Canonical models of costly signaling in international relations (IR) tend to assume costly signals speak for themselves: a signal's costliness is typically understood to be a function of the signal, not the perceptions of the recipient. Integrating the study of signaling in IR with research on motivated skepticism and asymmetric updating from political psychology, we show that individuals’ tendencies to embrace information consistent with their overarching belief systems (and dismiss information inconsistent with it) has important implications for how signals are interpreted. We test our theory in the context of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran, combining two survey experiments fielded on members of the American mass public. We find patterns consistent with motivated skepticism: the individuals most likely to update their beliefs are those who need reassurance the least, such that costly signals cause polarization rather than convergence. Successful signaling therefore requires knowing something about the orientations of the signal's recipient.

中文翻译：

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和平的代价：国际关系中的动机推理和代价高昂的信号

国际关系 (IR) 中高成本信号的典型模型倾向于假设高成本信号不言自明：信号的成本通常被理解为信号的函数，而不是接收者的感知。将 IR 中的信号研究与来自政治心理学的动机怀疑和不对称更新的研究相结合，我们表明个人倾向于接受与其总体信念系统一致的信息（并忽略与其不一致的信息）对于如何解释信号具有重要意义. 我们在 2015 年关于伊朗的联合全面行动计划 (JCPOA) 的背景下检验了我们的理论，结合了对美国大众公众成员进行的两项调查实验。我们发现与动机怀疑一致的模式：最有可能更新他们的信念的人是最不需要保证的人，这样代价高昂的信号会导致两极分化而不是趋同。因此，成功的信号传递需要了解信号接收者的方向。