Your success depends equally on your objective value and how effectively you signal it — but most men are clueless about the latter.

Signaling is a fundamental feature of life. Animals constantly send and interpret signals to achieve life-relevant goals, and humans do it with far greater complexity and strategy.
When it comes to social and life success, one of the most important classes of signaling relates to value, be it social value, job value, or mate value.
In general, the higher value you signal, the more successful you will be in life.

This article presents a framework for understanding the different sources of value signals, their relative credibility, and how to communicate your value accurately and effectively.

Verbally professing value with visibly low objective value is weakest and repels people

The Value Signaling Framework™

The Value Signaling Framework™ explains how people assess your value, and how value is communicated.

In simple words, value signaling is the communication of value to others. Value is an umbrella term that includes anything that increases someone’s social or mate value. It includes and is not limited to, signaling confidence, social dominance, virtue (‘virtue signaling’), intelligence, status, or lower comparative investment.

Broadly, value signaling includes not only deliberate self-promotion, but also signals from visible underlying value, environment, and reputation. In common parlance, value signaling refers more often to active communication, and in this article, we focus more on active signaling strategies.

Active signaling is crucial because it carries real weight and because it’s in the signaler’s full control. Active signaling reinforces already visible value, showcases semi-visible value, and is completely responsible for presenting the sizable non-directly accessible value like past history, mental faculties, character, etc.

Value, Signaling, & Perceived Value

People evaluate others on a combination of visible value, which they can assess without relying on the signaler’s trustworthiness, and the signaler’s active communication.

The key elements of value-signaling are:

• Objective visible value, including personal value foundations such as body language, confidence, and looks, and exchange value such as wealth and status. Total value ranges on a continuum of invisible to visible
• Active signaling strategies, controlled by the signalers to best showcase value (or undermine it when poor, and potentially manipulate it)
• Perceived value is the value others assign to us based on the visible portion of one’s personal value, and their assessment of signals they receive

In marketing speak, objective value is the ‘product’ and active signaling is the ‘marketing’ for the promotion of that product.
Honest self-development work tends to address more the ‘underlying value’, while strategies address more the presentation.

Perceived value is the most important, true bottom line of success because others assess and behave based on their perception, rather than ‘what truly is’. As Machiavelli said, everyone sees what you appear to be.

Genuine vs. Manipulative Signals: Self-Serving Bias

The self-serving bias principle states that signalers have an incentive to manipulate signals and communicate higher value than their objective value to boost their odds of survival and reproduction

• Genuine signaling (value-backed) reflects the true underlying value
• Manipulative signaling does not reflect true underlying value. It can signal non-existing value, inflate existing value, or hide negative value to present a higher total value than what’s objectively true

Manipulation is common in both nature and human socialization, although most everyday signaling is a mix of genuine and manipulative.

Manipulability: The Evolutionary Arms’ Race

Strategic and manipulative signaling can certainly sway perceived value, which advantages more Machiavellian players.

However, that’s not to say that everything’s fake or ‘easily fakable’.
As we said, part of people’s more objective value is more readily visible, and we can expect organisms to evolve more discriminating. Meaning, humans naturally favor reliable, hard-to-fake signals while discounting cheap, easily manipulated signals.

The Perceived Value Formula™: Objective Value x Signaling

Both objective value and signaling matter.

• Objective value is the raw material, and it shows: it’s partly visible, tends to ‘leak out’ when people fake higher value, and tends to ‘surface’ over the long run
• Signaling showcases value, is fully responsible for non-visible value, and it’s especially impactful in the short-term.

So perceived value comes down to:

Both are crucial and improvable, but The Power Moves, we stress working on objective value with honest self-development.
Higher personal value makes value signaling easier and more effective. Just look at the math:

Signaling well is a skill you can improve, and it works even better if you also work on the foundations of objective value. High value men may not even need much active signaling

High value also allows for more genuine self-presentation, less manipulation, and more win-win.
Also see:

• Self-empowerment: working from the ground up
• Competence-value model
• High value men: mindsets, traits, skills

What to Signal

Based on the signal dynamics we explained, this is what to prioritize for value-signaling:

Signal What’s Costly, Hard to Fake, & Unbiased

Overt verbal bragging without proof, what most men do, is sub-optimal because it’s cheap, easy to replicate by low-value individuals, easy to fake by anyone, and inherently biased.

Similar dynamics have been studied in nature.
Economist Michael Spence and biologist Amotz Zahavi both focused on costs, and reached the same conclusion. Signals that seek to convey value but that are cheap to produce are unreliable because anyone can fake them.
Costly signals are reliable because only high-value animals can produce them. The cost itself is the proof.
The common example is the peacock’s tail: it’s costly to produce and maintain, and only genetically gifted peacocks can boast the largest and most colorful tails.

And Dawkins and Krebs (1978) reached the same conclusion about speakers’ bias: signalers have an inherent interest in appearing higher value than they are, incentivizing manipulation, and making self-reports structurally unreliable.

👉🏼 Takeaway: avoid talking without showing, prioritize harder-to-fake signals

Value Credibility Hierarchy™: Signal From the Bottom-Up

A simplified value display hierarchy. Verbal claims are least credible, results and behavior are credible, and consistent value displays over time are most credible

1. First-hand observation: Others discover your value directly
2. Contextual signals: Status and wealth cues, clothes, house/office
3. Third-party signals: Others praise you, defer to you, introduce you as an expert, etc. Their credibility also depends on the interest alignment between praiser and praised (ie.: family and allies vs. strangers and competitors)
4. Personal sub-communication: Value inferred from your words or behavior. Can be subconscious and unintentional or conscious and strategic (signaling, without looking like you are)
   • Nonverbal sub-communication: including body language, social dominance, and behavioral leadership
   • Verbal sub-communication: conversational leadership, thread-expanding, name drops, humblebrags, stories, signals nested inside unrelated conversation, etc.
5. Direct verbal claims are the least credible because they’re cheap, easy to fake and replicate, and biased
   Ie.: “I’m great”

Promote Invisible Value, Let Visible Value Speak for Itself

Some men brag about what’s already visible because they think that visible value makes their bragging credible.
While the logic is valid, it’s a sub-optimal strategy. Bragging about what’s already visible trades little added signaling value for a reputation of an obnoxious bragger.

The smart strategist instead uses high visible value to self-efface, gain a reputation for humility, and use that social capital for promoting invisible value, or canceling flaws.

This is a similar tactic that launched the first viral get-rich guy in Web 2.0:

🔎 How this marketer used this strategy

This popular 2010s marketer first displayed value with a supercar, then self-effaced by stating to be more proud of his knowledge, which he later sold (as a way to achieve the supercar value, implied)

Visibility-informed Strategies

Visibility and value form a quadrant that can guide your signaling strategies:

Also see:

• Self-promotion at work: foundational strategies
• Guru marketing tactics: Tai Lopez case study
• Self-promotion at work: tactics

How to Signal: Strategies

First, a reminder on why the foundations are so important:

Be Congruent: Posers & The Leakage Principle™

The congruence principle™ states that people trust signals most when they are congruent, and trust the more credible signals when they’re incongruent.
Corollary (Leakage Principle™): Because the self-serving bias incentivizes inflating one’s own value and faking high-value signals, unintentional lower-value signals tend to be more credible, and therefore often dominate perception.

In simple words:
⚖️ When you mix low and high-value signals, people trust the low-value ones

This happens because of the lower credibility of self-interested sources, as explained above.
And it’s often visible in real life. Men can consciously fake some socially dominant, for example, strike open and confident body language poses even when not feeling confident.
However, without true underlying confidence, most men struggle to be 100% congruent.
Instead, low-confidence behavior tends to leak out. And, people trust those tiny leaks to recognize a ‘poser’.

Hence, if in strategy the name of the game is calibration, in signaling it’s congruence.

This is why on The Power Moves we propose the ‘source approach’ solution based on mental empowerment as the foundation. Set the foundations of a strong and resilient mind, and everything else flows downstream naturally and congruently.
See:

• Foundations of self-empowerment, starting with the mind
• Power University, built to internalize these principles from most foundational to advanced

Focus on Sub-Communication First

Effective sub-communication signaling is the art of signaling, without looking like you are.

Sub-communication is extremely powerful. As active signaling, it’s fully within your control. Yet, effective sub-communication is perceived as honest and reliable because it doesn’t look like active promotion.
Since it’s never perceived as active self-advocacy, it’s as credible as first-hand observation when well-executed.

Yet, few men truly master it, falling back on the simpler but less credible direct self-promotion.
Thus, the social strategist gains an immense advantage mastering the sub-communication.

🔎 Example: sub-communicating high value

You: Love a good wine <— Staying fit without over-sacrificing is a costly signal. Wine frames it as ‘classy’
but alcohol is on pause because I’m on a massive project sprint and training for a personal best <—📣🟰 I’m ambitious, fit and health-conscious, without being a nut/bore

Calibrate to Audience: Opportunity Meets Detection Risk

Inflated or exaggerated signaling can undermine credibility and rapport, diminish signaling effectiveness, and may even signal lower value.

However, the risks and opportunities of detection largely depend on context, goals, and audience.

Principle:
⚖️ The more empowered the audience is, the more signaling nuance is required.
Conversely, the more naive and low-power the audience, the more obvious your signals can be.

Similar dynamics apply with influence, status gaining, and leadership.
Nevicka in The Handbook of Trait Narcissism suggests that narcissistic leaders fit better with submissive followers (Grijalva & Harms, 2014).
Similarly, bragging bravado attracts disempowered men and repels more empowered ones (Kakkar and Sivanathan, 2017), who are more likely to find it weak and annoying and, potentially, an affront to their own power (Willer et al., 2013)

This principle is also seen in self-help and ‘guru’ dynamics, including our previous example.
Blatant signaling of supercars or cocky arrogance attracted beginners and less power-aware men. However, it only lost the trust of more power-aware and successful men.

On this topic, also see:

• Huberman value signaling: complex jargon, long sentences, and the breadcrumb technique to display high authority
• Political populism power dynamics: bigger talkers attract fawners
• Humblebrags examples from Tony Robbins

When to Signal

Calibrating to Time: Frontload Value

Principle:
⚖️ The briefer the interaction is, the earlier and more actively you must signal value

Early signaling in first impressions helps because people weigh the benefits of long-term associations based on future extrapolation of present sampling (‘sampling principle’, see Thibaut and Kelley, 1959).

The Sequence Value Model (Dating)

Principle:
⚖️ The more credible value you display over time, the more backing you have for verbal signaling

Especially valid in dating, value-backed displays of high confidence can boost attraction, rather than competition.
It may not be a coincidence that narcissists, known for grandiosity and value displays, are the most attractive of the dark triads (Rauthmann and Denissen, 2014; Rauthmann & Kolar, 2013).

A framework we introduced and that I’ve personally found very effective on multiple occasions:

• Phase 1: Display nonverbal foundations with leadership and social confidence
• Phase 2: Indirect Verbal displays as you move to the date location, move to conversational leadership and high-value sub-communication
• Phase 3: ‘Positive arrogance’: Verbal self-promotion works better once there is proof of it (O’Mara et al., 2018). Then, bursts of direct brags confirm her belief, thread-expand, and display a rare excess of confidence that’s often attractive. Even borderline arrogance can turn into a positive ‘yes, he’s a bit haughty… But he’s right’.
• Phase 4: Reminder bursts: If things progress and you set good win-win relationships, direct value displays are more welcomed and more believable when interests align (Farrell and Rabin, 1996)

Read more:

• Value sequence model: How to demonstrate high value in dates
• 📽️ How to DHV on dates

🎓 Advanced: Countersignal to Display Maximum Value

It’s often not the lowest or highest value men who signal the most, but the mid-level tiers:

1. Low value possess no major assets to signal about
2. Medium value (The “Try-Hard” Trap): terrified of appearing low value and hopeful they can climb to the upper tier, they’re the busiest signaling and managing impressions
3. High value (The Countersignalers): having visible value, structural status, and brand name visibility, they intentionally withhold information, dress down, self-deprecate, or follow a different signaling code than the masses

This phenomenon has been referred to as countersignaling (Feltovich, Harbaugh, and To, 1999).

Lowest value has no value to signal; medium value signals as much as possible; highest value differentiates himself from the masses by not signaling at all

Risks of Over-signaling: The Needy Jester Trap

Signaling value is effortful and betrays the intent to impress, which is needy.
For this reason, signaling follows the social investment model, meaning that oversignaling displays:

• Neediness for approval
• Lower value, trying to make up the difference (compensatory investment principle)
• Lower confidence, driven by feelings of not being enough

As per our social investment model, high value signaling with less (visible) signaling effort is higher power nad more effective:

The Signaling-Return Matrix measures the returns on signaling effort (self-promotion) in terms of perceived value, applying the same principle as the Social ROI Matrix™, which measures the returns on social investment.

Also read:

• Social climbing: the leader’s mistake

🎓 Advanced: Value Stacking

The pinnacle of sub-communication is to seamlessly stack multiple high-value signals while remaining high warmth.
Consider this response to a date complaining about work:

Yeah, I hear you.
It was the same for me. I hated the alarm. The moment it rang, I started the day alraedy pissed off (smiles to nonverbally offset the verbal negativity).
So for a character like mine, and maybe you too, doing my own thing wasn’t even an aspiration, it was a *necessity*.
But the true blessing is not just doing your thing, but doing what you’re passionate about. So you’re not just getting money and freedom, but doing what you love doing.

Look what this single moment sub-communicates:

• Peak personal success, succeeding in entrepreneurship while working on one’s passion: most people’s dream
• Virtue & wealth-signaling combined: saying ‘not just money’ puts passion first, while suggesting also making money (this is positive virtue signaling)
• No brags, there is on ‘I’ in there. It’s implied he did it, but he never says so
• Less about him, more about her, and ends shifting the focus completely to her
• Similarity and understanding, deepening the bond
• Inspirational: she’s led to imagine doing the same, disarming her from even registering there is any signaling intention (and later potentially empowering her to believe she can)

Now imagine a guy with these skills across a full date, or across a lifetime of social exchanges, and you may start to understand the upsides of being an advanced social strategist.

How to Signal: Tactics

Humblebrag

A signal that on the surface may seem neutral, low-value self-deprecating, or querulous, but designed to boost the speaker’s perceived value with the sub-communication

The humblebragger uses neutral or lower-value covers to hide the higher-value signal.

If effective, people won’t even consider it a humblebrag—they may simply see a joke, a self-effacing remark, a complaint, or a neutral statement.
But if people see through it, as it frequently happens, the high-value signal loses effectiveness. The speaker loses trust and likability, and the move may even turn net-negative (Sezer et al., 2017). Sezer’s research points to complaint-based humblebrags as most likely to backfire.

Example of a generally poor humblebrag:

Her: I am so tired of these men coming after me wherever I go, can’t a woman just be left alone once? <— Common tactic, seemingly a complaing, but signals being in demand and, supposedly, attractive

See more:

• 📽️ Tony Robbins humblebrags

Time Scarcity

While rather banal, busyness signaling is such a common status signal in Western cultures that it deserves its own entry (Bellezza et al., 2017).

Busyness signals ambition, high agency, and competence and, importantly, boosts scarcity. Busyness for work also implies wealth accumulation potential.
However, notice the important difference:

Mentor’s Frame & Growth Mindset

Mentor: I have made all these mistakes, so that you don’t have to <— It’s power-protecting because teaching is not based on personal superiority like genetics or IQ, only on experience, which you can also achieve

However, it still signals success, and it also happens to be a power move because it empowers the speaker, while disempowering the listener.
If the listener accepts this frame, he becomes a lower-value learner who must learn from the speaker to avoid costly mistakes he’d otherwise commit (says who?).

More Value-Signaling Tactics

• The “Casually Dropping Gold” Move:
  Nonchalantly drop references, data, or quotes to signal authority. Bonus point if you do it as an aside, signaling an overflowing well of knowledge
• Bamboozling Technique
  Start high complexity to signal expertise, then cut to practical takeaways to maintain attention. Frame it as ‘for the sake of time’ or ‘to skip the science and focus on the practicality’
• The Frame Reversal
  Imply or state that generally higher power parties are pursuing you. For example, imply the woman or the employer wants you, flipping the usual frame of men and interviewees courting and seeking jobs.
• Onion self-description
  To give brief self-descriptions and answers, prompting others to ask more and thus evoking a sense of first-hand discovery.
  Casanova used this tactic
• The Story Embed
  The early ‘pick-up artist’ approach to ‘demonstrating higher value’ by telling a story that made them look cool and high value.
  The formula: trait you want to convey → achievement that demonstrates it → story that makes it vivid.
• Eliciting Compliments (for dating)
  For example, misrepresenting a positive general observation of her as if it was for you, and openly asking if it doesn’t indeed apply to you if she corrects you. Or complimenting her for something you have in common, which calls for the same compliment back.
  See more here.
• The Giver Frame
  Signaling value generation or value-giving, which implies having high value, and adds a pro-social and ‘kind’ signal.
• Thread expanding (fame control)
  Expert value signalers do not just initiate novel signals, but maximize external signals, which is lower effort and more credible. It can be done in many ways, from asking a question, to commenting on a positive observation, to laughing about an empowering joke.
  See basics of frame control

See more:

• Covert bragging tactics

Applying it For Top 1%

The highest-value people rarely need to convince others they’re valuable.
They build lives and internalize skills that naturally generate evidence of value.

Their signaling simply helps others notice what’s already true. We teach how in Power University: