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The Role for Signaling Theory and Receiver Psychology in Marketing

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Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences

Abstract

Within marketing contexts, messages are effective when consumers find them both believable and relevant. An understanding of signaling theory and signal design features, derived from the study of animal and human behavioral ecology, can help marketers overcome the first challenge of crafting believable signals. Effective signals must fundamentally overcome the skepticism of receivers and generally accomplish this by linkage, either through identity or costliness, to the underlying quality being signaled. An understanding of receiver psychology, which involves appeals based on innate preferences that derive from shared human evolutionary history, can help marketers overcome the second challenge of rendering signals attractive and meaningful to consumers. Sensory bias, sexual stimuli, neoteny, and status all offer ripe opportunities for marketers to appeal to the innate preferences of consumers broadly or to specific targeted demographics. The following chapter provides an overview of signaling theory and receiver psychology as grounded in the evolutionary disciplines, with examples and applications that extend to the business world.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Gad Saad for constructive editorial remarks on the content and organization of this chapter. I would further like to thank Lee Cronk, Rolando de Aguiar, Frank Batiste, and Helen Wasielewski for providing comments on an early version of this manuscript as members of the Rutgers University Human Behavioral Ecology Laboratory. Jennifer Trivedi and Mark Murphy provided useful feedback during revisions and Mike Murphy offered useful discussions of business phenomena.

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  1. Public Health, New York University, 240 Greene Street, 2nd Floor, NY, 10003, New York, USA

    Bria Dunham

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    Gad Saad

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Dunham, B. (2011). The Role for Signaling Theory and Receiver Psychology in Marketing. In: Saad, G. (eds) Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92784-6_9

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