Costly Signaling
Signals that are expensive to produce or attract risks are more credible.
Signals are reliable because they're costly to produce. A signal that anyone can fake carries no information.
Loud calls attract predators. Male tungara frogs calling for mates produce low-frequency 'whine' calls at 900 Hz, but also add higher-frequency 'chuck' components (2,700 Hz) that females strongly prefer. The chuck, however, also attracts frog-eating bats. Only males in good condition can afford the risk of adding chucks to their calls - the acoustic signal honestly advertises male quality because weak males can't survive the increased predation risk. Loudness is honest because it's costly.
Business Application of Costly Signaling
Signals that are expensive to produce or attract risks are more credible. Companies that invest heavily in communication infrastructure (like NTT's redundancy) send honest signals about their commitment to reliability. Cheap talk is ignored; costly commitments are believed.
Discovery
Amotz Zahavi (1975)
Proposed the handicap principle explaining why costly signals are honest signals
Costly Signaling Appears in 4 Chapters
The tungara frog's risky mating call demonstrates how acoustic signals become honest through predation cost - only fit males can survive advertising.
Costly acoustic signals →Producing autoinducers and responding to quorum signals is metabolically expensive, ensuring that participation honestly reflects commitment to collective action.
Costly signaling in coordination →The peacock's tail exemplifies Zahavi's handicap principle: the metabolic expense and predation risk make the signal impossible to fake.
The handicap principle in sexual selection →Both pigment-based and structural colors are costly to produce - carotenoids compete with immune function while nanoscale structures require developmental precision.
Visual honesty through metabolic cost →