This supposes that the target of signaling is aware of the game and has pretty good knowledge of the underlying traits they’re looking for, and that they know the underlying traits are also desired by people who judge the judges.
There’s a big coordination and switching cost, especially for real-world cases where much of the signaling value is multi-level (hiring managers wanting to impress their bosses by hiring the “quality”, people wanting to impress their friends by the “desirability” of their mate).
Unless there’s a lot of universal knowledge about what others are looking for in signals, any change is risky to the early adopters.
This supposes that the target of signaling is aware of the game and has pretty good knowledge of the underlying traits they’re looking for, and that they know the underlying traits are also desired by people who judge the judges.
There’s a big coordination and switching cost, especially for real-world cases where much of the signaling value is multi-level (hiring managers wanting to impress their bosses by hiring the “quality”, people wanting to impress their friends by the “desirability” of their mate).
Unless there’s a lot of universal knowledge about what others are looking for in signals, any change is risky to the early adopters.