The Folly of Fools (27 page)

FACE-ISM

It has been argued that visual depictions of the face that show more of the face relative to the rest of the body—that is, the face appears closer to you and is higher in “face-ism”—will give the impression of higher dominance, and people do indeed rate such faces as being more dominant. The word “face,” after all, can be used to imply confrontation, as in “face-off,” “face-to-face,” “in your face,” “loss of face,” and so on. In short, the more I project my face on you, the more dominant I appear.

Consistent with this, the faces of a discriminated-against minority in the United States, African Americans, show lower face-ism than do those of European Americans in a variety of American and European periodicals, American portrait paintings, and US stamps. The difference shows up even when relative status is controlled for. Only when the artist is an African American is there an exception—there is no ethnic difference, with all face-ism ratings being on the high side. The degree of consciousness of the artists about these effects is, of course, unknown, but I would guess that many of the presenters of stimuli are unconscious of the effect, as are almost all of the recipients.

Similar findings have emerged for the two sexes in a wide range of US periodicals (such as
Time
and
Ms.
), in 3,500 media photos from eleven countries (including Kenya, Mexico, India, and France), in portraits and self-portraits dating back to the fifteenth century, and in amateur drawings of the faces of the two sexes. In all of these samples, men score higher in face-ism than do women. That is, relatively more of their face is presented in the picture—especially surprising since women have slightly larger heads for a given body size. On the other hand, women have breasts, and this may lead to a bias toward showing less head and more body. In any case, the correlation is true for every single country studied and every century from the seventeenth onward. The general face-ism effect appears to be all but universal, showing up in children’s books, Fortune 500 websites, and prime-time television, among other places.
Ms.
magazine (feminist) is only slightly less biased in the usual direction than the rest of US publications.

There are some weak associations between higher face-ism and higher perceived intelligence, but no evidence that this affects the between-sex or ethnic comparisons, with one small exception. In photos from a variety of US periodicals, men shown in relatively intellectual professions had higher face-ism scores than similar women, and the effect was reversed for more physical professions.

Even politicians’self-presentations—that is, the photos they choose to post on their websites—show the usual bias, at least in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Norway. The bias remains the same whether twice as many women per men are serving in the legislature or one-tenth as many (compare Norway and the United States). Once again, though, in the United States, African-American politicians are an exception, showing the highest face-ism index for any ethnic group. Again, this suggests awareness among them that higher face-ism equals higher perceived dominance (and perhaps intelligence). Among female politicians in the United States, the more a woman’s votes are interpreted as “pro-women,” the more she emphasizes her face in photos of herself.

The degree to which people are conscious of face-ism is unknown, and so is its mechanism. Does a white photo selector see a black face and say “subordinate,” then search for a relatively low face-ism picture? Or does he or she find black faces somewhat aversive, and so prefer them when they are smaller? And do black people viewing the photos find black pictures attractive and therefore easily tolerated up close, or are they saying “equally dominant” or “I wish myself and people like me to appear equally dominant”?

There is a curious result concerning George W. Bush’s head. Someone thought to analyze his face-ism index in cartoons rendered 78 days before and 134 days after the start of each of his two wars. The authors of this study predicted that, dominant leader that he was, his face-ism index would increase with the outbreak of war. In fact, it decreased in both cases. Because in every major recent US war the president has made sure to appear as if he were forced into it, after every concession and reasonable effort, the authors argued that this lowered his apparent dominance. Or perhaps cartoonists knew something the rest of us did not about how each war would turn out. More likely still, the cartoonists were unconsciously reflecting the bias toward inflating one’s own country (and leaders) prior to war, so as to impress adversaries, but not continuing once war was under way.

SPAM AGAINST ANTI-SPAM

There is an analogy between the coevolutionary struggle in nature and struggles in human life over deception in which (over a period of months or years) each move by a deceiver is matched by a countermove from the deceived and vice versa. The advantage lies with the deceiver, who usually has the first move. This is true even of situations in which the very best minds are enlisted in fighting the deception. Consider the ubiquitous invasive “species” of spam, unwanted computer messages. They offer a variety of services to induce a transfer of funds, however small, directly or from third parties. In some cases, companies will send out spam to lure the unsuspecting viewer to their websites, whose visits garner them more pay from the advertising company employing them. When spam first became a problem, computer software engineers leaped in on the side of prevention and protection, devising means of spotting incoming spam and blocking it. This led Bill Gates, in a burst of enthusiasm in 2004, to proclaim that the problem of junk e-mail “will be solved by 2006.” Gates saw that defenses could easily be erected against the set of spamming devices then in use, but he could not imagine that these defenses could quickly be bypassed at little cost and that newer forms of spamming would easily be invented. By 2006, the amount of spam was higher than ever, having doubled in the previous year alone. Spam, of course, is a human invention for human purposes, with the computer and the Internet serving as the tools of replication.

After an initially successful counterattack by the anti-spam forces that resulted in a decrease in spam, the protective measures introduced could all be circumvented so that by the end of 2006, roughly nine out of every ten e-mail messages were junk. The initial attack against spam blended three filtering strategies. Software scanned each incoming message and looked at where the message was from, what words it contained, and which website it was connected to. The first was bypassed in spectacular fashion by devising programs that infected other computers with viruses that sent out the spam instead. In late 2006, an estimated quarter-million computers were unknowingly conscripted to send out spam every day. This achieved two aims at once: no sender’s address that could be screened, and no additional cost to send.

The second screening device searched statistically for word usages suggestive of spam, but this maneuver was overcome by embedding the words in pictures whose extra expense was offset by the first device, the use of pirated computers. Efforts to spot and analyze images were, in turn, offset by “speckling” the images with polka dots and background bouquets of color that interfered with the computer scanners. To block detection of multiple copies of the same message, programs were written that automatically changed a few pixels in each picture. It was as if an individual could change successive fingerprints by minute amounts to evade detection, reminiscent of the ability of octopuses (see Chapter 2) to rapidly spin out a random series of cryptic patterns, again to avoid targeting. The HIV virus uses the same trick, mutating its coat proteins at a high rate to prevent the immune system from concentrating on it. As for the problem of linked sites, some scams do not require any. Spam can hype so-called penny stocks (inexpensive stocks in obscure companies) that may give a quick 5 percent profit in a matter of days, when enough people invest to raise the value, after which the spammer sells his or her interest in the stock and it collapses.

The point is that each move is matched by a countermove and a new move is always possible, so deceiver leads and deceived responds with costs potentially mounting by the year on both sides with no net gain. Intellectual powers among programmers increasingly will be required on both sides. One inevitable cost in this context is the destruction of true information by spam detectors that are too stringent, thus excluding some true information. This, as we saw in Chapter 2, is a universal problem in animal discrimination. Greater powers of discrimination will inevitably increase so-called false negatives—rejecting something as false that is in fact true. So as we act to exclude more spam, we inevitably delete more true messages. And now there is something more dangerous, called malware—special infiltrating codes that download proprietary information and ship it to one’s enemies. As with newly appearing natural parasites (such as living viruses), malware is increasing at a more rapid rate than defenses against it.

HUMOR, LAUGHTER, AND SELF-DECEPTION

One striking discovery is that humor and laughter appear to be positively associated with immune benefits. Humor in turn can be seen as anti-self-deception. Humor is often directed at drawing attention to the contradictions that deceit and self-deception may be hiding. These are seen as humorous. Reversals of fortune associated with showing off—usually entrained by self-deception—are often comical to onlookers. A staple of silent films is the man strutting down the street, dressed to the nines, showing off, with head held high—so that he does not see the banana peel underneath him, producing an almost perfect visual metaphor for self-deception. The organism is directing its behavior toward others, with an upward gaze that causes him to pay no attention to the surface on which he is actually walking. Result: cartwheel and complete loss of bodily control, of the strut, of the head held high, and of the well-presented clothes—the whole show destroyed by a single contradiction.

Those who are low in self-deception (as judged by a classic paper-and-pencil test) appreciate humor more (as measured by actual facial movements in response to comedic material) than do those high in self-deception. At the same time, those with greater implicit biases toward black people or toward traditional sex roles laugh more in response to racially and sexually charged humor than do those with less implicit biases. Is it possible that the greater internal contradiction in them is released by appropriate humor on the subject, resulting in greater laughter? Laughter is an ancient mammalian trait, found in rats as well as chimpanzees. Tickling a rat will produce laughter-like sounds, and the rats will seek out the pleasure of being tickled. Chimpanzees will pant-laugh when being chased, an action that signals that the chase is not aggressive or aversive.

Humor permits discussion of taboo topics and the views of disempow-ered groups. Also, people know self-deception is negative and costly but necessary, so humor permits us to bring out this truth for enjoyment and consumption—we are all self-deceivers. Humor permits a kind of societal-level criticism in which no one need be threatened—it is all just a joke.

DRUGS AND SELF-DECEPTION

Recreational drugs and self-deception are obviously intimately connected. For one thing, drug use is often, to varying degrees at least, harmful and addiction almost invariably so. I am speaking of a wide range of both legal and illegal chemicals with effects from mild to severe: marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, uppers, downers, cocaine, heroin, and so on. Hence, this cost must be rationalized to the mind and, through the mind, to others. Thus, self-deception is a virtual requirement of drug use. I remember the first time I tried cocaine, I said to myself, “Why, this drug will pay for itself! I am so much more clear-headed and will get so much more work done while using it.” Of course, in reality the drug was very expensive and entirely counterproductive where work was concerned. Huey Newton and I used to joke that we could practice drug abuse without self-deception, thus reducing or wiping out the cost, but it was a lie. Even the pleasant joke served to minimize the problem.

A second effect of drug use is often to separate our daily life into an up phase while using the drug and a down phase while recovering from it. This tends to split our personalities into two parts that then may be in conflict. The hungover self may remonstrate with the drunken self of the night before (and more generally), but the drunken state will usually forget all of this as soon as its time comes. It is tempting to imagine that the hungover self is more conscious of the two selves than is the drunken self. The latter is into enjoyment and would wish to suppress information from the other self that might cut into the pleasure. But in the hungover state, you are very aware of what went on the night before. Perhaps when you are drunk, your hungover self watches with dismay and attempts to call out—and sometimes (thank God) some information gets through.

My reason for imagining that the hungover self is the more conscious of the two rides partly on an analogy to split personalities. Many years ago, it was shown that among those rare people with two personalities, the second personality usually emerged in early adulthood and may have been strikingly different from the first. The first could be a shy and retiring British gentleman, the second a flamboyant Spanish fellow with a taste for flamenco. Typically the first personality knew nothing about the second, while the second had been watching the first for many years. Thus, therapy to unite such an individual into a single personality usually focuses on the second personality as the primary one. By analogy, then, the drunken self is like the first personality: it does not know that there is a second personality watching it.

A third factor of some importance is that the cost of drug use/abuse is often experienced as physiological pain, which you are then tempted to add to the pain of a given social interaction and to project it onto those around you. So the pain of arguments is that much greater, but, denying your own responsibility for that portion of the pain due to your drug use, you project your full anger onto the other person. Abusive drunks—surely we have all met one or two by now, if not in the mirror—fit the mold. So drug addicts tend to be irritable and morally righteous about it at the same time.