> charitable behavior is heavily driven by visibility (hardly any donations are anonymous)
That doesn't bear out with what I see. Looking at a dataset of 2.8 million donations through our site, roughly 20% are anonymous. That's not the majority, but it's much more than "hardly any."
And of all the ones that aren't anonymous, many many of them are only known to the recipient and the giver. If I give $30 to someone, just because I haven't anonymized it doesn't mean I think the world at large will know. I'm not sharing a list of my charitable giving with my friends, and I don't know many people who do trumpet their small-dollar donations.
Once you add that in, no wonder someone could find a way to tie 90% of human behavior to "signalling." Why did you do something? To convince yourself that you are the sort of person who would do that thing. This story works with a large majority of things people do. That seems too clever by half.
>We do things to convince ourselves of our qualities
This just seems like basic logic though? If you want to be X and Y provides the means, then it makes sense to do it right? There can't be a hidden agenda if you're actively pursuing it
That doesn't bear out with what I see. Looking at a dataset of 2.8 million donations through our site, roughly 20% are anonymous. That's not the majority, but it's much more than "hardly any."