At a few social functions over the holidays, as well as in the media, I noticed the term ‘virtue signaling’ being used in a negative way. The notion that virtue signaling is somehow a bad thing seems to be increasingly common.

Let’s take a minute to define the term: virtue signaling is how you demonstrate you are a good person through opinions you express or personal behaviors you model. When somebody accuses you of it, the implication is that you’re ‘putting on a show’ or are ‘full of BS.’ Some examples of virtue signaling might include talking about your fat-free diet, wearing an “I support public radio” t-shirt, or bragging about your 80-hour work week.

People tend to find virtue signaling annoying, which creates friction in conversations and relationships. While it’s easy to disregard virtue signaling since it can be so off-putting, I recommend paying close attention to it for these reasons:

Everybody does it. If you think you don’t, think again. Homo Sapiens is the moral animal. Our sense of right and wrong is always front and center in our thoughts— it’s what sets us apart from other species. So, signaling morality to our fellow humans is as natural as breathing. We all do it, and we do it all the time. This presents a paradox: we do it ourselves, but we find it obnoxious in others. If you had run into me on election day back in November, you would have seen me wearing an ‘I voted’ sticker and an ‘I gave blood today’ sticker, and feeling very smug. You probably would have crossed the street to avoid talking to me.

It can tell you a lot about people and their values. Virtue signaling is a form of ‘morality by proxy.’ A proxy is something that represents the value of something else, so virtue signaling is a behavior that represents a moral value. Because we’re so attuned to morality as a species, we use personal attributes as proxies for moral character in others: physical beauty and wealth to name two. And, when we want others to notice our virtues, we signal them. You might do this by displaying your muscles at the gym or by making a show of your electric car.

So, when people virtue signal, they are telling you something about themselves that they believe is important – giving you a window into their self-image. This presents a great opportunity to learn more about them.

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I’ve certainly noticed when conducting qualitative research that participants sometimes try to put each other on the defensive or quash disagreement either by virtue signaling or by questioning the sincerity of others who are doing it. Here’s an example:

While moderating focus groups on educational software, talking to parents who homeschool, one mother of a 7-year-old said: “Obviously, I would never have my daughter use that. Everything she learns she gets from me.” Several other participants vigorously agreed. A dad who had a 14-year-old pushed back: “my daughter is doing stuff right now – particularly in math – that’s over my head. The software I bought is teaching her material I can’t.” The mom replied, “I just could never do that,” the dad accused her of “self-righteous BS,” and it went downhill from there.

A little later, after things had calmed down, I asked the anti-software mom, “what do you think that says about you as a parent?” She replied, “that I’m not willing to take shortcuts or make anything less than a full effort.” Another like-minded parent chimed in, “I think it says I’m an old-school homeschooler.” And, when I asked what ‘old-school’ meant to him, he said it meant he lives by “traditional values.” This led to a good conversation about ‘traditional values’ – what they are and what they have to do with homeschooling.

Pay attention to virtue signaling, but be careful about taking it at face value. While it can tell you a lot about how people see themselves, remember that they might be blowing smoke. The fact that you gave $50 to public radio last year – and are displaying the tote bag to prove it –  doesn’t by itself make you generous. The fact that you drive a Prius doesn’t make you a committed environmentalist.

Virtue signaling is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, it’s just a human thing. We can no more stop doing it than we can stop breathing. However, we can train ourselves to become more aware of it in ourselves and others. Try paying attention to the virtues you signal and how you go about that. Think about what kind of impression are you creating and, how it affects relationships and interactions with your fellow humans. As for other people’s virtue signaling, treat it as an opportunity to ask questions and get to know them better.

A while ago, I was conducting focus groups on new frozen food products. Of 12 concepts, participants consistently called two interesting, but said they probably wouldn’t try them, as their freezers were overfull.

My instinct was to be skeptical of the ‘no-room-in-the-freezer’ justification. Between groups I thought about why, and recalled that the ‘no room’ rationale was often code for ‘this product offers no benefit’ – something I learned early in my career from friend and researcher-extraordinaire, Phil Glowatz.

Meanwhile, the clients in attendance were encouraged by the feedback on those ideas, and planned to put resources toward further development. I continued to probe reactions to these concepts, pushing participants to explain the basis for their professed interest.

Ultimately, we learned this: for the younger, apartment-dwelling participants, my intuition was wrong. They were genuinely interested, but were strapped for space in their tiny apartment freezers. However, I was right about the older suburbanites, who couldn’t articulate a coherent case for their interest. Eventually, some admitted that they were just trying to be nice. As a result, the client turned development efforts toward a smaller package and a formulation that didn’t need to be frozen.

The point of all this: intuition is valuable, but you must be careful about trusting it. Knowing when and how much to rely on intuition is an important skill, no matter what you do.

There are two kinds of intuition:

1. Rapid, subconscious analysis of information informed by prior experience.

2. Impulsive judgements shaped by your desires and biases. So sometimes intuition is your brain working incredibly fast, and sometimes it’s your brain just being lazy.

As a result, sometimes intuition can get you to a well-founded POV with blinding speed, and sometimes it can lead you astray.

Here are two principles I follow regarding intuition:

Be suspicious of your first, instinctive reactions. Pause, examine those reactions, and figure out where they came from – are they coming from bias or from experience? In other words, before questioning the information you’ve just encountered, first interrogate your own response. This is particularly helpful when somebody expresses a POV with which you intuitively disagree. By examining your initial reaction, you might be able to avoid a pointless, emotional argument and instead have a friendly, respectful conversation.

Realize that intuition is where you start, not where you finish. Intuition gives you an initial impression to follow up upon, not a final answer. Treat it as a hypothesis to be disproven.

Like any powerful tool, intuition must be used with care. It’s like a table saw – when treated with care, it can save time and deliver a high-quality product. But, if you’re not careful, it can cut your thumb off. So, respect your intuition, but don’t trust it. At least, not too much.

With the holidays approaching, we have a unique opportunity to support the businesses we care about.

The small, local businesses that add so much to our communities are very much in need of our attention. The pandemic has taught us it’s essential to support businesses that are important to us, because they may be more vulnerable than we think. Increasing costs, higher interest rates, challenges finding and retaining employees, lingering supply chain issues, Covid safety protocols  – you name it – are creating a uniquely challenging environment for small, businesses. Their owners are feeling particularly pessimistic.

To that end, as a qualitative researcher, lately I’ve been encouraging my clients to get back to in-person qualitative. This is partly because I love doing research face-to-face, partly because I believe in-person research gets you a level of engagement, insight and nuance that online simply can’t. And partly because I believe in supporting businesses that I value. When it comes to face-to-face qualitative research, this means focus group facilities, local recruiters, field managers and other businesses that provide for this type of research. Many of these businesses have gone under over the past 2 ½ years.

When you support a local business, most or all of what you spend goes directly into the local economy and supports the creation and maintenance of jobs right in that community. Also, there’s a waterfall effect. Each of those businesses will support other local businesses. A local focus group facility, in addition to creating multiple jobs and contributing to local property taxes, supports restaurants and caterers, cleaning services and many tradespeople.

In the town where I live, Westfield NJ, we’ve lost a number of well-regarded local businesses since 2020. Our favorite store for herbs, seasonings and spices closed. And Brummer’s, a 116-year-old family-owned chocolate shop shut down as well – so no more of those to-die-for chocolate covered apricots. These businesses are gone for good. So, this holiday season, our family is making a point of buying local. By supporting local bookstores, florists, toy stores, clothing stores, restaurants, movie theaters and so on, I can think of no better way to “be the change you want to see in the world.”

About 18 months ago, during research on health-related topics, the conversation turned to attitudes towards vaccinations. Here’s a word-for-word quote from one participant: “The covid jab just makes me uncomfortable. I feel like I need more data.” After hearing this, one of the observers texted me: “Have her explain why she refuses to get vaccinated!” I didn’t ask that question. Instead, I asked the participant to tell me more.

After the group, the observer asked why I hadn’t posed his question. I pointed out that the participant hadn’t actually said that she refused to be vaccinated, only that she wasn’t comfortable and needed more information. As it turned out, she was pretty set against being vaccinated but – as a qualitative researcher – it is important that I focus on exactly what research participants have said, and not make assumptions about underlying meaning. Instead, my job is – through careful probing – to get participants themselves to reveal those hidden meanings.

This is a lesson I learned before I got into qualitive research. Back when I worked in brand management, I received training on giving constructive feedback to the people who reported to me. A key principle the instructor shared was that feedback must be solidly based on what employees have actually done. She advised against making assumptions about what was going on in that person’s head, but rather only to talk about observable, empirically verifiable actions. In other words, rather than accusing someone of being lazy and poorly organized, simply point out that they got to work 45 minutes late, and still haven’t delivered work due two days ago. I’ve taken that lesson to heart ever since.

This principle can apply to all aspects of life. Make a point of taking what people say at face value. If someone says ‘nice tattoo’ in a tone that seems insincere, don’t take the bait. Just say thanks. If somebody expresses a view with which you disagree or that you don’t understand, be sure that your response focuses on what has actually been said, without reading anything into it.  And make your response a question that gives the other person an opportunity to elaborate.

Making assumptions about people’s motivations is not conducive to civil discourse. Rather than reacting to what you think are a person’s beliefs and values, question them as specifically and precisely as you can – to better understand what they have actually said to you.  Because that’s what really matters.

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The following are some questions you can ask to help people clarify what they mean:

Can you tell me the story of how you came to this point of view?

I’m not sure I’m following – can you explain?

How do you think your view contrasts with the views of others?

Have any past experiences shaped your opinion on this?

Could you elaborate on that a bit?

I think I know what you mean, but could you please spell it out for me?

What do you think are the implications of your POV?

Have you always felt this way, or has your opinion changed over time?

When you say – keyword in what has just been said like ‘jackbooted thugs’ – what do you really mean by that?

So, there you have it – some questions that will enable people to explain their point of view without you making any assumptions

Sometimes, when I’m conducting qualitative research, a sensitive issue will come up for which there’s no time, that’s off topic, and that I want to avoid.

This came to mind when I recently gave a seminar to The Center for Learning and Living on agreeing to disagree. I’ve been blogging about this for a while, so it was a welcome opportunity to talk about it with thoughtful people. One point that came up in our lively discussion was that, while being able to have friendly, honest conversations with people with whom you disagree is important, avoiding difficult conversations is also a necessary skill. This is true both in everyday life and in qualitative research settings. Sometimes a civil conversation isn’t in the cards, or maybe you just don’t want to get into it with someone.

Civil conversation is a skill. But sometimes there’s no opportunity for agreeable disagreement, and you need to draw on a different skill – avoidance.

My family has a set of four techniques for deflecting or delaying difficult conversations. Here they are, in no particular order:

Ignore.  Sometimes there’s nothing gained from even the tiniest bit of engagement. If that’s the case, simply ignoring is the way to go. For many, this is harder than it sounds, as it might make you feel like you’re being rude. Some people are naturally confrontational, and struggle to ignore the objectionable. Ignoring might also be interpreted by others as aggression, implying a message you actually don’t want to send (then again, maybe you do).

Smile and nod. A greatly underrated skill. Smiling and nodding can be interpreted by others in any way they like, which might suit you just fine. Use this one if you don’t care if others think you agree or not. Another advantage of this is you can do it while walking away.

Grunt noncommittally. A great technique, it enables you to provide a response without actually responding. Just make some sort of noise in the back of your throat and you’ll be home free.

Disengage. This can take many forms – walking away, directing your attention toward another person, changing the subject, deflecting with humor or a non sequitur. Depending on the situation, this can work better than ignoring in that it might not feel as rude or belligerent.

And there you have it – four essential social skills to avoid unpleasantness or delay it for a more appropriate time. One last thing: there is a top-secret fifth social skill. I can tell you is that it involves the liberal consumption of alcoholic beverages, but that’s all I’m going to say.