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The Handicap Principle Is an Artifact

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Simon M. Huttegger ,
Justin P. Bruner  and
Kevin J. S. Zollman
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Abstract

The handicap principle is one of the most influential ideas in evolutionary biology. It asserts that when there is conflict of interest in a signaling interaction signals must be costly in order to be reliable. While in evolutionary biology it is a common practice to distinguish between indexes and fakable signals, we argue this dichotomy is an artifact of existing popular signaling models. Once this distinction is abandoned, we show one cannot adequately understand signaling behavior by focusing solely on cost. Under our reframing, cost becomes one—and probably not the most important—of a collection of factors preventing deception.

Type
Game Theory and Formal Models
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , December 2015 , pp. 997 - 1009
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

The authors would like to thank Richard Scheines and audiences in Irvine and Chicago for helpful comments. This work was supported by National Science Foundation grant EF 1038456.

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