How to get smarter … and costly signaling theory.

About two years ago I wrote a post on this blog on “How to get smarter” (in Romanian) and every few days I get visits from people who searched “How to get smarter” in Romanian. I even got visits from Iceland, Japan, Switzerland, Australia and many other countries apart from Romania. In the last two months the number of visits that the blog got through googling these words increased (the blog is in the top 3 google results depending on exact combination of words).
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Initially I thought that more and more people are looking for ways in which to increase their intelligence or cognitive capacity or whatever you want to call “being smart”. This is not a bad thing, wright? It’s good if more and more people want to be smarter and look for ways of achieving this… or at least it’s a good thing if more and more people realize that they are not smart (enough).
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A few days ago I discovered what could be a much more plausible reason for the increased number of visits to this blog in search of ways to enhance one’s IQ. On the Romanian Radio station that I listen there is a commercial for Vodafone with a famous singer that says that if you buy a smartphone you’ll get smarter “automatically”. I guess that many of the people who ended up on this blog were searching for ways to get smarter without buying a smartphone which is expensive or maybe to get confirmation that owning one would lead to an increase in intelligence.
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Intelligence is a very important personal trait in social life and everyone (sane) wants to have it at a high level and display it even more. The reason for displaying intelligence is quite simple: everyone wants to have smart friends, smart spouses and IQ is a very good predictor in many things that we generally want to have such as job performance – good salary and successful mating (healthy kids that actually survive and don’t become junkies or end up in jail).
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Now there are various ways in which to display intelligence. Some people chose to buy complicated to use products like smartphones, or by getting MBA’s, PhD’s, Master degrees etc. Of course that smartphones and MBAs don’t display just IQ and these aren’t the only ways to show one’s intelligence, but this is not what I want to talk about. Some signals are more or less fake – they signal a trait that it not actually that high. For example one can buy a smartphone and not be very intelligent at all (he or she just stole some money and went directly to the store). Flashing out a brand new High-tech gadget will signal to his or her acquaintances that that person is smart enough to get the money needed and to know how to use the 10.000 features of the gizmo.
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Unfortunately for those who use false signals, there are much more natural and simpler ways to signal a trait such as intelligence. One of these is conversation. Let’s suppose that our dude that just bought a flashy last generation smartphone with 11.001 features and applications goes on a date with a young lady that was unconsciously attracted to him by the gadget. They go for some drinks, a nice walk etc. He can’t just stand next to her playing with his alleged IQ extension and not say a word. He has to talk to her or at least mimic a decent conversation. Now, talking and communication have been around far longer than electronics and we know how to unconsciously decode these more natural signals.
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So our guy that has spent at least 500 Euros on an intelligence showing piece of electronics has to prove in a very ancient way (conversation) that he’s actually smart. If the conversation is at a very low level of intellectual engagement, then he’ll not get a second date. Of course there might be some exceptions such as: the girl is less intelligent than him and she’ll perceive him as better fitted for mating; or the girl just wants a short (rather embarrassing) adventure.