Receiver psychology: a receiver's perspective

Abstract

The elaborate design of animal signals is challenging to explain. In 1991, Guilford and Dawkins published their iconic paper on ‘receiver psychology’ in Animal Behaviour (42, 1–14), and proposed that the ways in which animals detect, discriminate and learn about relevant stimuli in their environment would have a significant influence on signal evolution. In this essay, I review the impact of this paper on the study of animal communication, and in particular how highlighting the tactical design of animal signals has been important in changing the way in which we think about and study animal signals. Although there has been some recent criticism of receiver psychology, I think it continues to be a powerful approach that generates exciting areas for future research.