Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide a rational choice explanation of the existence and variation of societal norms involving sexual modesty. First I argue that enforcement of chastity is an efficient response to the fact that information regarding paternity is costly to obtain, but that since chastity itself is not immediately observable, what is needed is some signal thereof. The thesis of this paper is that modesty in dress and behavior effectively serves as a costly signal of chastity. I present a simple signaling model of modesty and show how modesty norms can develop individually according to a simple confirmation feedback loop between immediately observed modesty and ultimately observed chastity, while modesty norms for any one society as a whole evolve over time as such individually-arrived-at-norms are transmitted through various institutional arrangements. I also discuss briefly some of the determinants of the observed variation in the strictness of modesty norms in the real-world by considering some examples in light of the model.
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