Signaler psychology: Why people send costly signals of commitment?
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In a series of studies, we investigate whether perceptual biases facilitate the effectiveness of cooperative costly signals in humans. Specifically, we propose that biased cost and benefit estimations of cooperative signals are used by automatic cognitive processes to determine the value of costly signals. We first test this proposition in a one-shot Public Goods Game (PGG) where participants have an opportunity to send a costly signal (an extra time-consuming task) to join a normative group or play in a group without signals. Before selecting whether to signal or not, we survey participants on a battery of questions regarding their perception of the signal cost and benefits, and estimate the value of the signal that enters the decision-making process. We found that people playing cooperative strategies perceive the signal to be more beneficial than people playing selfish strategies, a bias that stabilizes the signal effectiveness in assorting cooperators. In a follow-up study, we recruited religious and non-religious participants and asked them to choose between a costly signal framed in a religious terms (signaling devotion) and a group with no signal. We observed that religious costly signal reliably assorted participants high on religious commitment, yet this assortment was not predicted by biased perception of signal cost and benefits and was not associated with higher contributions to the common pool in PGG. We conclude with a discussion of the costly signaling theory of religion and the need to update the theory in light of the current results. |
| Related projects: |