Signaling Cost Research Articles

Voluntary Costly Signals in Religious Communities: A Political Interpretation

Abstract The article advances a political interpretation of ritual behavior in religious communes, grounded in costly signaling theory of religion. Both asceticism, often involving self-inflicted pain or severe deprivation, and ecstatic behavior, incurring considerable energetic and emotional expenditure, can perform the role of voluntary costly signals (VCS) – uncoerced displays broadcasting features that predispose the signaler to higher status or position of authority in the community. VCS, as all costly signals, help the group determine the distribution of relevant traits, but, in contrast to most applications of the signaling theory, it is leadership qualifications, and not commitment, that these signals communicate. The discussion of the VCS’ empowering mechanism is illustrated with cross-cultural evidence, focusing on Russian Skoptsy and American Shakers. Voluntary costly signaling had demonstrably contributed to the creation and stability of these groups’ power regimes.

Religious Hate Propaganda: Dangerous Accusations and the Meaning of Religious Persecution in Light of the Cognitive Science of Religion

Religious hate propaganda, which is sustained communication by an authority that attempts to guide an audience towards persecuting others based on religion, is a speech crime. Yet, it is one of the least understood and most difficult speech crimes to prosecute. This is due to misunderstandings and epistemic gaps regarding how persecutory language, which would otherwise have little significance for prosocial religious adherents, becomes meaningful for a religious community. Drawing from the cognitive science of religion (CSR), this article develops and explores the hypothesis that for some religious communities, discursive attacks on others become meaningful when they center on dangerous accusations. Dangerous accusations portray the other as capable of mystical harm and, when made by cultural authorities, become socially accepted truths if repeated during rituals of veridiction. This article shows that dangerous accusations are at the heart of religious hate propaganda and exploit cognitive biases for threat perception, coalitional psychology, and costly signaling. Moreover, dangerous accusations can reinforce the social order and maintain social cohesion. Together, an analysis of speech crimes and dangerous accusations shed light on how religious hate propaganda works, how it can offer meaning to religious communities, and how it can justify persecution in certain environments.

Sick of awards: hidden costs of signaling for advertising creatives

This qualitative study explores the signaling costs associated with winning Cannes Lions, considered the industry’s most prestigious award ceremony. The dynamic componential model of creativity and signaling theory are utilized as a theoretical framework. Grounded Theory was employed for the analysis of eighteen in-depth interviews conducted with Cannes award-winning creatives from Brazil (one of the top three most awarded countries in the festival). Corporate creative tyranny emerged as the central category, which leads to excessive workload, competitive obsessions, and stress. Findings suggest that winning awards is linked to negative costs related to reputation (scam work) and health (physical and psychological damages), contradicting the dynamic componential model of creativity and showing the hidden costs of achieving awards in the advertising industry. Managerial advice is given to reduce these costs.

Effects of information quality on signaling through sovereign debt issuance

This paper develops a sovereign debt model proposing that a debt issuance can be a credible signaling channel between a sovereign government and foreign creditors. The government has private information regarding the future economy. The one with a good economic outlook would like to find a credible way to disclose it to obtain a high bond price. Foreign creditors are interested in inferring the government’s private information to assess sovereign default risk precisely. The government’s private information is imperfect, so the precision of information matters. We study how the interaction of the prior, the signal, and its precision affects the equilibrium and the resulting welfare. We propose a unique separating signaling equilibrium demonstrating the feature that a more precise signal of good economic outlook leads to a greater extent of fiscal austerity. As the information becomes more precise, the signaling cost for a government with a good economic outlook increases. Interestingly, unless the prior is very pessimistic, a highly precise signal harms the sovereign because a resulting strong signaling motive drives it to reduce bond issuance excessively (paradox of highly precise information).

The price of defence: toxins, visual signals and oxidative state in an aposematic butterfly.

In a variety of aposematic species, the conspicuousness of an individual's warning signal and the quantity of its chemical defence are positively correlated. This apparent honest signalling is predicted by resource competition models which assume that the production and maintenance of aposematic defences compete for access to antioxidant molecules that have dual functions as pigments and in protecting against oxidative damage. To test for such trade-offs, we raised monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) on different species of their milkweed host plants (Apocynaceae) that vary in quantities of cardenolides to test whether (i) the sequestration of cardenolides as a secondary defence is associated with costs in the form of oxidative lipid damage and reduced antioxidant defences; and (ii) lower oxidative state is associated with a reduced capacity to produce aposematic displays. In male monarchs conspicuousness was explained by an interaction between oxidative damage and sequestration: males with high levels of oxidative damage became less conspicuous with increased sequestration of cardenolides, whereas those with low oxidative damage became more conspicuous with increased levels of cardenolides. There was no significant effect of oxidative damage or concentration of sequestered cardenolides on female conspicuousness. Our results demonstrate a physiological linkage between the production of coloration and oxidative state, and differential costs of sequestration and signalling in monarch butterflies.

The Signaling Mechanism of Fairness Concern in E-CLSC

The E-CLSC (E-closed-loop supply chain) game model dominated by manufacturer is set, and information value about asymmetry fairness concern of E-platform (E-commerce platform) is calculated for manufacturer, recycler, and E-platform. By signaling model under various signal costs, the authors study the condition for E-platform to transmit real information about fairness concern so as to reduce profit loss for all parties in E-CLSC. The authors prove that E-platform has the motivation to disguise or exaggerate fairness concerns in order to obtain more profit, and manufacturers must try to identify the E-platform's real fairness concern to avoid profit loss. Besides, only when different types of E-platforms need significantly different signaling cost, both of them would like to send real fairness-concern signal, and thus manufacturer can effectively identify E-platform's real information about fairness concern so as to improve recycling rate and optimize the whole E-CLSC operation.

Quality Signaling Through Crowdfunding Pricing

Problem definition: This paper studies an entrepreneur’s pricing strategy in a reward-based crowdfunding campaign under asymmetric product quality information. We propose two signaling mechanisms and investigate how entrepreneurs can leverage their pricing strategy to signal a high-quality project. Academic/practical relevance: This problem is relevant to practice, as asymmetric quality information is a significant concern in reward-based crowdfunding. High-quality entrepreneurs seek credible mechanisms to signal the quality of projects to customers. Methodology: We develop a stylized game-theoretic signaling model with funding and regular selling periods that captures asymmetric quality information between an entrepreneur and customers. Results: We propose a new theory on quality signaling in crowdfunding. We show that contingent access to the regular selling market after running a successful crowdfunding campaign allows high-quality entrepreneurs to signal their quality through low funding prices (one-price signaling). A high-quality entrepreneur can increase his funding price and still signal his high-quality level if he commits to the future regular selling price (two-price signaling). We show that the distinct feature of crowdfunding, that is, the probabilistic nature of crowdfunding, plays different roles in one- and two-price signaling. It is the driving force for the separating equilibrium in one-price signaling, and in two-price signaling, it affects how the entrepreneur should manipulate his funding and regular selling prices to reduce signaling cost. Managerial implications: Entrepreneurs should be mindful of pricing in funding and regular selling periods because it could play an essential role in signaling quality information. Our findings suggest practical tools for quality signaling in crowdfunding. We also investigate when price commitment is the most beneficial for a high-quality entrepreneur, looking for potential signaling mechanisms. Funding: W. Zhou acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72192823 and Grant 71821002]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.1177 .

Communicating the cost of your altruism makes you cool—competitive altruism and sexual selection in a real-life charity situation

Maintaining a good reputation is crucial for humans. Altruism, e.g. charity, may serve as a costly signal that enhances reputation based on the real or communicated cost. Fundraising via charity running triggers competitive altruism when potential donors donate in reaction to the reputation increase of the fundraiser. Using real-life data of marathonists and half-marathonists (388 runners) and their 9281 donors, the present research focuses on how the communicated cost and goal of a charity run affected the potential donors. We analysed the introductory texts of the runners presented online according to the cost and the social benefit of the fundraising communicated by them. We have shown that emphasizing more the subjective cost of running and the social benefit of the goal, or writing a longer text, attracted more donors and, even though the average amount of donation per donor did not increase, still lead to a greater amount of donations collected overall by the fundraiser. It was also shown that a higher communicated subjective cost resulted in a higher ratio of opposite-sex donors, both in the case of male and female runners, suggesting that the communication of the cost of an altruistic act might be the object of sexual selection.Significance statementA good reputation is crucial for humans, as a reputable person enjoys several benefits. One way to maintain a good reputation is to be altruistic, e.g. doing charity. A seemingly high cost and a socially accepted goal may result in a higher reputation. Using data from a charity running community we demonstrate that fundraisers who emphasize their subjective cost (how difficult to run), and emphasize the good goal of the charity, attract more donors, and even though the average amount of each donation does not increase, a higher number of donors results in a greater amount of donations collected overall. Talking about the difficulties of the charity run results in a higher ratio of opposite-sex donors. Our results may be helpful to plan more successful charity events or to make a human community more altruistic and cooperative in general.

Honesty in signalling games is maintained by trade-offs rather than costs

BackgroundSignal reliability poses a central problem for explaining the evolution of communication. According to Zahavi’s Handicap Principle, signals are honest only if they are costly at the evolutionary equilibrium; otherwise, deception becomes common and communication breaks down. Theoretical signalling games have proved to be useful for understanding the logic of signalling interactions. Theoretical evaluations of the Handicap Principle are difficult, however, because finding the equilibrium cost function in such signalling games is notoriously complicated. Here, we provide a general solution to this problem and show how cost functions can be calculated for any arbitrary, pairwise asymmetric signalling game at the evolutionary equilibrium.ResultsOur model clarifies the relationship between signalling costs at equilibrium and the conditions for reliable signalling. It shows that these two terms are independent in both additive and multiplicative models, and that the cost of signalling at honest equilibrium has no effect on the stability of communication. Moreover, it demonstrates that honest signals at the equilibrium can have any cost value, even negative, being beneficial for the signaller independently of the receiver’s response at equilibrium and without requiring further constraints. Our results are general and we show how they apply to seminal signalling models, including Grafen’s model of sexual selection and Godfray’s model of parent-offspring communication.ConclusionsOur results refute the claim that signals must be costly at the evolutionary equilibrium to be reliable, as predicted by the Handicap Principle and so-called ‘costly signalling’ theory. Thus, our results raise serious concerns about the handicap paradigm. We argue that the evolution of reliable signalling is better understood within a Darwinian life-history framework, and that the conditions for honest signalling are more clearly stated and understood by evaluating their trade-offs rather than their costs per se. We discuss potential shortcomings of equilibrium models and we provide testable predictions to help advance the field and establish a better explanation for honest signals. Last but not least, our results highlight why signals are expected to be efficient rather than wasteful.

Re-evaluating late Mesolithic economies

The late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of what is now Denmark have long captivated archaeologists, who have meticulously studied the archaeological remains of their foraging economy since the mid-twentieth century. However, these studies – predominantly focused on subsistence – have often overlooked how individual decisions based on social and environmental settings can greatly structure foraging behaviours and, subsequently, the patterns observed in the zooarchaeological record. Perceiving hunting not just as an activity, but as a cultural practice shaping identities and social bonds, underscores the importance of considering social, symbolic and economic dimensions in Mesolithic hunting research. This study bridges this gap by integrating theoretical frameworks from human behavioural ecology (HBE), such as optimal foraging theory (OFT), costly signalling theory (CST) and notions of prestige. By doing so, it aims to elucidate the complex motivations underlying prey selection among the Ertebølle hunters. Through analysis of five sites from the Danish Ertebølle period (5400–3950 BC) using a simplified prey choice model (PCM), this research seeks to shed light on the interplay of ecological and social factors shaping hunting practices. The findings are discussed through the lens of optimal choice and prestige to examine patterns of prey selection at these archaeological sites.

Comportamentos (Não)Monetários: Como Moralidade e Status Formam as Percepções sobre Ações Sustentáveis

ABSTRACT Objective: in response to the growing importance of environmental issues, more and more consumers are adopting a sustainable lifestyle. Therefore, it is important to understand the judgments and perceptions consumers form about the different possibilities of being sustainable. This study aims to investigate how consumers’ inferences about (non)monetary sustainable actions impact the judgments about the contribution of this action and about the actor responsible for the sustainable action. Theoretical framework: based on the costly signaling theory, this research investigates how consumers form judgments about (non)monetary sustainable actions. Method: Study 1 was a single factor (sustainable action: non-monetary vs. monetary) between-subjects design. Study 2 employed a 2 (sustainable action: non-monetary vs. monetary) by 2 (cost intensity: high vs. low costs) between-subjects design. In both studies, participants completed scales that measured the perceived environmental contribution of the action, the moral elevation of the actor performing the sustainable action, morality, and socioeconomic status. Results: consumers form more positive perceptions about non-monetary (vs. monetary) sustainable actions, making more positive inferences about environmental contribution and moral elevation. There is also evidence that morality shapes this effect. Given the actor’s self-investment imputed in a non-monetary action, these individuals are perceived as signaling more morality than those buying a sustainable product. Conclusions: although past research shows that buying a green product signals status, this study shows that it is not enough to trigger more positive inferences about the actor (moral elevation - admiration) and about the contribution of the action to the environment.

Costly Commitments “Under His Eye”: Reconceptualizing the Costly Signaling Theory of Religion

AbstractCostly signaling theory of religion has been proposed to explain the evolutionary adaptiveness of religion in general and, specifically, its prosocial effects, including the relative longevity of religious communes vis-à-vis their secular counterparts. This article focuses on two crucial aspects of this relationship: the features and functions of signals and the mechanism through which signaling translates into enhanced prosociality. It identifies some of the key factors of the costliness of behavior and distinguishes between religious and secular signals, arguing that only the latter serve to broadcast commitment. The role of religious signals, instead, might be to stimulate the supernatural watching (“Under His Eye”) mechanism: enhancing supernatural sanctions beliefs and providing a setting in which implicit prosocial responses are triggered. The relative absence of this mechanism in secular communities may explain their shorter life spans. A link is thus established between the costly signaling and supernatural punishment theories of religious behavior.

Costly signaling, cost shifting, and the Maya Classic-Postclassic transition: architecture and portable display media in the context of The Petén Lakes region, Guatemala

Costly signaling theory indicates that highly visible acts of public generosity and display, which exact costs not easily recouped, can provide social benefits to those engaged in such acts. Such signaling is associated with the strength or fitness of the provider. Costly signaling has been implicated by archaeologists in the rise of complex societies. But costly signaling theory, with modifications proposed in the article, might equally apply to theorizing political collapse and the regeneration of complex societies thereafter. This article explores how Maya elites and rural sub-elites engaged in costly signaling and modified their actions by cost shifting and cost masking, which significantly transformed their signaling behavior. The material culture media assessed for signaling are architecture, slipped and fineware ceramics, and obsidian in display contexts. The case study focuses on the Petén Lakes region of Guatemala from the Late Classic to Early Postclassic periods (AD 600-AD 1250).

From Political Violence to Political Trust? How Transitional Justice Affects Citizen Views of Government

AbstractHow does transitional justice affect trust in government? Political trust is central to peaceful conflict resolution, but less is known about the ability of different transitional justice efforts to build confidence in government after war. Using survey-experimental evidence from post-conflict Guatemala, I compare how three commonly deployed justice policies (trials, truth commissions, and reparations) and political rhetoric accompanying them affect citizen attitudes toward government. Exposure to information about a trial or reparations program, which convey costly signals, led to significantly higher levels of political trust and perceived political legitimacy, when compared to the truth commission treatment. Further, a moral rhetoric emphasizing the normative claims of war victims was significantly more effective than either an instrumental rhetoric emphasizing institutional benefits or the absence of justification, regardless of policy content. The micro-level evidence reveals how the trust-building functions of transitional justice are far from uniform, speaking to the pivotal role of political communication.

Novel Group Mobility Model for Software Defined Future Mobile Networks

Nowadays, a massive amount of data leads to cause network traffic and inflexible mobility in future mobile networks. A new Group Mobility Model (GMM) named MoMo is introduced that addresses the issue of the aforementioned problems. Even though, software defined network (SDN) is functional with network-rooted mobility protocols that enhance the network efficiency. Some existing network-rooted mobility administration methods still undergo handover delay, packet loss, and high signaling cost through handover processing. In this research work, SDN-based fast handover for GMM is proposed. Here, the neighbor number of evolving node transition probabilities of the mobile node (MN) and their obtainable resource probabilities are estimated. This makes a mathematical framework to decide the preeminent number of the evolving nodes and then allot these to mobile nodes virtually with all associations finished by the exploit of Open-Flow tables. The performance examination demonstrates that the proposed SDN rooted GMM technique has the enhanced performance than the conventional handover process and further technique by handover latency, signaling cost, network throughput, and packet loss.

Extremely Lightweight PUF-based Batch Authentication Protocol for End-Edge-Cloud Hierarchical Smart Grid

Smart grid is gradually replacing traditional grid with two-way communication and improved management. Besides the efficiency and reliability it brings, the smart grid is inevitably fraught with rampant physical and cyber-attack. Although several physical unclonable function (PUF)-based schemes have been proposed, they are unsuited to the end-edge-cloud hierarchical smart grid. This paper proposes a PUF-based batch authentication and key agreement protocol, which protects both meters and gateways and provides end-to-end authentication between meters and the server. By offloading heavy operations from field devices to the server, the computation overhead is reduced substantially. Moreover, we innovatively devolve batch authentication and access control to the gateway, which additionally decreases downlink communication and signaling cost, and is superior to most recent schemes. Our protocol is proved by Tamarin under extended Dolev–Yao adversary and the Real-or-Random model and is evaluated to be secure against various attacks. Using extremely lightweight operations, our protocol is implemented on the MSP430FR5969 microcontroller.

¿Es la belleza criterio de verdad? Calidad genética o criterios estéticos, motores de la selección sexual en animales

Do bees or hummingbirds perceive the beauty of the flowers they approach to take nectar? That is, can non-human animals appreciate beauty? Is there a universal truth regarding beauty? Or is it just a useful attribute, an indicator of a valuable trait? As with so many other natural phenomena, there is no simple answer to these questions. In the following document, we analyse different aspects of sexual selection and its connection (or lack thereof) to aesthetic criteria and the so-called handicap principle.

Ritual Animals also Require Pedagogy, Communication, and Social Reasoning

Harvey Whitehouse offers a complex and stimulating theory of rituals that bind people together and propagate via affiliative imitation. The Ritual Animal argues that fundamental problems of group cooperation can be solved by causally opaque and goal-demoted behaviors which produce arbitrary cultural conventions, honest signals of membership, and collective fused identities. This amply evidenced and compelling account explains a broad variety of prominent examples, yet other key causal mechanisms emerge from the ethnographic literature and analytical reflection on affiliation and groups. Taking a glance at some widespread and unusual rituals, this paper highlights the importance of cultural transmission via pedagogy with or without copying, costly signaling and coordination without coalitional groups, and meta-representations of impenetrable ritual efficacy. Future research can explain how bonding rituals become central features of social interaction without relying upon a quite debatable adaptive function of ritual behavior for cooperation – or anything else.

Female dewlap ornaments are evolutionarily labile and associated with increased diversification rates in Anolis lizards.

The evolution of costly signalling traits has largely focused on male ornaments. However, our understanding of ornament evolution is necessarily incomplete without investigating the causes and consequences of variation in female ornamentation. Here, we study the Anolis lizard dewlap, a trait extensively studied as a male secondary sexual characteristic but present in females of several species. We characterized female dewlaps for 339 species to test hypotheses about their evolution. Our results did not support the hypothesis that female dewlaps are selected against throughout the anole phylogeny. Rather, we found that female dewlaps were evolutionary labile. We also did not find support for the adaptive hypothesis that interspecific competition drove the evolution of female dewlaps. However, we did find support for the pleiotropy hypothesis as species with larger females and reduced sexual size dimorphism were more likely to possess female dewlaps. Lastly, we found that female dewlap presence influenced diversification rates in anoles, but only secondarily to a hidden state. Our results demonstrate that female ornamentation is widespread in anoles and the traditional hypothesis of divergent selection between the sexes does not fully explain their evolution. Instead, female ornamentation is likely to be subject to complex adaptive and non-adaptive evolutionary forces.

Fashionably late: Differentially costly signaling of sociometric status through a subtle act of being late

This research examines how arriving late to social gatherings operates as a signal of social connectedness and desirability, leading to elevated sociometric status attributions.Drawing on costly signaling theory and the premises of sociometric status and consumption mimicry, we argue that tardiness to a gathering, as a costly and visible signal, can lead to positive inferences of sociometric status, thereby leading to mimicry. We define fashionably late as a separating equilibrium tardiness based on a signaling game and demonstrate through a series of experimental studies that people infer higher status to late- rather than on-time-arriving people. Consequently, they strive to be in the same social network with such individuals, favor their product choices, and imitate their consumption behaviors. This research contributes to the literature on the conspicuous consumption of time and to research on costly signaling by revealing the powerful influence of signaling (through late arrival to a social event) on perceptions of sociometric status.