Signaling Theory and Gender Acceptance

Costly medical interventions convey more information than cheap(er) talk.

Written by Jimmy Alfonso Licon.

There is an old adage that actions speak louder than words. The idea is that actions are often more costly than words—they require more effort and incur more risk. And due to their costs, actions often reveal more about individuals than words. Someone who bears the costs of doing something, as opposed to the cost of saying something, reveals more about themself than words could. For example, it would be easy to tell someone that you have faith in their business plan, and costly to invest a big chunk of money in it. Hence the latter is a far better indication of sincerity. The aim of this article is to apply the old adage, and its theoretical underpinnings, to gender acceptance among the public.

Before that, however, we should explore a few everyday examples that illustrate the claim that costly actions typically convey information better than cheap talk. Proposing marriage typically involves an expensive ring that, once accepted, marks the start of the engagement. An astute observer will note that engagements rings are expensive and impractical, as compared to say a vehicle or appliance. It is a wasteful, impractical tradition—but that is precisely the point. Consider the alternative: instead of buying an expensive engagement ring, one buys a cheap ring costing a few dollars. This signal wouldn’t be nearly as strong as the one communicated by an expensive ring. Someone wouldn’t be willing to spend a large percentage of their annual salary if they weren’t serious about proposing marriage. And so, an expensive and impractical engagement ring is a costly signal of the sincere intent to wed the recipient of the ring.

Higher education is another example. It takes approximately four years to earn a bachelor’s degree at most colleges and universities in the United States. As such, college is costly: there’s the time and effort that getting a degree requires, the four years of tuition and living expenses, and most importantly, the opportunity cost of earning a salary straight out of high school (e.g., as a plumber). Consider that attending university typically requires studying subjects with little value or relevance to future employers. Does your employer really care that you studied Shakespeare at university? Not likely. Then what is the point of going? A big part of the explanation is the impracticality. It signals to future employers that you are intelligent, reliable, and sufficiently compliant to qualify as a viable candidate. The behavioral evidence for this claim can be found in actions taken by the students themselves:

1. Students often prefer it when professors cancel class.

2. Subject matter is frequently unrelated to labor market demand (e.g., Shakespeare).

3. Graduation year explains most of the benefits of a degree.

4. The best education is already available online free (e.g. free MIT courses).

5. Failing to pass a class is worse than forgetting the matter (after passing).

6. Students typically prefer easier classes over classes that teach skills.

7. Undetected cheating is as good as passing without cheating.

These behaviors are odd considering how much students pay for their higher education. There seems to be a contrast between stated and revealed preferences. Someone would be annoyed if they bought an expensive coffee only to receive half a cup. Yet students in colleges and universities are usually happy if the professor cancels class. This would be odd if the main point of higher education were to instill useful skills and knowledge. However, since the real aim is to signal intelligence, reliability and compliance, then it doesn’t matter that professors cancel class sometimes. If graduating from university were cheap and easy, then university would be a poor signal of these traits; nearly everyone could be a graduate, draining the signal of information.

The point of these examples is that costs convey information that would otherwise be opaque. This insight can be fruitfully applied to gender acceptance: all else being equal, costly medical interventions convey more information than cheap(er) talk.

The Varying Costs of Gender Acceptance

To illustrate how costs relate to gender acceptance, consider a joke from a Ricky Gervais comedy special,

In real life, of course I support trans rights. I support all human rights, and trans rights are human rights. Live your best life. Use your preferred pronouns. Be the gender that you feel that you are. But meet me halfway, ladies: Lose the c**k. That's all I'm saying.

The joke was highly controversial, but put that aside. What is interesting is that the joke reveals an intuition: that someone who bears costs (by having surgery, or takinghormones) for their “gender identity” sends a more robust signal than someone who only verbally identifies as a different gender. The idea here is not to claim that one should or should not bear costs to signal one’s “gender identity”. It is that costs are often a robust guide to the sincerity of one’s claimed identity.

When comparing medica interventions to simply identifying as a different gender, the former is clearly costlier than the latter. Here are some of the costs:

1. The physical and psychological transformation.

2. Potential for serious side effects and complications.

3. The interventions are potentially irreversible.

4. The interventions are expensive.

5. Social discrimination, harassment, bias, etc.

While costs (1) through (5) are likely to be borne by anyone who has hormone replacement therapy or gender reassignment surgery, only (5) may be borne by someone who merely identifies with a different gender. Although identifying as a distinct gender can be costly, undergoing medical intervention is relatively more costly – all else being equal.

This difference in relative costs is a plausible (though only partial) explanation for the intuition that informs the Ricky Gervais joke from earlier. Since we now have a plausible account of how costs relate to the acceptance of one’s gender identity, we need to better understand the theoretical foundation of why costs convey information. That is the next section.

Costly Signaling Theory

Why do costs matter? A short answer is that costs indicate someone is willing or able to accomplish a goal, aid someone in distress, better realize their self-identity, and so on. An important theory offers insight: costly signaling theory. Let us unpack the theory. This theory was independently discovered both in evolutionary biology and economics. The basic elements of the theory are as follows:

1. The signaler has a quality that is hard to directly detect but that could be signaled.

2. Observers would benefit from accurate information about the quality, which would be absent without the signal.

3. The cost of the signal benefits the signaler.

Take gender reassignment surgery. The costs borne by the individual serve as a robust signal to others that they are sincere about their gender transition – that their gender transition is not something that they take lightly. And others benefit from that information in that they are better able them to interact with and understand the individual in question. The individual who has the surgery benefits too – by finding others who support and accept how they see themselves.

It is tempting to respond that one shouldn’t need to incur costs to convey information to others; others should just take one at one’s word. In an ideal world this might be true. Yet this is not the world we live in: people often say things that they do not mean because talk is cheap and we often know ourselves poorly. There is another factor at work here: as a highly social and cooperative species, humans rely on each other for survival. And we cooperate on nearly any task (it is our evolutionary superpower) provided there are suitable partners available. Unfortunately, though, despite the fact that we rely on others, we only have partial knowledge of their minds, and as such, we operate under partial ignorance of their beliefs, desires and intentions. Enter the need for signaling.

Some individuals are willing and able to send costly signals to mitigate others’ partial ignorance of their beliefs, desires and intentions. Undergoing medical interventions like hormone therapy or gender reassignment is a signal that would be hard-to-fake for those without the ability or inclination to bear the associated costs. Here someone could point out that such signals are not perfect, since some people simply cannot afford the medical interventions. Yet this argument fails to undercut the robustness of costly signals, which convey information robustly, not perfectly. As the economist Bryan Caplan explains:

Signaling models have three basic elements. First, there must be different types of people. Types could differ in intelligence, conscientiousness, conformity, whatever. Second, an individual’s type must be nonobvious … Third, types must visibly differ on average … A signal doesn’t have to be definitive, just better than nothing.

Much of what motivates signaling is partially hidden in the subconscious, as argued by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson in their book The Elephant in the Brain. It is plausible that individuals who transition to a different gender choose medical interventions, as compared to cheaper alternatives, to send a strong, robust signal about their gender identity – the better to secure gender acceptance. This social acceptance is valuable to individuals who transition to a different gender identity, as it is for those with whom they interact. It’s another case of actions speaking louder than words.

Jimmy Alfonso Licon is a Philosophy Professor at Arizona State University. He works on ethical issues related to cooperation and ignorance. You can find his Substack here.

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