Libertarianism. Org aaron powell and i are joined by the books authors justin tosi and brandon warmke. Justin tosi is an assistant professor of philosophy at texas tech university, specializing in political, legal, and moral philosophy. Brandon warmke and is assistant professor of philosophy at a and he specializes in ethics, moral psychology and social philosophy. We will be taking audience questions online using the hashtag auntran8a events. If you have a question for the authors whether watching this event via facebook, twitter, youtube or the Cato Institute website posted with the cato hashtag so the question queuing software can find it. Justin, brandon, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having us. Great to be here. To begin, briefly, what is grandtanding . If you want the simplest Bumper Sticker description of grandstanding, its using discussion of morality or politics and Public Discourse as a vanity project. Grand standards use discussions of morality, justice, talk of rights, family daggers to draw attention to themselves to make themselves look like moral paragons. They want others to think of them as morally enlightened or caring more about the poor or uncaring more about the American Factory worker. You want something a little bit more detailed the account of grandstanding we give the book is a very simple one we say that grandstanding simply has two parts, the first part is the granstanders want a certain audience, the Reference Network to think certain things about them. We want them to come to believe that they have certain impressive moral properties because of the recognition desires. Granstanders wants to be recognized as having certain moral qualities by certain people in the audience. The second part of the account is that the granstanders stay something aSay Something. They Say Something because they want to impress people. We call the thing that they say what they type into facebook or twitter or what they say on cable news or on a stump speech and as a politician, that they say is what we call the grandstanding expression. That grandstanding expression is motivated in the significant way by this desire for praise, to be seen as on the side of the angels. So grandstanding is very simple thing, if these two parts think in terms of an equation, grandstanding is saying something in Public Discourse with primary or significant motivation to be seen as morally impressive. Whats the difference between grandstanding and another term that gets thrown around a lot, virtue signaling . Good question. Let me focus on two differences. The first i will say these are related terms. I think often when people talk about virtue signaling they could just as well be talking about grandstanding. But nonetheless, brandon and i think that virtue signaling is not an ideal term for capturing whats going wrong when people use moral talk in the way we describe. So one reason for this is a lot of grandstanding is not about virtue. Virtue is typically thought to be an excellence of character. A lot of grandstanding is just about showing people you are decent enough you might say, ive made a lot of mistakes in my life but even i know you dont treat women that way. When someone says that, they are trying to show people that they have certain moral qualities and they want at least to be thought of as a good person but theyre not trying to claim any virtue for themselves. The other problem is maybe more serious. Its that signaling is overbroad as a category to pick out the right kinds of expressions. So the signal any time you talk about morality at all you send a signal. If you make any moral claim at all you are signaling to people that believe that thing that you might be committed to it in a certain way. But we dont object to every single instances of this form of communication. What people are complaining about when they complain about grandstanding and virtue signaling typically is people are using moral talks for the wrong reason. They are using it to impress others in doing so intentionally. We think that grandstanding is sort of a narrower term and takes out the right instances of these moral talks to complain about. I just want to add to justins comments, when we started writing about grandstanding in 2014, the term virtue signaling wasnt really on the scene. We sort of it was about a year after the term virtue signaling was picking up online and in public discussions as a term to pick out this sort of show we ostentatious moral behavior. As justin mentioned, theres lots of reasons why we think its not the most helpful terminology to pick out a discussion of selfinvolved egoistic moral talk. For all the reasons he mentions, also the term has been picked up in the cultural wars. Virtue signaling as a term tends to connote between the politicizing on the left but all the research weve done over seven studies and 6000 participants all the evidence we have is that grandstanding is equally bipartisan. People on the left do it just as much as people on the right although as we found, people on the ideological extremes do it much more. Because the term has gotten caught up in the culture wars we think its best to avoid. Also, the term itself is a bit ambiguous. I think what most people have in mind with virtue signaling when they accuse someone of doing it is they are accusing someone of basically grandstanding of using using moral talk for selfpromotion or bane purposes. But there is a perfectly, a perfectly innocent use of the term virtue signaling which is whatever you do something virtuous and public, whether you are trying to impress people or not, that sends a signal. Theres a kind of equivocation or confusion that can result this is one way you see this is now we have this discussion you may have seen of vice signaling. Or arguments about whether someone is virtue signaling. We think grandstanding is a much clearer term, a term that dates back to the 19th century, it came out 1988 book ab excuse me, 1888 book on baseball. The idea was that these guys in the outfield making really showy catches and playing to the crowd they were playing to the grandstands. We think it captures a very intentional use of moral talk first selfpromotion in a way that virtue signaling obscures. The idea of virtue signaling is broader and can capture nonverbal behavior as choices, decisions that may not be made for political or grandstanding purposes. Perhaps someone just really does like the previous. In picking up grandstanding you chosen to focus specifically on moral talk, conversation. Why that focus on speech . We think that the Public Discourse is an extremely valuable tool. Its our primary method as human beings to commit a cake that someone has been wronged, to identify injustices, to warn of threats, to praise people who are worthy of trust. You might think that people would take care of this. And preserve it and use it for appropriate purposes. But it turns out you can also abuse this resource. Its like a resource in the common at like a pastor, public park, can be used. And it can be abused. It can be used for proper ends and it could be used for other kinds of nefarious purposes. In our view grandstanding is one of those uses of moral tact that actually degrades the social currency. Degrades our ability to have conversations with each other about what matters. Grand standards, find a way to turn these discussions that are really important problems into discussions about themselves. And so we think, our focus on public, in conversation and the rise to media and how many conversations are occurring now, we think it is the times you have conversation about how we converse. Guest a couple reasons to chime in on a couple more things is to bring action into the conversation is its reasonable to say the stakes change a lot when you Start Talking about action. Because say someone gives 100 million to a hospital for Cancer Research or Something Like that. We might not care as much if the person does that kind of out of vanity and they want a wing named after themselves because the amount of good they do is so much greater then you might do simply by saying something even giving a fairly major speech. A another reason to focus just on speech instead of action is that the model between what we are trying to do here is to give a speech act. If you read the book, will you probably noticed we go again and again to comparisons. So if you wanted to focus on dishonesty you could talk about dishonest actions, dishonesty and lots of forms of expression and different areas of life. But you learn a lot by just talking about the cases of dishonest speech. There intentionally misleading speech. So we took that is sort of a model for proceeding. We hope that what we ended up doing sheds a lot of light on the use of moral talk or selfpromotion. Host the core of the book is where you set out a taxonomy of grandstanding. Which for me, deeply interesting section. Because a lot of us have a sense of what this grandstanding thing is if we call it virtual signaling or whatever else. But the separating it out is really clarifying. I was hoping maybe you guys could run through that taxonomy a bit. Those different kinds of grandstanding, the way people go about doing it. Sure. This is one of our favorite parts of the book is we run through what we call a field guide of grandstanding. Now one thing to note at the outset is there is no foolproof test for identifying when someone is grandstanding. We talk about grandstanding a lot over the years and when the questions we often get is tell me what grandstanding looks like. Tell me how i can identify grand standards because they want to go out to facebook and twitter and call people grand standards or Something Like that. Later in the book we talk about the side go about solving this problem. It can be helpful to have a roadmap or a field guide of what kinds of discourse ten to exemplify grandstanding. Ill quickly run through each of the five here. One of them we call piling on. Piling on involves saying something that other people have said to get in on the action, just to show that your heart is in the right place. The primary motivation here is just to show that you are one of the good guys. Or at least you and other people to think you share their values. So people who engage in these hues shaming pile on for example, this Research Shows that people engage in these activities not necessary because they believe somebody did something wrong. But they want to be seen as certain kinds of values. They want to be seen as tough on the outgroup. So a lot of grandstanding involves this sort of pylon of people joining with others just to be seen as taking a certain stance. Whether they believe that or not. The second form of grandstanding is called ramping up. Ramping up is when moral discourse takes the form of an arms race. So we know from social psychology that a lot of the way we think of ourselves is in terms of how we match up to others. How we think about ourselves in relation to others. And so what happens in Public Discourse if i think of myself of caring deeply for the poor or feeling deeply for the factory worker and someone in Public Discourse says something that implies that they care deeply. I have a choice to make i can allow them to be seen as really important or impressed leave a jet impressive showing they care deeply or i can try to outdo them. Theres lots of examples of this in recent discourse. We went from police needs, serious reform, to abolish the police in about two days. We went from masks dont help too if you wear a or part of the deep state in about two days. So there is this sort of competition that can occur in Public Discourse were people trying to outdo each other and take a more extreme or demanding more from position to show how much they care or show much how sensitive they are about the certain moral considerations. A third form of the grandstanding is recalled trumping up. No relation to the current president by the way it. [laughter] trumping up hazard with trumping up charges. You take a morally innocent peace of behavior. Or maybe a slight moral wrong for you to run up, up the charges and make it something really big, morally important something that is agree just. What that signals to others you have a moral compass, you are intolerance of any immoral behavior. A lot of grandstanding involves taking very innocent behavior and moralizing it. Making it run to this machine that makes it a really huge problem. So others can see how impressive you are. Grandstanding also takes the form of excessive emotions. Often in terms of outrage. So we know from psychology that expressions of outrage signify your moral convictions. If you get really outraged about something, that implies you care deeply about it and you have lots of moral convictions. And so grand standards can exploit this background assumption and get outraged about a kinds of things. I mean we know from psychology that people get outrage to alleviate guilt. We know they do it to avoid suspicion about their own bad behavior. One other thing they do is they use outrage to show how much they care. And show how immorally they are impressive they are at Public Discourse. And finally, the final form is dismissiveness. So someone could Say Something like if you cant see hamilton, the musical, is the most morally agree just thing thats ever been produced on broadway that i dont have time for you, lets not talk anymore. Do better. A lot of grandstanding on evolves a very dismissive attitude towards people. And the implication is i dont need to explain why this is wrong. Even if i were to explain it you would not understand it so these are the five forms that grandstanding can take. They are not meant be exhaustive but they should delight on the ways that grandstanding tends to rear its ugly head. Sue necklaces book and that answer. And that is this is not a guide spotting transcending in the world you can grandstand like brandon said without doing any of those five things. And you can do any of those five things without grandstanding. To the point of giving this guide is just to help people understand what this account can explain. And help us and see if grandstands common. They should expect to see a lot of this behavior. As youre going through these your definition of grandstanding has almost a mens rea requirement. Trainees moral talk to accomplish something. It seems like a number of the kinds of grandstanding we might see horton not necessarily is trying to get others to think another way in terms of it feels good to do these things sometimes it just feels good to get out razor feels good to pylon because it makes you feel righteous about yourself is that a distinct behavior . Is it grandstanding but your audience is your self . Guest thats a nice question. I dont think theres a onesizefitsall answer to that question. I think youre absolutely right that a lot of people engage in these behaviors like excessive outrage and domineering Public Discourse. Simply because it feels good. Theyre exercising with the call there will to power. They just really enjoy dominating other people. It gives them satisfaction. I dont think you have to be grandstanding to do that. Our view is not that grandstanding is the only poison in Public Discourse. I think theres surely lots of behavior thats engaged in simply because it feels good. Becker william seems to have this nice paper the idea essays moral outrage to satisfy their desires and make themselves feel good. Now all that being said, why these things feel good might reaffirm to ourselves how good we think we are. Decades of Research Show most people are morally better than the average person. We all give ourselves pretty high grades, morally speaking. We typically what others to believe those things about us too. Good that we have these reaffirmed in public. Youre right its not just the only audience is not just the other person reading my post online or if i am a cable talkshow host what people say about me on twitter after words prayed that is not the only audience. We are also our own audience sometimes. Sometimes i think were playing to ourselves. To convince ourselves or reassure ourselves we are good as we think we are. Yeah, to add so we recognize of course that motivation is really complicated. People almost never act out of one sure motivation. Just want to point out, even if we are often acting because it feels good over trying to satisfy our will to power as brenda points out, we might also be trying to promote our social status. So you might think when someone goes after somebody and tries to shame them, publicly just to feel good they are also trying to show people i am someone to be reckoned with. [inaudible] is a friend i want to have and so on. Host so taking this mens rea element, how should we distinguished grandstanding from lead by example what you genuinely feel you can act as a moral guide for others by demonstrating correct course of action in your personal life, others will follow along. Guest yeah, thats good. Just to mention motivations for our behavior are complex and myriad. But heres a simple way to think about different ways we might be motivated to engage in Public Discourse. So one broad category of motivation we have is all true with dick. So we engage in Public Discourse. We say what we say because we truly care about other people. We are trying to help. We are trying to Say Something that will promote understanding. That will promote seeking the truth that will provide good evidence. You are saying things because you have really good reason to think this is going to be helpful. That is one kind of motivation you have. I think those are perfectly innocent and laudable motivations to have another motivation is dutiful motivation. Having to do with duty. If youre not so much trying to help, but you are trying to promote the right moral principles pretty trying to articulate the moral truth. To give reasons or evidence to discover what we ought to do and what we ought to do together. I think those are perfectly laudable, virtuous motivations for discourse two. The third category of motivation is the category that caused trouble thats egoistic dessert motivation for discourse. For selfinterested reasons, right . And the reason we are primarily interested in this book are reasons that hazardous social status. And so our worry, when you engage in Public Discourse for egoistic selfserving resources, that doesnt just hold constant to what you say. Its actually going to motivate and cause you to say things you would not otherwise say and do things you would not otherwise do if you were not selfishly motivated. So for lots of reasons that we discussed in the book, egoistic and Public Discourse causes all kinds of problems. They lead to polarization, cynicism about Public Discourse. It causes outrage exhaustion, and thats also disrespectful. It treats people as mere means, simply conscripting them into your morality play to show people how good you are. Using discourse for these purposes, free rides on other peoples wellintentioned uses of Public Discourse. And also we just think using Public Discourse in these selfish egoistic ways, one way they might put it is pathetic. That is not what morality is for. Morality is not to gain social status. Its not there to try to impress people. The point of morality is not to dominate people, shame them, make them tower before you. That is a cheap pathetic way to use morality. Its not what morality is for. And so for all of those reasons we think egoistic motivated Public Discourse is just going to lead to a lot of the problems we see. Our case is made easier if you look at Public Discourse. No one thanks is going well. Everyone thanks it could be going better. We could counsel people and how they are contributing and how they are engaging in discourse for all touristic reasons or dutiful reasons. One way to test that for retype into twitter course something is ask yourselves because i want to look good or my doing this because i actually think its going to do good . We think that sort of question is the kind of question we should be asking before we engage in discourse. Host i think if a lot of us tried to imagine examples of grandstanding, many of the ones were going to come up with will be in the political sphere. Think people grandstand quite a lot on political issues. And so i am curious about the relationship between politics and grandstanding on the one hand is it easier to grandstand about political issues . Or in our current environment just get more engagement if your grandson on political issues and other issues . Or perhaps the causation runs in the other direction. The kinds of issues that we tend to grandstand on are the ones that then become politicized. Kind of the moral outrage leads us to wanting to politicize say the outcome of those issues. Yeah, thats a great question and a lot of different ways i can take that. Guest one thing that people expect us to this book that we dont do is really go after politicians. Because when you think of grandstanding the first thing to think of are probably politicians engaging in publicity stunts. But we see the matter a little bit differently. We actually think the bulk for political grandstanding lives mostly on the people who demand it. So here is a great thing about political actors in a democracy. They tend to basically give us what they want. So why did they grandson . Because they were rewarded for. So Politicians Face incentives that the rest of us mean our friends will like her posts may be, we say things that are pleasing to them. But our livelihood generally does not depend on the people around us. Our supporters if you want to think of it that way. It doesnt depend on whether they think that we are good upstanding people. This causes a lot of problems though in politics. There is good reason for us to stop demanding more from that politicians engage in the sort of attention grabbing moral tal talk. Because we encourage our politicians to take moral stances, we see fewer cases of important compromise. So why is that . Because if no one takes a moral stance on an issue, people tend to really punish them. You think of someone you cant trust all that then changed her mind or have some nuance in their position to be committed to that stance. By the same token we expect politicians to be loyal to us. So we dont like it the partisans dont like it when they given to the other side. Looks again like theyre going back on their commitment, the politician has every incentive not to compromise. Another problem is when you turn politics into a morality pageant thats basically what we get. We get a display of everyones good intentions instead of policies that work. We called the expressive policy problem. So rent control for instance. Basically every economist agrees rent control doesnt work that makes housing shortages it doesnt make housing more affordable. And yet politicians many of whom must know this continue to call for introducing rent control issues. Why did they do that . Because on the face of it looks like policies will promote some morally worthy goal. Thats making it easier for people to have a home. Sorry i lost my train of thought for a second there. So why did they do this . Its a lot easier to give people what they want morally splashy policies than to sit down and explain to them know you need to understand supply and demand. They have their slogan about how everyone deserves because the issue was so thoroughly moralize her so much grandstanding about it we get policies that sound good and dont work. It smote really easy for people to see grandstanding as the other side as it were. You motivated on the other side. Every politician does this. I think we just have to be honest that our beloved politician on her own side and they do it is just and points out because we wanted study after study shows they vote to share their values or cares about them. Those are all well and fine. But the problem is when politicians merely because they express not because of that. [inaudible] about the prevalence of grandstanding today. Zurich technological aspects to the seeming widespread nature . Do we just have more avenues to broadcast our purported virtues for ability to curate how we present ourselves to the world . Or is this all been going on for a long time and maybe it is just less visible . Guest yeah, we argue in the book the basic human ingredients for grandstanding are as old as society. And they desire to impress people, the desire for status. Those very basic human desires have been with us. In many aspects of life, we are able to overcome those desires. You might be at a dinner party at you really want people to know how much you make. Or where you went to college. But you are able to overcome and keep your mouth shut. So those mode invasions, those features of human psychology been with us for a long time. So the same things intrinsic unique about the present moment, what is different is that at no time in Human History have people been able to just get on their phones and immediately talked to hundreds or thousands or even millions of people. And for a lot of human beings, that temptation. The temptation to get the positive feedback to impress other people to be liked. To say things. Maybe not because you think theyre true but because you think it will raise your status and your political movement. Those temptations are going to be early hard to overcome. Nothing new about human psychology and humans on a scale never before seen are able to talk to people. Even just 100 years ago you didnt have to go stand on a Street Corner and convince people to listen to you. Maybe be a preacher or politician to have an audience. Each of us now at the touch of our fingers has an audience greater than any of our ancestors could have. So much easier for each of us to grandstand. Also easier to find it. You can logon see a bunch of grandstanding he spent 20 minutes on twitter today youre probably going to see it. And so social media made it easier for us to act on these desires for status. Act on these desires to impress others. It also made it much easier to find it. Host just interject with one optimistic note. Introduce some technology that human beings just cant use. Theres just no way we can live together with these easy platforms for grandstanding will always bid each others throats. May give you some reason to not think that. It is plausible this is just a case where the norms have not caught up with the social environment yet. Heres an example. If you look at mid evil guides from the middle ages 20 authors writing for adults and not only reba can afford books theres a reason for those books about etiquette dont non a bone and put it back on the serving dish. Dont blow your nose into the tablecloth. Stuff that if anyone ever told me this i dont remember, it seems so obvious to these people it is like whoa. We need a whole book to explain stuff like this to us. So what happened . Will the norms caught up, right . So here is a case may be people did not have opportunities to blow their nose that often. Or they were remiss with eating outside or not refined settings. And all of a sudden they have these opportunities to gratify the strong urges so they did. But people dont do that anymore. And the reason they dont is because the norms caught up. So brandon and i hope its eventually the norms will catch up for grandstanding. Also people will come to see it as a people get on facebook or twitter a a long caption on instagram about whatever social justice or whatever issue they want to impress people with their more. [inaudible] its not the sort of thing that people do in polite company. Host i am interested in the Practical Applications you guys imagine for this book, for the ideas that are set out in it. Particularly because i can see attention and how they are applied. The first way is going back to our discussion of self assessment. To recognize when youre doing it. The other is scallop diagnosis. To those who experience living and an undergrad who was a psych major would come home from class and immediately diagnose you and everyone he knew with all manner of Mental Illnesses based on whatever the lecture had been that day. And i can see something similar happening with this. Anytime anyone does any moral talk thats an example of piling on. Or about trumping up the reader reads this, what to expect them to do with an idea would you like to do with it . So the entire last chapter of the book is called what to do about grandstanding. This is actually hard to do with a couple of philosophers. Im not in the business of telling people how to live their lives. So what to do about grandstanding . Grandstanding is a tricky phenomenon. You cant look at a peace of text often enough summons grandstanding or be certain enough to justify a public accusation. Grandstanding is figure out its lying or or humble bragging thats often not clear if some is doing it or not. But we do to solve this problem . We argue in this last chapter is not to call somebody out, calling someone up for doing this is probably not a good idea. There are several reasons we give. One is in epidemic reason it simply you probably dont have enough information to justify a public accusation. This reason to a moral reason because you dont know enough about this persons intentions and goals its probably unfair to them to make a public accusation. Theres also a very practical reason not to call someone a grand center and accuse them. That is going to be counterproductive. Im going to accuse you erna being a grand setting is a oh youre just grand setting at me and working to get an argument about whats in my heart of whats in your heart. The first time that conversation the next time that kind of conversation is productively the first time. As just not a way to have a good conversation. We just dont think calling people out is a good idea. So what we do . What we want to do is change the norms. We want to go from a normal grandstanding is common and accepted and even rewarded to a norm where people dont do it. They know better there than to treat Public Discourse this way. They are not impressed by other peoples grandstanding. So how do we do that . Here we draw on some work from the university of pennsylvania but the basic idea here is one, set a good example. Set a good example and how we each engage in Public Discourse. And that means admitting when you are wrong, paying attention to the data and the evidence. Understand that being outraged expressing anger is not an argument. Harder on yourself and your own other people. Its easier to treat ourselves with grace and think we are great and then being really critical of others. I think Public Discourse calls were division of labor. We should be hard on ourselves, more critical in ourselves than others. Theres a lot of tips and tricks we talk about in the book and how to avoid grandstanding. So then you might think i stopped grandstanding freed thats a drop in the bucket. To a four unable to call them out how do we do that . Our advice here so instead of calling someone out for grandstanding dont give them what they see. The criticism of serving general self chicken or whatever the case is and youre really trying to show people that you care about this issue in your really morally important in known response, no one likes it they say youre so brave thank you. If no one does that, at least for most of us is going to be embarrassing. One change the norms to dis incentivize is if you think you see it, avoid it. Try to make, just like knowing on the bone at a dinner table would now be embarrassing. Try to make selfcentered egoistic discourse something of a past by making it something embarrassing to engage in. A lot of people are often dissatisfied. Maybe this is the thing people are friendly to the project are least satisfied with that because they want to get those green sinners but they dont like being told they shouldnt go after them. So heres what i tell people when they say this. Remember why we are here remember what discourse is for november why grandstanding is bad. Good to figure out whats true and then get people to do what we ought to do. When youre trying to him aris them explicitly, and away youre giving the grandstand exactly what he or she wants. You are letting them make Public Discourse about themselves. So even if it did work and people came to see them as a joke or whatever. You still should be doing exactly that there doing which is making talk about the wrong thing. Well, thank you for that answer. We are starting to run a little low on times i think its time to move into audience q and a. Our first question has been asked actually buy a couple of people. A matthew in a couple anonymous commentators asked how anonymity affects these grandstanding expressions . We can see perhaps the cost and payoffs of grandstanding would be lessened if you were speaking anonymously. Guest , thanks everyone for those named matt and not name matt thanks for joining us today. So yeah, anonymity does change the story a little bit. But we think not by much. For think about yourself typing on the internet. Whether you have a name attached to it or not, is not like some random stranger knows who you are even if you are using a name even if youre using your real name. And so the fact that you might not attached your identity to your statement, to a random stranger is not going to make any difference. Heres what the grandstand is often thinking. Going im going to say this thing and i want the people to see this in the person who this is morally impressive. Thats true they cant parade around and take under their name. But they are still thinking to themselves, i want to be seen as a certain kind of person. Even if all their thinking is all man the person who wrote that thing is really awesome. And of course when you are the grandstand or, all you might care about is just what other people think the person who wrote it which happens to be you and you know its you is really impressive. That might be satisfying to you as much as anything else. The other thing to keep in mind as we mentioned earlier, a lot of impression management, the term psychologist used to try to get other people to believe that we are the way that we think we are, morally impressive. A lot of impression management as reflexive. So turn back on ourselves. They call it self impression management. So the basic idea is a lot of grandstanding might be done with an eye to depressing yourselves this is strange that might seem more convincing ourselves we are good are taking satisfaction, smug satisfaction in our own moral greatness. Its true that politicians doesnt mean much for them to grandstand anonymously, but for lots of people they can still get the kick, they can still get the satisfaction or desire to have people think that whoever wrote this thing is morally impressive. Thats a good question. Host weve got another one from nathaniel snow who asks, is there a correlation between the scope of issues upper public debate and the intensity of grandstanding . If grandstanding is social. [inaudible] that will encourage more grandstanding right . Guest lets see. Justin do and take that one . Guest so i thought it was about two Different Things from the one hand there is the scope of the issues. Then theres the bit about rent seeking and how much is at stake. So let me try this. Korean standards are in a way sort of entrepreneurial. And so one way that you can grandstand is to do what was mentioned earlier in our field guide is to trump up moral concerns. So in other words there is status to be had for people who can find moral problems were other people see nothing. So the thought is that if you could spot this problem everyone else overlooks, you must be morally special somehow pretty must be especially sensitive or specially morally wise or Something Like that. So if thats right, then we should expect people to do more of this when they are grandstanding, right . To look for these hyper specialized and heretofore unrecognized issues. You might think also, maybe this is whats getting out about rent seeking is the more payoff there is for this kind of behavior, the more straightforward with thinking people as rational actors, its not ideal behavior, is not a good use of good outcome lobbing exotic or recently invented claims and blaming one another for violating them. Then we went to also maybe give people a little less credit for behaving this way. Host our next question comes from joe kolb asking how we can best respond to expressions of grandstanding. And wondering whether suppression of response would be sufficient as he proposes it as one might listen to Adrian Sander in silence and not give them any indication of whether you approve of what they said or not. How would we imagine this as a general response effect attempts at grandstanding . Is is a very nice practical question. Thanks for the question. So we do give some advice in the book i dont think we address this question in particular. What should you say in a response question marketing a lot of social science with a psychologist named joshua grubbs. Safari done several studies with 7000 participants but we want to eventually get to as a figure out what kinds of interventions are effective. But also respectful in the grandstand you see. Going to say this is an open question i want to be sensitive to empirical to what might actually work. One thing i suspect, is helpful in these kinds of conversations is to try to gently move top of the conversation away from the speaker. Whether its me challenging the grandstand or the grandstand or herself to take the conversation away from it being personal. Not make it personal. Its not whether you care about the poor produce that whether i care about the poor. Its about the issue. What is the relevant issue . One thing you could do is ask the grandstand is could you refrain the question for me . Could you tell me about the moral principle that you have in mind here . What is the relevant moral principle . Lets think about the kinds of negative consequences that could come from this proposal . You have any good data about this question . Im not promising any of those things will actually work. But i do have the suspicion that we can gently get away from personal attacks, personal selfpromotion moving away from those topics into the issue at hand. I suspect that might be a helpful way to do it. I mentioned earlier these are empirical questions. We are engaged in very longterm empirical time. Host what kind of interventions might actually be helpful . Guest i think we have time for one more question. This time coming from i suppose the side of a potential grandstand her. Someone named mike is a little worried about this. If someone is using moral language signaled their moral moral feelings to encourage wider norm changes is this motivation distinct from what debates grant standards . What moral introspection would you recommend for someone considering expressing moral views online in support of a cause . So great question. We dont actually get that many questions from people about how they could avoid granting themselves. People usually more interested in how they can get those annoying grant standards they want to go after. So i really like this question. So one test that brandon and i proposed in the book as it would call the disappointment test. You can ask yourself suppose i type up this post or say this thing at this rally or whatever, and i find it later. No one cared it all about me. I got no social credit for, no one was impressed, no one thanks better of me at all. Ask yourself, would you be disappointed. If the answer is yes thats good evidence that maybe you care a little too much. At least in this one instance about what instance of moral talk would do for you and not enough about what it would do for other people who moral talk is supposed to be helping. Now, look, it could be that you just happen to be in a case where it is so important that someone Say Something that even if you are grandstanding it is still the right thing to do. But you should even in that case i think go in knowing that what youre doing is not optimal. It would be better if you werent motivated to seek status for yourself and if you were primarily just going for helping others. But its good to ask. Guest justin is right one thing we did not point out yet but we discussed in the book is that it might be okay in some cases to grandstand. I think we are perfectly comfortable with that. Grandstanding is may be no different in lying most world philosophers say its okay to lie. Doesnt mean its a great or choice worthy or laudable. It might be the best set in about options. The thought is not that grandstanding is always everywhere not to be done although we should not be giving too much license to do it. There may be cases in which is just the thing to do. You have to do it. We argue in the book that there is a strong presumption. Just like theres a strong presumption against lying or may be. There is a strong more moral presumption against grandstanding. Until heres a thought. If you can do all of your advocacy and activism and protesting, those are all wonderful things. But if you can do them without trying to seek for yourself status you are going to be more morally above board and probably more effective than if you are trying to seek status for yourself and trying to make moral discourse, moral progress of any prospect. See what wow i think that is an excellent note to end on. We have more questions but unfortunately we have run out of time for today. Justin and brandon thank you very much for joining us. Thank you to all of our viewers for watching. The book that we discussed today is grandstanding the use and abuse of moral talk and it is available in print today pretty can find it on amazon, on oxford, anywhere else you find books. Had there will be additional materials posted on this event page with the recording of this lecture. Enke again to all of our guests and audience and have a wonderful afternoon. Announced cspan2 book tv, or television for serious readers. So lower one welcome to the Virtual Program of the commonwealth club. I am amy allison founder and she the people. A National Network dedicated to elevating the power and voice of women of color. And im so thrilled to be your moderator for todays afternoon program