis: The opposite effect would happen—people would become more willing to publicly signal after doing something genuinely nice. Why? Because they just went through all the effort to be moral, and nobody knows! So they feel entitled to a bit of moral grandstanding.