Seems to me the racism example doesn’t work because it never was countersignaling to begin with.
The idea of countersignaling is that you are so secure in your possession of some high status trait/situation you perspicuosly fail to promote/advertise THAT trait/situation. The racism case isn’t countersignaling because your casual behavior doesn’t suggest confidence in your actual non-racism (that’s largely irrelevant to the consequences of such talk to you) but rather confidence in other people’s belief that you are non-racist. However, other people believing you are non-racist isn’t actually a high status trait, it’s the situation of people believing you have such a trait.
In other words you can countersignal you are smart by not fretting about grades but it doesn’t make sense to countersignal that other people think you are smart.
In other words you can countersignal you are smart by not fretting about grades but it doesn’t make sense to countersignal that other people think you are smart.
But other people thinking you’re smart can potentially give you more influence than you’d get simply by being smart. This is most obvious in politicians, who need to convince others that they’re smart / trustworthy / etc. in order to get elected, but also applies more generally.
Seems to me the racism example doesn’t work because it never was countersignaling to begin with.
The idea of countersignaling is that you are so secure in your possession of some high status trait/situation you perspicuosly fail to promote/advertise THAT trait/situation. The racism case isn’t countersignaling because your casual behavior doesn’t suggest confidence in your actual non-racism (that’s largely irrelevant to the consequences of such talk to you) but rather confidence in other people’s belief that you are non-racist. However, other people believing you are non-racist isn’t actually a high status trait, it’s the situation of people believing you have such a trait.
In other words you can countersignal you are smart by not fretting about grades but it doesn’t make sense to countersignal that other people think you are smart.
But other people thinking you’re smart can potentially give you more influence than you’d get simply by being smart. This is most obvious in politicians, who need to convince others that they’re smart / trustworthy / etc. in order to get elected, but also applies more generally.