Alternative theories to honest signaling explain non-semantic human communication
the verdict
INSUFFICIENT LEANING
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
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The evidence partially touches on alternative theories of behavioral signaling and human communication components, but does not fully establish comprehensive alternative theories specifically explaining non-semantic human communication.
The “costly signaling” hypothesis proposes that animal signals are kept honest by appropriate signal costs. We show that to the contrary, signal cost is unnecessary for honest signaling even when interests conflict. We illustrate this principle by constructing examples of cost-free signaling equilibria for the two paradigmatic signaling games of Grafen (1990) and Godfray (1991). Our findings may explain why some animal signals use cost to ensure honesty whereas others do not and suggest that empirical tests of the signaling hypothesis should focus not on equilibrium cost but, rather, on the cost of deviation from equilibrium. We use these results to apply costly signaling theory to the low-cost signals that make up human language. Recent game theoretic models have shown that several key features of language could plausibly arise and be maintained by natural selection when individuals have coincident interests. In real societies, however, individuals do not have fully coincident interests. We show that coincident interests are not a prerequisite for linguistic communication, and find that many of the results derived previously can be expected also under more realistic models of society.
The handicap principle (Zahavi, 1975, 1987; Zahavi and Zahavi, 1997) is now widely used to explain the evolution of conspicuous signals such as tail ornaments, courtship displays, and nestling begging (Godfray, 1991; Grafen, 1990a,b; Johnston, 1997; Maynard Smith and Harper, 1995). The essence of the model is that signals must be costly to be honest. Females have evolved preferences for males with longer tails or brighter plumage, for example, because only males of high quality can survive and perform with handicapping ornaments. Despite the general acceptance that the handicap principle explains extravagant morphological and behavioral signals, the model’s mechanism has not been broadly applied to explain a host of other behaviors. Here we suggest that the selection on animal behavior to be performed differently when observed by other animals can lead to significant quantitative changes in behavior. Although such changes in the level or intensity of a behavior may not justify calling the behavior a signal, they can evolve as signaling components to behaviors whose primary function is not signaling (i.e., they can shift the level of the behavior from its nonsignaling optimum). We call this idea the overlooked signaling component of behavior. We explore this issue using three examples: (1) prey fleeing a predator; (2) human behavior in the presence of others; and (3) parental care behavior. We then apply the overlooked signaling component to reexamine Zahavi’s (1977, 1995) sug
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