Author: Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson

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Notes:

1. Why We Hide Our Motives
   • Animal Behaviour
     • Two behaviours hard to decipher
       1. Social Grooming
          • Why?
            • Most groom more than needed to clean
            • Most groom others more than themselves
            • Body size correlates with time spent grooming
          • Answer: Politics
            • High rank receive more
            • Correlates with size of group
       2. Competitive Altruism
          • Altruism sometimes forced from higher ranking to below
          • Competition usually with those immediately above or below rank
          • Altruistic members develop “credit” → Prestige
     • Notes: We are more social than we think / social explanation to actions more prevalent than we think
   • Competition
     • Human Brains may be fostered by competition of
       1. Ecological → From environment and promotes cooperation
       2. Social → From competition in group
     • Social Competition is not flattering and often not favoured as an explanation (bias against)
     • Often a species’ most important competitor is itself
     • Types
       • Sex (for mates)
       • Social Status
         • Dominance
           • Result of competition → Vicious and destructive
         • Prestige
           • Less competitive on surface → Respect that must be freely conferred by admirers
       • Political
     • Requires judging and being judged by others
       • Signals → Used to communicate or convey info
         • Honest → Correlated with underlying trait or fact
         • Dishonest or Deceptive → Not correlated with traits
       • Sometimes useful to do do something risky or wasteful to prove desirable trait → Handicap Principle
       • Signalling does not have to be conscious
     • Notes: Evolutionary competition between species is less used as an explanation for actions but often just as or more important. Social Competition can happen through dominance or prestige, and requires judging and being judged by others.
   • Norms
     • Norms = Conventions or rules about how members of a community should behave
     • Most norms are beneficial for majority of community
     • “Collective Enforcement” enables egalitarian political order by punishing norm violators
     • Gossip is useful to create threat of reputational damage outside of enforcement (but easily abused)
     • Weaker norms are harder to notice due to blind spot
     • Some subtle but impt norms
       • Bragging
       • Currying Favour
       • Subgroup Politics
       • Selfish Motives
     • Notes: Regulating society (and thus competition) requires norms set that help the collective overcome any individual(s) (and benefit most of the community). These norms can be obvious or subtle.
   • Cheating
     • Cheating allows reaping of benefits without incurring costs
     • Cheating is natural → we have special purpose cheat detection adaptations
     • Two dimensions to keeping a secret
       1. How widely it is known
       2. How openly it is known
     • Norm enforcement requires both detecting and prosecuting violators → Use of discretion can help avoid
       • Pretexts
       • Discreet Communication
       • Skirting a norm
       • Subtlety
     • Notes: Individuals cheat to violate or skirt norms without repercussions.
   • Self-Deception
     • Deception is natural and allows reaping benefits without full costs
     • We deceive others AND ourselves
     • Old school of thought on self deception: Self defence mechanism to preserve self esteem
     • New school of thought on self deception: Deceive ourselves to deceive others
       • Lying alone without self deception is cognitively demanding and difficult/risky to do
     • Other people have partial visibility into what we’re thinking (micro-expressions, body language, tells, etc)
     • 4 archetypes of self deception
       • Madman
       • Loyalist
       • Cheerleader
       • Cheater
   • Counterfeit Reasons
     • Our brains can rationalise our behaviour after the fact
     • The internal interpreter is doing so for an internal audience and for an external audience → We interpret events to convince ourselves and others
   • Notes: Self deception and rationalisation allows us to deceive ourselves in order to deceive others, allowing better cheating.
2. Hidden Motives in Everyday
   • Body Language
     • Body conveys vital emotion about emotions and social attitudes
     • Most nonverbal signalling and reading is automatic and outside conscious awareness
     • Why are we unaware of nonverbal signals?
       • Consciousness too slow
       • Strategically blind to body language as it betrays our ugly, selfish, competitive motives
     • Honest (expensive) signals underlie much of our body language
     • Sex
       • Men and women are expected not to advertise sexual intentions too prominently and conduct activities in private → too much interest in sexual activities of partners and others
       • Flirting is done discreetly, dressing suggestively and private rendezvous
       • Much of the thrill and drama of courtship lies in struggling to decipher the others mixed signals
       • Sexual jealousy gives rise to mate guarding like touching and being near partners
     • Politics
       • Nonverbals help coordinate coalitions
       • Proximity and touch to develop friendship and social bonds
       • Posture to show comfort or discomfort with others
       • We also use our eyes and glances to coordinate
       • Mimicry is a way to demonstrate allegiance/likeness
     • Social Status
       • Of all the signals we send, we are least aware to social status
       • Dominance and status signalling
       • Aposematism - wanting notice when confident (honest signal)
       • Social signal must be matching with others, coordinated
       • In dominance context, eye contact is aggression
       • In prestige context, eye contact is a gift
     • We are unaware of body language due to norms, and what we hope to accomplish is often at odds with others

• Laughter
  • Laughter is innate and universal → Involuntary social behaviour
  • Superiority theory: laughter is a form of mockery, derision or scorn
  • Relief theory: We laugh when a situation initially accumulate “nervous energy” then takes away the need for it
  • Incongruity theory: We laugh when expectations are violated, especially pleasingly
  • We laugh far often in social settings than when alone (±30% more est)
  • Laughter is a vocalisation → active communication
  • Laughter occurs in other species
  • Laughter is necessarily coupled with play (not serious mood)
    • Laugh at ourselves → Signal our intentions are playful
    • Laugh at others → Perceive others actions as playful
    • Danger increases laugher as it reinforces “we are just playing”
  • Our propensity to laugh comes first and provides goal for humor to achieve