Cheap Talk - Biological Applications

Biological Applications

It has been commonly argued that cheap talk will have no effect on the underlying structure of the game. In biology authors have often argued that costly signalling best explains signalling between animals (see Handicap principle, Signalling theory). This general belief has been receiving some challenges (see work by Carl Bergstrom and Brian Skyrms 2002, 2004). In particular, several models using evolutionary game theory indicate that cheap talk can have effect on the evolutionary dynamics of particular games.