Social Signaling is the idea that people, through actions or even words, may be trying to get others to believe something about them. A simple example might be trying to signal you are smart by using big words. Or conversely, trying to signal you’re a chill bro™ by using all those latest slang words and memes. Or signal you’re rich by purchasing a certain item.
Of course there’s a paradox here – if somebody suspects they are being judged on a signal (using big words) then it’s really not that hard to manipulate the signal (go memorize a bunch of big words and use them a lot).
One of the challenges of manipulating a signal is that often it’s not that easy. The term “nouveau riche” refers to somebody who grew up poor with poor tastes, but suddenly came into wealth, and stands out starkly in their tastes and preferences. This is because what a poor person thinks a rich person looks like (gold toilet) might not be what a rich person thinks a rich person looks like (“summering” in the Hamptons).
Likewise what sounds smart to a dumb person probably isn’t what sounds smart to a smart person.
So to finally get to the point the paradox is that most signals are now anti-signals. If somebody is going out of their way to show you their golden toilet and talk about their $500 meal, it’s much more likely that they want you to think they are rich than that they already are rich. Likewise if somebody is using a slew of words you don’t understand it’s more likely they want you to think they are smart than that they actually are smart. And if somebody is obsessively hammering you with the trendiest new slang it’s because they very much care that you think they are cool.
One concrete example is that with so many people leasing cars or buying on a 6+ year auto loan (now the average) owning a mercedes with a $1,000 a month loan payment isn’t evidence that you have tons of disposable income; to me it looks like evidence that you don’t. Likewise I’m hearing that a surprising number of people who own a “McMansion” actually struggle with the tremendous upkeep costs.
Back when I was in the dating pool I’d see this a lot. Most profiles were aspirational fabrications, every picture chosen to emphasize that they were somebody who was prettier or more adventurous or more popular than we all are. Some people would post pictures next to vehicles they didn’t own, a fish they didn’t catch, or I even personally know somebody who used AI to put themselves on a boat that didn’t exist. Many felt like they were supposed to have a more active social life than they did.
This is more than theoretical, this is my lived experience. The smartest people I know aren’t trying to outdebate everybody, the strongest people I know aren’t talking about reps every day, the nicest people I know aren’t the ones yakking about volunteer work, etc.
The paradox cuts the other way too. If you asked me right now to name somebody smarter than myself I might pick 3Blue1Brown (a person who makes complex ideas sound simpler, to the best of his ability). And it’s not just because he seems like a nice dude, it’s because he explains complex things at my level that I am able to verify that what he says is smart. However when you take some pop-cultural icons of braininess e.g. Neil DeGrass Tyson or Bill Nye, I don’t actually know either way.
Of course signaling does work sometimes, otherwise nobody would ever do it. There are things that are genuinely hard and there are things that can be made to seem hard, and not everybody is equally equipped to differentiate the two.
Here’s my mental model, I’d be curious to hear what others think