Applications of Signaling Theory in Sociological Scholarship

Signaling theory (ST) describes how people deal with and overcome uncertainties about others’ attributes and intentions relevant to their interactions. I integrate ST into a multilevel framework to highlight how people's need to overcome these uncertainties shapes collective outcomes and to spell out the different conditions for the theory's predictions. After a nontechnical outline of the integrated ST framework, I review three strands of sociological scholarship that have applied ST, broadly construed: (a) the job market and the education-to-work transition, (b) trust and cooperation in social and economic exchange relations, and (c) signaling norms and boundary making in intergroup relations. After recounting how ST has spurred the sociological imagination, I sketch promising research directions.