Signaling Theory
Talk is cheap, so we trust the stuff that's expensive to fake. That's the whole game.
Grounded in the research on Signalling theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory)
What even is signaling theory?
It's the study of how you communicate hidden quality to people who can't directly verify it. You know you're competent, loyal, rich, healthy. They don't. So you send a signal. The whole field exists because anyone can CLAIM anything, so the only signals that mean something are the ones that would be too costly for a faker to send. Born in biology (Amotz Zahavi, 1975) and economics (Michael Spence, won the 2001 Nobel for it).
Why can't I just tell people I'm good?
Because talk is cheap, literally. Cheap signals carry no info because liars send them for free too. This is the core mechanism: the handicap principle. Zahavi's argument is that a signal stays honest only if it's costly enough that a low-quality faker can't afford to fake it. A gazelle that sees a lion doesn't run, it STOTS, jumping straight up wasting energy. The message: 'I'm so fit I can blow energy taunting you, don't bother chasing.' A weak gazelle physically can't fake the jump.