This is a misleading comment. You're saying you disagree with the author and stopped reading here:

> In fact, Hanson believes that “well over 90 percent” of human behavior can be explained by signaling. Whether or not you agree with that exact number, I think it’s an interesting thought experiment to look at a specific behavior and think about what the hidden signaling subtext of that behavior might be.

You do realize the author is citing someone else making the assertion you disagree with? The next sentence validates this interpretation. Your comment is a textbook straw man against the author.

Also, your bit about economists sounds incredibly inaccurate. No, economists didn't randomly realize human behavior needed to be taken into account one day. Since the beginning, the people studying economics already knew that it emerged out of the intricacies of human behavior. Simplifying a phenomenon for the purposes of modeling it is how we study things initially. We iterate on those solutions as we go.

If anything, economists are the ones less likely to understand this (and focus on some abstract utility independent of signaling). As for the top books in Amazon's psychology category, they're likely there for people to purchase so they can signal how well read they are about diverse psychological topics.

Agree. This is incredibly cynical. Maybe the author is writing in this way of almost absolutes to get their point across but people are perfectly capable of making consumer choices based on reasons other than or even primarily other than signalling.

(Though in this two-part theory I'm obviously hiding them from myself)