Assertions, Handicaps, and Social Norms

How should we undertand the role of norms – especially epistemic norms – governing assertive speech acts? Mitchell Green (2009) has argued that these norms play the role of handicaps in the technical sense from the animal signals literature. As handicaps, they then play a large role in explaining the reliability – and so the stability (the continued prevalence) – of assertive speech acts. But though norms of assertion conceived of as social norms do indeed play this stabilizing role, these norms are best understood as deterrents and not as handicaps. This paper explains the stability problem for the maintenance of animal signals, and so human communication; the mechanics of the handicap principle; the role of deterrents and punishments as an alternative mechanism; and the role of social norms governing assertion for the case of human communication.

The role of signaling constraints in defining optimal marginal costs of reliable signals

The handicap principle was originally proposed to resolve the question of why, in their competition for mates, certain species invest in exaggerated ornaments that are often detrimental to their survival. Zahavi suggested that the traits that are most suitable to serve as signals are precisely those that require the burden of extra investment to increase in magnitude: that burden enables the signal to be correlated with the signaler’s quality. According to his model, the additional investment in signaling results in a functional advantage. It does so by providing more accurate information regarding the signaler as it increases the distinction between males of similar quality. There are a number of formalizations of this model, and experimental studies of the handicap principle have focused on testing them. Nonetheless, there is little consensus whether 1) ensuring reliability requires an additional investment or 2) traits that require a relatively higher investment to increase (have higher marginal costs) are selected as signals over those with lower marginal costs. Here, we present an agent-based mate choice model that quantifies the relative stability of signals with different marginal costs. Our model demonstrates how quality-independent constraints (in signal production and perception) affect the range of marginal costs for which a signal is informative. In turn, receiver preference for informative signals drives the selection of signals according to marginal cost. The presence or absence of signaling constraints can determine the outcome of costly signaling models and, thus, explain the different conclusions of Zahavi’s verbal model and its subsequent formalizations.

Condition-dependent trade-offs maintain honest signaling: A laboratory experiment

How and why animals and humans signal reliably is a key issue in biology and social sciences. For many years the dominant paradigm in biology was the Handicap Principle. It claims a causal relationship between honesty and signal cost and thus predicts that honest signals have to be costly to produce. However, contrary to the Handicap Principle, game theoretical models predict that honest signaling is maintained by condition dependent signaling trade-offs and honest signals need not be costly at the equilibrium. Due to the difficulties of manipulating signal cost and signal trade-offs there is surprisingly little evidence to test these predictions either from biology or from social sciences. Here we conduct a human laboratory experiment with a two-factorial design to test the role of equilibrium signal cost vs. signalling trade-offs in the maintenance of honest communication. We have found that the trade-off condition has much higher influence on the reliability of communication than the equilibrium cost condition. The highest level of honesty was observed in the condition dependent trade-off condition as predicted by recent models. Negative production cost, i.e. fix benefit-contrary to the prediction of the Handicap Principle-promoted even higher level of honesty than the other type of costs under this condition.

Numerous Paradoxes Explained by Bandwagoning

Background: Solon (2019) introduced genetic bandwagoning in a very general sense: A variant sequentially 1) evaluates its holder’s quality and 2) induces its holder to relinquish resources if the holder’s quality is low. Here, I introduce a more complex form of bandwagoning in order to account for a series of phenomena considered “paradoxical” by scientists specializing in their literatures: a) depression, b) differential nurturing, c) honest signaling of quality, d) reproductive suppression, e) stress-induced anthocyanins, and f) hormesis. These literatures are characterized by the following findings: 1) Low-quality individuals incur a cost against reproductive success compared to higher-quality individuals. 2) Individuals not (yet) identified as low-quality incur a cost against their ability to survive predators and/or parasites compared to individuals that have already been identified as low-quality. 3) Females incur a cost against reproductive success compared to males. 4) Males incur a cost against their ability to survive predators and/or parasites compared to females. 5) If conditions are challenging, individuals gain in both reproductive success and their ability to survive predators and/or parasites compared to less challenging conditions; however, too-challenging conditions detract from both. For each literature, at least one of these findings is unaccommodated by existing theory when considered in the context of that literature. Despite existing theory, these patterns are remarkably persistent. Question: Can paradoxes fitting these patterns be explained by genetic bandwagoning theory? Conclusion: Here, reservation is introduced as a form of bandwagoning in which a bandwagoning variant induces its holder to reserve from (i.e., withhold) some of its ability to survive parasites or predators. Reservation would occur for the purpose of assessing a holder’s quality when conditions are sufficiently unchallenging that few individuals are chronically stressed, so it is otherwise difficult to evaluate a holder’s quality. If the holder is subsequently killed, wounded, or infected, then it is identified as lacking the quality that would allow its descendants to survive more challenging conditions. The holder loses some or all of its resources as a direct consequence of the very death, wounding, or infection that identified its low quality. That is, in reservation, the two steps of bandwagoning are accomplished simultaneously. (This way of bandwagoning is distinguished from when the two steps are accomplished sequentially, which is termed resonation.) Reservation shares numerous premises with Zahavi’s handicap principle. If conditions are challenging, individuals would downregulate reservation and also be less likely to forego resources through resonation (which accounts for (5)). Additionally, a bandwagoning variant would likely evolve to vary the reservation it induces from holder to holder as a hedge against the possibility that conditions suddenly turn severe before it can adjust the reservation. Individuals already identified as low-quality would downregulate reservation (which accounts for (2) above) and would instead forego resources through resonation (which accounts for (1)). Additionally, females would downregulate reservation (which accounts for (4)) and, as a consequence, surviving females are more likely than surviving males to forego resources through resonation (which accounts for (3)).