Virtue Signaling & Moral Grandstanding

 

Link to Time Image/Getty Images 2020

Virtue signaling is a 2015 term meaning that people are advertising themselves as kind, decent, and virtuous. Virtue signaling is a term used to shame others for their moral grandstanding.

Moral grandstanding combines the concept of a moral proclamation with the concept of a prominent display (see Tosi & Warmke, 2016). Making moral pronouncements is risky because human beings have different views on morality and rarely live lives that match the call to a moral stance.

Grandstanding of any type is also risky because people may look closely at what the speaker is saying or doing and find fault if the pronouncements from the public grandstand seem hollow, false, or a thinly disguised attempt to win votes or profit from a newly discovered cause—often presented as a moral cause.

Psychological scientists find that people are harsher in their moral judgments when they perceive a selfish motivation compared to people who do not make a moral judgment (Zaki & Cikara, 2020).

Zaki and Cikara suggest that virtue signaling may work under certain conditions. If you follow politics or religion, you have likely seen many people saying or doing things that their leaders say or do. Loud and prominent voices are signals. People often do not know what other’s think. Most people are influenced by frequent and persistent opinions. Opinions and information are powerful forces for social change. Opinions can create social norms, which people adopt without a great deal of thought.

Virtue signaling that leads to conformity may be judged in terms of effectiveness. The actions that are signaled are those subject to be examined for their moral worth.

Cite this post

Sutton, G. W. (2021, January 14). Virtue signaling & moral grandstanding. SuttonPsychology. https://suttonpsychology.blogspot.com/2021/01/virtue-signaling-moral-grandstanding.html

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Psychology of Flow

 Flow is a positive psychology concept described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a pleasant mental state experienced when performing intense but enjoyable activities requiring full deployment of a person's skills or abilities. Flow is a peak experience involving high levels of concentration during which a person loses an awareness of things around them as well as self-consciousness.

See Csikszentmihalyi's book titled Flow for more details (Link to UK Book).

Several measures have been developed to assess flow. Lonczak summarised these at this link: https://positivepsychology.com/how-to-measure-flow-scales-questionnaires/

Csikszentmihalyi has a TED talk on Flow. It is not exciting but he does present the concept and provides stories to illustrate people in a state of flow.

In his talk, Csikszentmihalyi illustrates flow with a diagram. The picture at the top of this post is a rendition of that illustration.

Cite this post

Sutton, G.W. (2021, January 13). Flow. Psychology Concepts and Theories. Retrieved from https://suttonpsychology.blogspot.com/2021/01/psychology-of-flow.html

Note: Csikszentmihalyi died 20 October 2021 at age 87 in California. Obituary link.

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Gaslighting

"You think I'm insane" scene in "Gaslight"

Gaslighting is the act of influencing another person to doubt their experiences, perceptions, or understanding of events. 

In the past, the term referred to extreme manipulation that led to severe mental illness but the term has become a part of popular culture and can refer to less severe but still harmful examples of manipulation.

Inducing doubt can be subtle at first but if the challenges to reality persist, then the target of gaslighting can begin to question many of the things they thought were true about themselves and the world.

When gaslighting is a pattern of manipulation that impairs other people's lives, then it may be associated with antisocial personality disorder. An older term for people with antisocial personality disorder is psychopath. Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse, which can be severe.

Gaslighting can occur in relationships. 

An abusive parent can gaslight a child.

An abusive adult can gaslight an elderly parent.

An abusive spouse can gaslight their spouse.

An abusive boss can gaslight employees.

An abusive politician can use their position to gaslight the people they govern.

Recognizing people who gaslight.

People skilled in gaslighting or manipulating others may be recognized by those "Dark Triad" traits of Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. See the Dark Triad Scale.

The term "gaslighting" is derived from the title of a 1938 British play called Gaslight by playwright, Patrick Hamilton (see Guardian).

Cite this page

Sutton, G. W. (2021, January 3). Gaslighting.  SuttonPsychology.  https://suttonpsychology.blogspot.com/2021/01/gaslighting.html? 

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