October 2008
"Does Costly Signaling Matter? Preliminary Evidence from a Field Experiment"
Discussion Paper
By Philip Potter, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2006-2008 and Julia Gray
This paper presents a preliminary experiment designed to determine whether costly signaling plays a role in political interactions. Drawing on the expansive signaling literature in international relations and elsewhere, we propose that the quality of solicitation materials matters because voters respond to costly signals from candidates as a shortcut for determining both a candidate’s investment in their own campaign and the degree of commitment from other voters to that candidate’s cause.
