Infamously, the presence of honest communication in a signaling environment may be difficult to reconcile with small (relative) signaling costs or a low degree of common interest between sender (beneficiary) and receiver (donor). This paper posits that one mechanism through which such communication can arise is through inattention on the part of the receiver, which allows for honest communication in settings where–should the receiver be fully attentive–honest communication would be impossible. We explore this idea through the Sir Philip Sidney game in detail and show that some degree of inattention is always weakly better for the receiver and may be strictly better. We compare limited attention to Lachmann and Bergstrom’s (1998) notion of a signaling medium and show that the receiver-optimal degree of inattention is equivalent to the receiver-optimal choice of medium.

臭名昭著的是，信令环境中诚实通信的存在可能难以与较小（相对）的信令成本或发送者（受益者）和接收者（捐助者）之间的共同利益程度低相协调。本文假定，通过接收方的不注意，可以发生这种通信的一种机制是，这种通信机制可以在以下环境中进行诚实的通信：如果接收方应该全神贯注，则诚实的通信是不可能的。我们通过菲利普·西德尼爵士的游戏详细探讨了这个想法，并表明，某种程度的注意力不集中总是对接收者弱一些，甚至可能会更好。