This insight comes from my book Costly Signals: The Evolution of Dating Advice, where I dive deeper into how evolutionary principles can transform modern dating.
The problem isn’t authenticity. It’s legibility.
“Just be yourself.” It’s the most common dating advice out there, and it’s almost completely useless. Not because authenticity doesn’t matter—it does. But because “be yourself” misunderstands how attraction actually works.
The pickup artists of the 1990s and early 2000s were among the first to articulate this problem, as I discuss in Chapter 6 of my book. They recognized that “just be yourself” is essentially female-centric advice—it reflects how women often experience attraction rather than offering men any actionable guidance on generating signals. The pickup artists’ proposed solutions were deeply flawed, but their diagnosis was correct: passive authenticity isn’t a strategy.
The advice assumes your inner qualities will somehow radiate outward, that the right person will perceive your worth through emotional osmosis. This is magical thinking. In reality, attraction depends on signals—observable behaviors that communicate something about who you are. And signals have to be readable to work.
What makes a signal believable
Evolutionary biologists have long studied how animals communicate qualities that can’t be directly observed—health, genetic fitness, commitment to offspring. The answer is costly signals: displays expensive, difficult, or risky enough that they’re hard to fake.
The peacock’s tail is the classic example. It’s metabolically expensive, makes the bird vulnerable to predators, and serves no practical purpose—which is precisely why it works. A weak peacock can’t afford the handicap. The tail’s impracticality makes it a reliable indicator of underlying fitness.
Human courtship works similarly. We’re constantly assessing qualities we can’t directly observe: Is this person genuinely kind, or performing kindness? Truly confident, or masking insecurity? Will they stick around when things get hard?
Words are cheap. Anyone can claim to be loyal or emotionally available. What we rely on are costly signals—behaviors difficult to fake or sustain if the underlying quality weren’t real.
Why “be yourself” fails
The problem with “be yourself” is that it offers no guidance on making your authentic qualities legible.
Consider someone genuinely generous. That generosity might be visible to close friends or colleagues—but it remains invisible to someone they’ve just met. The generous person who never expresses generosity in readable ways will be indistinguishable from a selfish person who’s good at small talk.
Or consider confidence. Someone might display genuine confidence at work, but what a new acquaintance perceives are only the signals present in that interaction: relaxed body language, willingness to express opinions, comfort with silence. Without those signals, they’ll be read as insecure—regardless of how confident they are elsewhere.
“Be yourself” assumes signal and substance are the same thing. They’re not. Your self is invisible. What others see are the signals you emit.
Signals shift with time and context
What counts as a costly signal isn’t fixed. Signals change across eras, cultures, and situations—and misreading context can make your signals illegible.
In the 1950s, owning a car signaled resources and stability. Today, in many urban environments, not owning a car can signal wealth—you live somewhere desirable enough to walk. Formal dress once signaled success; now a tech founder in a hoodie signals “I’m so successful I don’t need to impress you.”
Context matters equally. The signals that communicate confidence in a loud bar differ from those at a bookstore reading. A signal calibrated for one environment may seem try-hard in another.
And not all signals are intentional. How you treat the waiter, your reaction when something goes wrong, whether you check your phone while someone’s talking—these unintentional signals often communicate more than deliberate self-presentation. People watch for unguarded moments precisely because they’re harder to fake.
The authenticity paradox
Costly signaling theory doesn’t dismiss authenticity. It explains why authenticity matters.
Costly signals work because they’re hard to fake sustainably. You can pretend to be generous on a first date, but you can’t fake generosity for months without exhaustion. You can perform confidence once, but maintaining that performance without the underlying trait drains energy over time.
This is why the tactical approaches I studied for this book—whether pickup artist techniques for men or rules-based strategies for women—ultimately fail. The pickup artist’s scripted routines are cheap signals dressed up to look costly; they collapse under extended contact. Meanwhile, women’s advice like The Rules focuses on strategic withdrawal and scarcity games—generating short-term interest but communicating nothing authentic. And the self-esteem-focused advice dominating women’s dating literature makes the opposite error: concentrating entirely on how a woman feels about herself, assuming internal confidence will radiate outward without attention to legible signals. Faking signals and ignoring signals are equally ineffective.
True costly signals are sustainable because they’re genuine. The generous person doesn’t exhaust themselves—generosity flows naturally. The confident person doesn’t maintain a performance—they simply are what they appear to be.
What works instead
If “be yourself” is inadequate, what helps?
First, understand what you’re signaling. Most people have never thought systematically about whether their behavior conveys the qualities they value. You might prize loyalty—but what signals make loyalty visible to someone who just met you?
Second, invest in costly signals matching your genuine qualities. If you’re ambitious, pursue things requiring sacrifice—not to impress anyone, but because doing so makes your ambition legible.
Third, read the context. Signals that work in one environment may not translate elsewhere. And your unintentional signals—how you behave when you think no one’s evaluating—may matter most.
Fourth, accept that not all signals land with all people. Costly signaling is about honest communication, not universal appeal.
The real advice
Be yourself—but learn to be legible.
Your authentic qualities matter. But they only matter if perceived, and they can only be perceived through signals. Your job is developing signals costly enough to be credible, consistent enough to be readable, and calibrated to context.
Authenticity isn’t passively waiting to be understood. It’s actively translating who you are into a language others can read.
Grab a copy of Costly Signals: The Evolution of Dating Advice for more strategies on making your best qualities irresistibly legible.
Dating and Mating 
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