Out of curiosity, what are the connotations of the word “rube” that make you suspicious?
Low status, contemptibility, etc. I expect making status hierarchies salient to make people less rational (hence fully generic suspicion), and I had the specific hypothesis that you might see people using ‘signaling’ models as judging others as contemptible and be offended by this.
Relatedly, I dislike calling the behavior in question “pandering”, since I expect using condemnatory terms for phenomena to make them aversive to look at closely, and to lead to bias in attribution (against seeing them in oneself/‘good’ people and towards seeing them in ‘bad’ people, as well as towards seeing people who unambiguously exhibit them as ‘bad’).
Now that you mention it, I think this does occur, although I think most of the judgement is directed at the ‘signaller’ (or in my language ‘panderer’) for being vain or duplicitous, although I don’t like saying I’m offended by it (“Offense is a sign of a weak and bourgeois mind” says my inner Dali.)
I think that ‘pandering’ does carry the connotations of how ‘signalling’ is used, but I’m happy to accept alternatives. One I can think of right away is “appealing to”, and I’d be happy to switch from ‘pandering’ to ‘appealing’ if you like.
Low status, contemptibility, etc. I expect making status hierarchies salient to make people less rational (hence fully generic suspicion), and I had the specific hypothesis that you might see people using ‘signaling’ models as judging others as contemptible and be offended by this.
Relatedly, I dislike calling the behavior in question “pandering”, since I expect using condemnatory terms for phenomena to make them aversive to look at closely, and to lead to bias in attribution (against seeing them in oneself/‘good’ people and towards seeing them in ‘bad’ people, as well as towards seeing people who unambiguously exhibit them as ‘bad’).
Now that you mention it, I think this does occur, although I think most of the judgement is directed at the ‘signaller’ (or in my language ‘panderer’) for being vain or duplicitous, although I don’t like saying I’m offended by it (“Offense is a sign of a weak and bourgeois mind” says my inner Dali.)
I think that ‘pandering’ does carry the connotations of how ‘signalling’ is used, but I’m happy to accept alternatives. One I can think of right away is “appealing to”, and I’d be happy to switch from ‘pandering’ to ‘appealing’ if you like.
“Influencing” is pretty neutral, if not very specific. “Exploiting the halo effect” is too long, but precise.