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?
     • Honest (expensive) signals underlie much of our body language
     • Sex
     • Politics
     • Social Status
     • We are unaware of body language due to norms, and what we hope to accomplish is often at odds with others

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