Why do people make anonymous donations, and why does the public perceive this as admirable? Why do we downplay our interest in a potential partner, if we risk missing out on a relationship? A team of scientists, consisting of Christian Hilbe, a postdoc at the Institute Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), Moshe Hoffman, and Martin Nowak, both at Harvard University, has developed a novel game theoretic model that captures these behaviors and enables their study. Their new model is the first to include the idea that hidden signals, when discovered, provide additional information about the sender. They use this idea to explain under which circumstances people have an incentive to hide their positive attributes. Continue reading “The logic of modesty – why it pays to be humble” →