The Game
There are two individuals, the signaler and the responder. The responder has some good which can be transferred to the signaler or not. If the responder keeps the good, the responder has a fitness of 1, otherwise the responder has a fitness of (1-d). The signaler can be in one of two states, healthy or needy. If the signaler receives the good, her fitness will be 1. Otherwise her fitness will be (1-b) or (1-a) if healthy or needy respectively (where a>b). The signaler can send a signal or not. If she sends the signal she incurs a cost of c regardless of the outcome.
If individuals maximize their own fitness the responder should never transfer the good, since he is reducing his own fitness for no gain. However, it supposed that the signaler and responder are related by some degree r. Each individual attempts to maximize her inclusive fitness, and so in some cases the responder would like to transfer the good.
The case of interest is where the responder only wants to transfer the good to the needy signaler, but the signaler would want the good regardless of her state. This creates a partial conflict of interest, where there would be an incentive for deception. Maynard Smith showed, however, that for certain values of c, honest signaling can be an evolutionarily stable strategy. This suggests that it might be sustained by evolution.
Read more about this topic: Sir Philip Sidney Game
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