The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life Read online

  Applied more broadly, the general argument is that we deceive ourselves the better to deceive others. To fool others, we may be tempted to reorganize information internally in all sorts of improbable ways and to do so largely unconsciously. From the simple premise that the primary function of self-deception is offensive—measured as the ability to fool others—we can build up a theory and science of self-deception.

  In our own species, deceit and self-deception are two sides of the same coin. If by deception we mean only consciously propagated deception—outright lies—then we miss the much larger category of unconscious deception, including active self-deception. On the other hand, if we look at self-deception and fail to see its roots in deceiving others, we miss its major function. We may be tempted to rationalize self-deception as being defensive in purpose when actually it is usually offensive. Here we will treat deceit and self-deception as a unitary subject, each feeding into the other.

  THE EVOLUTION OF SELF-DECEPTION

  In this book we take an evolutionary approach to the topic. What is the biological advantage to the practitioner of self-deception, where advantage is measured as positive effects on survival and reproduction? How does self-deception help us survive and reproduce—or, slightly more accurately, how does it help our genes survive and reproduce? Put differently, how does natural selection favor mechanisms of self-deception? We shall see that we have a large set of such mechanisms and that they may have important costs. Where is the benefit? How do such mechanisms increase individual reproductive and genetic success?

  Although the biological approach defines “advantage” in terms of survival and reproduction, the psychological approach often defines “advantage” as feeling better, or being happier. Self-deception occurs because we all want to feel good, and self-deception can help us do so. There is some truth to this, as we shall see, but not much. The main biological objection is this: Even if being happier is associated with higher survival and reproduction, as expected, why should we use such a dubious—and potentially costly—mechanism as self-deception to regulate our happiness? Lying to ourselves has costs. We are basing conscious activity on falsehoods, and in many situations this can turn around and bite us, as we shall see many, many times in this book. Whether during airplane crashes, the planning of stupid offensive wars, personal romantic disasters, family disputes, whatever, we shall see time and again that self-deception brings with it the expected costs of being alienated from reality, although, alas, there is a tendency for other people to suffer disproportionately the costs of our self-deception, while the benefits, such as they are, go to ourselves. So how does self-deception pay for itself biologically? How does it actually improve survival and reproduction?

  The central claim of this book is that self-deception evolves in the service of deception—the better to fool others. Sometimes it also benefits deception by saving on cognitive load during the act, and at times it also provides an easy defense against accusations of deception (namely, I was unconscious of my actions). In the first case, the self-deceived fails to give off the cues that go with consciously mediated deception, thus escaping detection. In the second, the actual process of deception is rendered cognitively less expensive by keeping part of the truth in the unconscious. That is, the brain can act more efficiently when it is unaware of the ongoing contradiction. And in the third case, the deception, when detected, is more easily defended against—that is, rationalized—to others as being unconsciously propagated. In some cases, self-deception may give a direct personal advantage by at least temporarily elevating the organism into a more productive state, but most of the time such elevation occurs without self-deception.

  In short, this book will attempt to describe a science of self-deception that is actually built on preexisting science—in this case, biology. The book will showcase what seem to be some of the most important features of the subject. The field is in its infancy, and surely many mistakes will be made here, but if the underlying logic is sound, and is linked by evidence and logic to the rest of biology, then corrections should come very quickly and we may rapidly grow a mature science that this book seeks only to outline.

  The dynamics of deception and its detection have been studied in a broad range of other species (see Chapter 2), with the advantage that we can see things in others that we can’t easily see in ourselves. This enterprise also greatly extends our range of evidence and leads to a few general principles of some considerable value. Deceiver and deceived are trapped in a coevolutionary struggle that continually improves adaptations on both sides. One such adaptation is intelligence itself. The evidence is clear and overwhelming that both the detection of deception and often its propagation have been major forces favoring the evolution of intelligence. It is perhaps ironic that dishonesty has often been the file against which intellectual tools for truth have been sharpened.

  Regarding underlying mechanisms, some interesting work in neurophysiology shows that the conscious mind is more of an observer after the fact, while behavior itself is usually unconsciously initiated (see Chapter 3). Knocking out activity in deception-related areas of the brain improves the quality of deception, while suppression of memory can be achieved consciously by inhibiting brain activity in relevant areas. The classic experiment demonstrating human self-deception shows that we often unconsciously recognize our own voices while consciously failing to do so, and this tendency can be manipulated. An important concept is that of imposed self-deception, in which we act out self-deceptions others have imposed on us. The possibility that self-deception evolves as a purely defensive device to make us feel better is addressed and rejected, with some latitude for self-deception that directly benefits self (without fooling others). The placebo effect provides an interesting example.

  Our logic also applies with special force to family and sexual interactions (see Chapters 4 and 5), each involving both conflict and cooperation over reproduction, life’s key aim. Family interactions can select for a divided self, in which our maternal half is in conflict with the paternal half, leading to a kind of “selves deception” between the two halves. Sexual relations are likewise fraught with conflict—and deceit and self-deception—from courtship to long-term life partnerships.

  And there is an intimate association between our immune system and our psyches, such that self-deception is often associated with major immune effects, all of which must be calculated if we are to understand the full biological effects of our mental lives (see Chapter 6). There is a whole world of social psychology that shows how our minds bias information, from initial avoidance, to false encoding, memory, and logic, to incorrect statements to others—from one end to the other (see Chapter 7). Key mechanisms include denial, projection, and perpetual efforts to reduce cognitive dissonance.

  The analysis of self-deception illuminates daily life, whether the evidence is embedded in personal experience or unconscious and uncovered only through careful study (see Chapter 8). One example from everyday life that has an entire chapter devoted to it is airplane and spacecraft crashes—they permit the cost of self-deception to be studied intensively under almost controlled conditions (see Chapter 9).

  Self-deception is intimately tied to false historical narratives, lies we tell ourselves about our past, usually in the service of self-forgiveness and aggrandizement (see Chapter 10). Self-deception plays a large role in the launching of misguided wars (see Chapter 11) and has important interactions with religion, which acts as both an antidote to self-deception and an accelerant (see Chapter 12). We are hardly surprised to note that nonreligious systems of thought—from biology to economics to psychology—are affected by self-deception according to the rule that the more social a discipline, the more its development is retarded by self-deception (see Chapter 13). Finally, as individuals, we can choose whether to fight our own self-deceptions or to indulge them. I choose to oppose my own—with very limited success so far (see Chapter 14).

  DECEPTION IS EVERYWHERE

  Deception is a
very deep feature of life. It occurs at all levels—from gene to cell to individual to group—and it seems, by any and all means, necessary. Deception tends to hide from view and is difficult to study, with self-deception being even worse, hiding itself more deeply in our own unconscious minds. Sometimes the subject must be ferreted out before it can be inspected, and we often lack key pieces of evidence, given the complexity of the subterfuges and our ignorance of the internal physiological mechanisms of self-deception.

  When I say that deception occurs at all levels of life, I mean that viruses practice it, as do bacteria, plants, insects, and a wide range of other animals. It is everywhere. Even within our genomes, deception flourishes as selfish genetic elements use deceptive molecular techniques to over-reproduce at the expense of other genes. Deception infects all the fundamental relationships in life: parasite and host, predator and prey, plant and animal, male and female, neighbor and neighbor, parent and offspring, and even the relationship of an organism to itself.

  Viruses and bacteria often actively deceive to gain entry into their hosts, for example, by mimicking body parts so as not to be recognized as foreign. Or, as in HIV, by changing coat proteins so often as to make mounting an enduring defense almost impossible. Predators gain from being invisible to their prey or resembling items attractive to them—for example, a fish that dangles a part of itself like a worm to attract other fish, which it eats—while prey gain from being invisible to their predators or mimicking items noxious to the predator, for example, poisonous species or a species that preys on its own predator.

  Deception within species is expected in almost all relationships, and deception possesses special powers. It always takes the lead in life, while detection of deception plays catch-up. As has been said regarding rumors, the lie is halfway around the world before the truth puts its boots on. When a new deception shows up in nature, it starts rare in a world that often lacks a proper defense. As it increases in frequency, it selects for such defenses in the victim, so that eventually its spread will be halted by the appearance and spread of countermoves, but new defenses can always be bypassed and new tricks invented.

  Truth—or, at least, truth detection—has been pushed back steadily over time by the propagation of deception. It always amazes me to hear some economists say that the costs of deceptive excesses in our economy (including white-collar crime) will naturally be checked by market forces. Why should the human species be immune to the general rule that where natural selection for deception is strong, deception can be selected that extracts a substantial net cost (in survival and reproduction) every generation? Certainly there is no collective force against this deception, only the relatively slow generation and evolution of counterstrategies. These lines were written in 2006, two years before the financial collapse that resulted from such practices and beliefs. I know nothing about economics and—from evolutionary logic—could not have predicted a thing about the collapse of 2008, but I have disagreed for thirty years with an alleged science called economics that has resolutely failed to ground itself in underlying knowledge, at a cost to all of us (see Chapter 13).

  As for the notion that deception is naturally constrained to be of modest general cost, consider the case of stick insects (or Phasmatodea), a group that has given itself over to imitating either sticks (three thousand species) or leaves (thirty species). These forms have existed for at least fifty million years and achieve a remarkably precise resemblance to their models. In those forms resembling sticks, there is apparently strong evolutionary pressure to produce a long, thin (sticklike) body, even if doing so forces the individual to forgo the benefits of bilateral symmetry. Thus, to fit the internal organs into a diminishing space, one of two organs has often been sacrificed, leaving only one kidney, one ovary, one testis, and so on. This shows that selection for successful deception has been powerful enough not only to remold the creature’s external shape but to remold its internal organs as well—even when this is otherwise disadvantageous to the larger creature, as loss of symmetry must often be. Likewise, as we shall see in the next chapter, selection can evolve a male fish that lives its entire adult life pretending to be a female and hooks up with territory-holding males in order to steal paternity of eggs laid in their territories by real females.

  WHAT IS SELF-DECEPTION?

  What exactly is self-deception? Some philosophers have imagined that self-deception is a contradiction in terms, impossible at the outset. How can the self deceive the self? Does that not require that the self knows what it does not know (p/~p)? This contradiction is easily sidestepped by defining the self as the conscious mind, so that self-deception occurs when the conscious mind is kept in the dark. True and false information may be simultaneously stored, only with the truth stored in the unconscious mind and falsehood in the conscious. Sometimes this involves activities of the conscious mind itself, such as active memory suppression, but usually the processes themselves are unconscious yet act to bias what we are conscious of. Most animals also have a conscious mind (not usually self-conscious), in the sense of a light being turned on (when awake) that allows integrated ongoing concentration on the outside world via their sense organs.

  So the key to defining self-deception is that true information is preferentially excluded from consciousness and, if held at all, is held in varying degrees of unconsciousness. If the mind acts quickly enough, no version of the truth need be stored. The counterintuitive fact that needs to be explained is that the false information is put into the conscious mind. What is the point of this? One would think that if we had to store true and false versions of the same event simultaneously, we would store the true version in the conscious mind, the better to enjoy the benefits of consciousness (whatever they may be), while the false information would be kept safely out of sight somewhere in the basement. The hypothesis of this book is that this entire counterintuitive arrangement exists for the benefit of manipulating others. We hide reality from our conscious minds the better to hide it from onlookers. We may or may not store a copy of that information in self, but we certainly act to exclude it from others.

  DETECTING DECEPTION IN HUMANS VIA COGNITIVE LOAD

  If the main function of self-deception is to make deception more difficult to detect, we are naturally led to how humans detect consciously propagated deception. What cues do we use when we do it? When interactions are anonymous or infrequent, behavioral cues cannot be read against a background of known behavior, so more general attributes of lying must be used. Three have been emphasized:

  Nervousness: Because of the negative consequences of being detected, including being aggressed against and also possibly guilt, people are expected to be more nervous when lying.

  Control: In response to concern over appearing nervous (or concentrating too hard) people may exert control, trying to suppress behavior, with possible detectable side effects such as overacting, overcontrol, a planned and rehearsed impression, or displacement activities. More to the point, tensing ourselves up almost inevitably increases the pitch of our voices. When asked to create a painful reaction or suppress it, for example in response to cold, children and adults are more successful suppressing than inventing—they tend to overact.

  Cognitive load: Lying can be cognitively demanding. You must suppress the truth and construct a falsehood that is plausible on its face and does not contradict anything known by the listener, nor likely to be known. You must tell it in a convincing way and you must remember the story. This usually takes time and concentration, both of which may give off secondary cues and reduce performance on simultaneous tasks.

  Cognitive load often appears to be the critical variable among the three, with a minor role for control and very little for nervousness. At least, this seems to be true in real criminal investigations as well as experimental situations designed to mimic them. Absent well-rehearsed lies, people who are lying have to think too hard, and this causes several effects, some of which are opposite to those of nervousness.

  Consi
der, for example, blinking. When nervous, we blink our eyes more often, but we blink less under increasing cognitive load (for example, while solving arithmetic problems). Recent studies of deception suggest that we blink less when deceiving—that is, cognitive load rules. Nervousness makes us fidget more, but cognitive load has the opposite effect. Again, contra usual expectation, people often fidget less in deceptive situations. And consistent with cognitive load effects, men use fewer hand gestures while deceiving and both sexes often employ longer pauses when speaking deceptively. An absurd example of the latter occurred the other day on my property in Jamaica when I questioned a young man just arriving on a motorcycle, intent (in my opinion) on either extorting money or robbing me. What was his name, I wanted to know. “Steve,” he said. “And what is your last name?” Pause. “It is not supposed to take a long time to remember your own last name.” Quick as you can say “Jones,” he said, “Jones.” So it was “Steve Jones”—not an entirely unlikely pair of names in Jamaica—but less believable on its face than his actual name, which turned out to be Omar Clarke. The point is that cognitive load gave him away at once. The most recent work shows that there is by no means always a delay prior to lying. It depends on the kind of lie. Denial is apt to be quicker than the truth, and so are well-rehearsed lies.

  Efforts at controlling oneself can also reveal deception. A nice example is pitch of voice. Deceivers tend to have higher-pitched voices. This is a very general finding and is a natural consequence of stress or of any effort to suppress behavior by becoming more rigid. Tensing up the body inevitably tends to raise the pitch of voice, and this tensing will naturally increase the closer the liar comes to the keyword. For example, someone denying a sexual relationship with “Sherri” may see her voice shoot up upon mention of the key person’s name: “You think I am there with SHERri.” Well, I had been leaning toward that theory, but now I had a fresh piece of evidence.