Do Virtue Signals Signal Virtue? with Matt Lowe

In this episode, we talk with Matt Lowe about his randomised controlled trial, “Do virtue signals signal virtue?”, co-authored with Deivis Angeli. The research examines whether tweets about racial justice predict real-life actions, finding that while people who tweet about racial justice are generally more likely to act in line with those values, the sincerity of these signals diminishes when social pressure to speak out is higher. Our interview focuses on his findings, as well as his experience running a large experiment that involved over 200 research assistants to sample more than 11,000 academics.