Mate Selection — A Selection for a Handicap.

Zahavi, A. (1975). Mate Selection — A Selection for a Handicap. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 53(1), 205-214.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1975

Volume

53

Issue

1

Pages

205-214

ISSN

0022-5193

DOI

10.1016/0022-5193(75)90111-3

DOI registrant

Elsevier

Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-5193(75)90111-3

Cited from

economics_finance

Cited by

6 citations across 6 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Goodhart's Law
  • And in evolutionary and ecological selection on proxies, indicator traits inflate past the construct in runaway sexual selection and parasitic signal manipulation.
• Information Asymmetry
  • A peacock's tail, a gazelle's stotting, or aposematic coloration all transmit (or attempt to transmit) a privately held fact — mate quality, vigor, toxicity — across the gap to a receiver who cannot directly verify it.
• Signal Devaluation
  • Costly-signalling constraints in biology, supply caps in some professional examinations, and quota-based grade reform are the respective realisations of these escape routes.
• Signaling
  • argues that costly displays — peacock tails, stag antlers, bird song complexity — function as honest signals of genetic fitness because only fit individuals can afford the cost.

Mechanisms

• Leader "I Was Wrong" Story
  • Its strength is that a leader's admission is a costly signal — expensive to fake, and therefore believed — and it grants everyone below explicit permission to do the same.

    This sourcePresents a handicap as a costly quality test that can make a signal credible because it is harder for lower-quality individuals to sustain.

• Ritual or Status Sign Review
  • Its strength is catching signs that read one way to insiders and another to everyone else, and flagging status markers whose link to a real deed has quietly hollowed — the concern at the heart of honest-signaling accounts, where a signal keeps its meaning only while it stays costly or hard to fake.

    This sourceProposes that a costly handicap can function as an honest quality signal because low-quality individuals cannot sustain it as readily.

Verification

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