The Folly of Fools (51 page)

Consider other regular occurrences. Absent self-deception, how do we explain that Ponzi scheme after Ponzi scheme after Ponzi scheme marches across the pages of our newspapers despite a one hundred–year record of financial disaster (at least for all those rushing to join the scheme once it is under way). Or how—without self-deception—should we explain that every year in the United States another anti-homosexual politician or preacher is shown to have a hidden homosexual life?

Or to turn to real tragedy, without deceit and self-deception, how can we explain people across the world of various faiths murdering their daughters and sisters for often trivial infractions of local sexual mores in so-called honor killings? It is hard to believe that the feeble Y chromosome, with only a few dozen protein-coding genes, could do the job. But patriarchy—benefiting all or most of a male’s genes even at the expense of his wife and female relatives—could, with proper mental adjustments, bring about this horror. Men (largely) who murder their daughters or sisters, or horribly disfigure them or drive them to suicide, do not appear to do so with a guilty conscience. Quite the contrary, they profess moral indignation and are outraged at the sins causing them to take such extreme measures. This appears to be a case of innocent women caught in the crosshairs of conflict between local patrilines, not quite out-groups or unrelated neighbors, but sets of related genes in paternally related people. As we have seen when discussing war and religion, these kinds of conflicts are especially likely to induce self-deception, along with heartless and cruel behavior.

The newspapers disgorge fresh material daily. It turns out that the safety culture at Japanese nuclear reactors was so bad, even NASA could admire it. All effort was put into a public relations campaign to convince the country that the reactors were safe, while no effort was spent on what to do in case of crisis. Although it’s the world’s leader in robotics—Japanese robots can run on two feet, sing, dance, and play the violin—none were designed to work in a crippled, radioactive plant, because “introducing them would inspire fear.” Japan had to import them from a Massachusetts company better known for making vacuum cleaners. Nor did they have a way of introducing cooling water; they had to import a 203-foot-long water pump from China. But as we have seen so often in this book, when a company or government is in full-sale mode, mundane goals such as safety are cast aside.

Meanwhile, science continues to spit out examples. Metaphor is so strong that we wish to wash our hands when we have done something immoral (= dirty), but the form of our misbehavior can affect the disinfectant chosen: soap for a nasty e-mail sent by hand but mouthwash for a nasty message left on an answering machine. In principle, some of these subtle, unconscious associations are available for notice by others, especially those close by and motivated to do so.

And now conference calls by businesses about quarterly earnings have been subjected to linguistic analysis by economists for cues to deception, mostly using later performance restatements as the arbiter of truth. Sure enough, some of the usual villains reappear—people avoid first person references when lying, preferring “they” or impersonal pronouns, such as “people.” People use fewer extreme positive and negative terms—as if moderating their position for the sake of plausibility—and fewer certainty and hesitation terms (as if having memorized their spiel). They also prefer references to general knowledge but avoid references to shareholder value and creation. Logic can go either way. Perhaps you hype shareholder value to fool others. But the evidence suggests otherwise. You shy away from the truth (shareholder value) because that is where you are weakest, but then you are stuck with weaker pleas to aspects of “general” knowledge. The above work is tentative but very appealing. At last we are moving out of the experimental psychology lab, a near-hopeless place in which to investigate deception and its consequences.

Finally, consider a clever experiment recently run on undergraduates. Although artificial in the extreme—telling an imaginary lie to a teacher (high status) versus an imaginary lie to a fellow student (equal status)—people forgot more simultaneously learned words in the high-status case than in the equal-status one, as if self-deception (including memory impairment) were more often practiced against high-status opponents.

One nice feature of the study of deceit and self-deception is that we will never run out of examples. Quite the contrary, they are being generated more rapidly than we can deconstruct them. At least we can enjoy the never-ending extravaganza while trying to deepen our consciousness. Everybody can join in, not just academics or scientists. The logic for understanding self-deception is simple and the phenomenon universal.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the many research organizations that have supported my work over the years: the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Biosocial Research Foundation, and the Crafoord Foundation. I am especially grateful to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for giving me the wonderful gift of the Crafoord Prize in 2007. I am also grateful to the University of the West Indies for making me in 2009 an Honorary Research Fellow for life.

The first draft of this book was written while I was a fellow at WIKO, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin (2008–09). The institute provided a very warm and supportive environment in which to work, and I am grateful to all staff members at all levels, administrative, IT, library, and kitchen. Fellows who helped me that year were Roger Chickering, Holk Cruse, Thomas Metzinger, Srinivas Narayanan, and Ibrahima Thioub. I am especially grateful to Bill von Hippell for spending five months at WIKO teaching me social psychology and commenting on all aspects of the book.

For detailed, helpful comments on multiple chapters I am grateful to Nick Davies, Bernhard Fink, Norman Finkelstein, Steven Gangestad, Marc Hauser, Jody Hey, Srinivas Narayanan, Stephen Pinker, Richard Wrangham, Doron Zeilberger, and William Zimmerman. I am most grateful to David Haig for reading the entire book and engaging in numerous conversations on all aspects of the book. Finally, I am also grateful to Amy Jacobson and Darine Zaatari for their contributions to this book.

I thank my agent John Brockman for connecting me with three first-rate publishers. I thank my English-language editors for detailed comments and unfailing support—Will Goodland at Penguin and TJ Kelleher at Basic Books. I am also grateful for the critical support of Michele Luz-zatto at Einaudi.

Finally, for early years filled with comic insight into the subject, I thank my brother Jonathan.

NOTES

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

1
Parent/offspring relations:
Trivers 1974; reciprocal altruism: Trivers 1971.

2
Sex differences:
Trivers 1972;
sex ratio:
Trivers and Willard 1973, Trivers and Hare 1976.

7
Within our genomes:
Burt and Trivers 2006.

8
Stick insects:
Brock 1999;
at least fifty million years:
Wedman et al 2007.

10
Behavioral cues to human deception:
DePaolo et al 2003, Vrij 2008;
accuracy of detection:
Bond and DePaolo 2006;
suppression versus faking
: Craig et al 1991, Larochette et al 2006;
cognitive load a critical variable:
Vrij 2004, Vrij et al 2006.

11
By no means always a delay prior to lying:
Morgan et al 2009;
pitch of voice:
DePaolo and Kashy 2003, Vrij 2008;
displacement activities:
Troisi 2002;
nervousness as a weak factor:
Vrij 2004, 2008.

12
Cognitive load and blurting out:
Wegner 2009;
common verbal features:
Newman et al 2003.

13
Lies are detected 20 percent of the time:
DePaolo et al 1996; see also DePaolo et al 1998.

14
Ignorance and confidence:
Ehrlinger et al 2008, Kruger and Dunning 1999.

15
“Beneffectance,” active voice, man and telephone pole:
Greenwald 1980;
BMW owners:
Johansson-Stenman and Martinsson 2006.

16
Self-inflation effect, high school students, academics:
Greenwald 1980; general review
:
Alicke and Sedikides 2009, Guenther and Alicke 2010;
morphing faces:
Epley and Whitchurch 2008.

17
Japan and China:
Alicke and Sedikides 2009, Kobayashi and Greenwald 2003
; area of the brain for self-inflation:
Kwan et al 2007;
narcissists high in dominance and power:
Campbell et al 2007;
overconfident, over-bet, and persistent in their delusions:
Campbell 2004.

18
Contrast two sets of college students:
Fein and Spencer 1997.

19
“Us” paired with nonsense syllables:
Perdue et al 1990;
generalize bad to out-group, good to in-group:
Maas et al 1989;
smiles imputed to in-group members:
Beaupre and Hess 2003;
smile intensity predicts longevity
: Abel and Kruger 2010.

20
Monkeys:
Mahajan et al 2011.

21
Power prime:
Galinksy et al 2006;
Churchill:
Mukerjee 2010.

22
Moral hypocrisy:
Batson et al 1999;
under cognitive load, moral bias toward self vanishes:
Valdesolo and DeStano 2008;
predictable and unpredictable shocks in rats:
Weiss 1970;
effects of perceived control in humans:
Lykken et al 1972.

23
Illusion of control:
Langer and Roth 1975;
in stockbrokers
: Fenton-O’C-reavy et al 2003;
illusory pattern recognition:
Whitson and Galinksy 2008.

25
Victim/perpetrator:
Baumeister et al 1990.

28
Self-deception and inefficient mental systems include misapprehension of reality:
Peterson et al 2002;
failure to respond to error:
Peterson et al 2003.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

30
Frequency-dependent selection in butterflies:
Sheppard 1959;
for matched pictures of the butterfly models and mimics
: Owen 1971.

31
Brood parasites in birds:
Davies 2000; almost everything in this section can be found there.

32
Individual species specialized to lay eggs:
Gibbs et al 2000;
advantageous to count eggs:
Lyon 2003;
single cuckoo’s begging call mimicking entire brood:
Davies et al 1998;
hawk cuckoo in Japan:
Tanaka and Ubeda 2005, Tanaka et al 2005.

33
Importance of recognition errors in reed warblers:
Davies et al 1996, Brooke et al 1998.

34 “
Mafia-like” behavior:
Soler et al 1995, Hoover and Robinson 2007;
cultural transmission:
Davies and Welbergen 2009.

35
Ants:
Barbero et al 2009;
ant mimics:
Maderspracher and Stensmyr 2011.

37
Monkey and ape brains:
Byrne and Corp 2004.

38
Mimicry in general:
Wickler 1968;
fireflies:
El-Hani et al 2010, Lloyd 1986;
orchids:
Jersakova et al 2006;
deceptive orchids more outbred:
Cozzolino and Widmer 2005.

39
Bluegill sunfish:
Dominey 1980, Gross 1982;
blister beetle:
Saul-Gershenz and Millar 2006.

40
In mixed-species flocks:
Greig-Smith 1978; see also use by drongos to steal food from meerkats, Flower 2010;
to separate warring siblings:
Spellerberg 1971, and more generally, Wiebe and Bartolotti 2000;
as a paternity guard:
Moller 1990;
antelopes:
Bro-Jorgensen and Pangle 2010;
each skin-color cell of an octopus:
Hanlon et al 2007.

41
Adjusting its color to each new surface:
Barbosa et al 2007;
mimic flounders:
Hanlon and Conroy 2008;
randomly displaying variant phenotypes:
Hanlon et al 1999;
squid female mimic:
Hanlon et al 2005;
bird distraction displays:
Sordahl 1986.

42
Crakes:
source unknown;
fake butterfly eggs:
Gilbert 1982;
pronghorn mother:
Byers and Byers 1983.

44
Wasp status badges:
Tibbetts and Dale 2004;
key perceptual factor:
Tibbetts and Izzo 2010;
sparrow status badges:
Rohwer 1977, Rohwer and Rohwer 1978, Rohwer and Ewald 1981, Moller and Swaddle 1987.

46
Ravens adjust behavior to context and competitors:
Bugnyar and Heinrich 2006;
cachers and raiders:
Bugnyar and Kotrschal 2002;
see around an obstacle:
Bugnyar et al 2004;
jays:
Dally et al 2004, 2006;
gray squirrels:
Leaver et al 2007;
chimps hiding erections:
de Waal 1982.

47
Mantis shrimps:
Steger and Caldwell 1983, Caldwell 1986, Adams and Caldwell 1990;
fiddler crabs:
Lailvaux et al 2009.

48
Hide objects behind back:
de Waal 1982;
throw object:
de Waal 1986;
cooperation modeled as prisoner’s dilemma:
Axelrod and Hamilton 1981; more recent work reviewed: Trivers 2005.

49 I am most grateful to Karl Sigmund for suggesting this entire page.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

54
Neurophysiology of action:
Libet 2004; we also have an illusion of conscious will, one we actively work to maintain: Wegner 2002.