Costly Signals, Easy Habits and Excessive Dopamine
Five Plus Newsletter No1
Note: you will notice this newsletter is different. Instead of a one long article, it contains five or more interesting ideas, insights, data, links and observations about human behavior and how we can build an ideal life. Let me know how you like this new format.
1. Costly signaling
Human interaction happens on multiple levels. What we explicitly say is the most boring one. It is also the least credible.
What we find more credible are unspoken signals, which we convey through actions, clothes, goods, social circle, the way we speak, what we know.
If you see me giving money to a homeless person, then you are more likely to believe I am generous than if I tell you I am generous.
Such signals are not 100% credible by default. Their credibility depends on how costly they are to make. If I give five bucks I am perceived as less generous than if I give five thousands bucks.
The peacock’s tail is the classic example of costly signaling. Male peacocks have exuberant big tails. These are a handicap for them for hunting and escaping predators (like carrying a big neon 20 pounds suitcase over your head). But females select peacocks with the most elaborate tails for mating. Why? Because males with big tails are signaling they are fit to survive even with the handicap. It is a costly signal because it genuinely takes a lot of resources. Peacocks that are weaker die if they attempt to maintain the exuberant tail.
Costly signals have high credibility because they are expensive.
Similarly, in modern society, people engage in costly signaling behaviors, such as wearing expensive clothing or driving luxury cars, as a way to signal their social status. These behaviors are costly and thus credible.
Wealth displays are the most common costly signals. Buying an expensive car is expensive. You need the wealth to afford it. If you buy it despite not affording to do so, you go into debt and suffer the consequences.
Which brings us to faking costly signals. A Gucci bag is expensive. A fake Gucci bag is not. If it can fool others into thinking it’s authentic, then you get the benefit of the costly signal without paying its cost.
This is why there are forgeries for anything that is expensive or luxury, from clothing to artwork. And there are people who specialize in spotting said forgeries. This is a game of faking signals and detecting fake signals. If a peacock could put on a fake tail to attract females and then take it off, it would.
There are many other types of costly signals, such as high-class etiquette, jargon, knowledge, sport achievements, and so on.
What costly signals are you giving out?
What costly signals are influencing you?
Are they true or fake?
You can read more about such hidden games in the book Hidden Games
2. Brands as costly signals
A modern type of costly signaling is about the brand you buy and use. When people see you with an iPhone it sends a different signal than a Huawei. When you wear Armani shirt, it’s different than a Gap shirt. A Mercedes is different than a Toyota, even if both get you from A to B. And so on.
With the meteoric rise of advertising and marketing in the past decades, brands have become more powerful social signals. Through marketing they have become signals of not just wealth, but other attributes as well. Like Apple’s 1984 ad portraying rebelliousness and freedom, North Face and Salomon portraying fitness and adventure, Adidas young independent thinking, and so on.
But be careful. Brands are fake signals. You need nothing but money to buy a certain brand. You don’t become adventurous by wearing North Face, or fit by having Nike shoes, and so on.
It’s easy to pursue brands as social signals and to perceive them this way because they are convenient. But it pays enormous dividends not to do so.
What brands are you using to signal about yourself to others? Are these signals true?
3. Embarrassingly easy success
Successful habits start as embarrassingly easy.
Adopting any new habit rests on making it ridiculously convenient. It must be so easy, you would be embarrassed to tell your friends you are doing it. Think starting with two push-ups at a time, not 100; think of 10 minutes of learning a new skill each day, not 3 hours; think of eating 10 grams of vegetable per day, not making veggies the main ingredient.
How can you make the habit you want easier? And then easier still?
4. Dopamine spikes
Supernormal stimuli are those that create excessive dopamine spikes. Common examples are sugar, ultra-processed food, social media, gaming, porn, news. They are called supernormal because they exceed the limits of our evolution.
For example social media stimulates our social belonging and status needs beyond what was possible in our natural environment. You can scroll Facebook for hours and keep stimulating social validation. In our natural environment our ancestors had only a few people with which to interact to get this stimulation.
Because they exceed our ‘functioning parameters’ supernomal stimuli have addictive properties. They create excessive dopamine spikes. These cause subsequent crashes in dopamine, which make you momentarily unmotivated. And in time they cause a decrease in baseline dopamine, meaning you feel less motivated to do anything.
As a result of lower baseline dopamine, you seek more supernormal stimuli to overstimulate it. This creates a vicious cycle that keeps you hooked on supernormal stimuli and robs you of agency over your own behavior.
One way to restore dopamine baseline is so-called dopamine fasting.
5. Dopamine fasting
Excerpt from Effortless Habits Blueprint
Dopamine fasting is the practice of eliminating all dopamine stimulation for a time.
By getting a break from all the dopamine stimulation, you increase sensitivity to it. You become more dopamine sensitive.
How do you do it? You cannot really eliminate dopamine. But you can temporarily avoid high spike activities such as: everything online, everything digital, games of any kind, sugar, all food you especially like or crave, TV, music, podcasts, sports, porn, news, parties, new people, alcohol, drugs, travel. You should even limit social interaction with people you already know.
Dopamine fasting should feel incredibly boring. However the more you do it, the stronger the impact. At least a few days are necessary to have any effects. Doing it for half an hour does nothing.
6. The goal is not the motivation
In the pursuit of habits,
Do not mistake the end for the means.
To run for health and longevity is noble,
But without true motivation,
Your feet will never leave the ground.
A runner seeks to be fit and free,
But what drives them to lace up and flee?
Not thoughts of future health or life's length,
But the joy of running with each breath.
A path to a habit is paved with good intent,
But beware the trap of misguided content.
To run for a better life may seem wise,
Yet the true fuel is what makes your heart rise.
7. Quote on dopamine
“The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
The ideal life is easy when you know what you need,
Victor