Communication without common interest: A signaling experiment.

Communication can arise when the interests of speaker and listener diverge if the cost of signaling is high enough that it aligns their interests. But what happens when the cost of signaling is not sufficient to align their interests? Using methods from experimental economics, we test whether theoretical predictions of a partially informative system of communication are borne out. As our results indicate, partial communication can occur even when interests do not coincide.

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