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

by Robert Trivers

Overview

Whether it's in a cockpit at takeoff or the planning of an offensive war, a romantic relationship or a dispute at the office, there are many opportunities to lie and self-deceive — but deceit and self-deception carry the costs of being alienated from reality and can lead to disaster. So why does deception play such a prominent role in our everyday lives? In short, why do we deceive?

In his bold new work, prominent biological theorist Robert Trivers unflinchingly argues that self-deception evolved in the service of deceit — the better to fool others. We do it for biological reasons — in order to help us survive and procreate. From viruses mimicking host behavior to humans misremembering (sometimes intentionally) the details of a quarrel, science has proven that the deceptive one can always outwit the masses. But we undertake this deception at our own peril.

Trivers has written an ambitious investigation into the evolutionary logic of lying and the costs of leaving it unchecked.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465085972
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	01/07/2014
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	377,014
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.60(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Robert L. Trivers is a Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University. He won the Crafoord Prize in Biosciences in 2007 for his fundamental analysis of social evolution, conflict, and cooperation. He lives in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Preface xiii

1 The Evolutionary Logic of Self-Deception 1

The Evolution of Self-Deception 3

Deception-Is Everywhere 6

What Is Self-Deception? 8

Detecting Deception in Humans via Cognitive Load 9

Self-Deception Is Older Than Language 13

Nine Categories of Self-Deception 15

The Hallmarks of Self-Deception 27

2 Deception in Nature 29

The Coevolutionary Struggle Between Deceiver and Deceived 30

Frequency-Dependent Selection in Butterflies 30

An Epic Coevolutionary Struggle 31

Intelligence and Deception 36

Female Mimics 38

False Alarm Calls 39

Camouflage 40

Death and Near-Death Acts 41

Randomness as a Strategy 42

Deception May Induce Anger 43

Animals May Be Conscious of Deception 45

Deception as an Evolutionary Game 48

A Deeper Theory of Deception 50

3 Neurophysiology and Levels of Imposed Self-Deception 53

The Neurophysiology of Conscious Knowledge 54

The Neurophysiology of Thought Suppression 56

The Irony of Trying to Suppress One's Thoughts 57

Improving Deception Through Neural Inhibition 58

Unconscious Self-Recognition Shows Self-Deception 59

Can One Half of the Brain Hide from the Other? 61

Imposed Self-Deception 63

Implicit Versus Explicit Self-Esteem 64

False Confessions, Torture, and Flattery 66

False Memories of Child Abuse 67

Is Self-Deception the Psyche's Immune System? 68

The Placebo Effect 70

4 Self-Deception in the Family-and the Split Self 77

Parent/Offspring Conflict 80

Cases of Extreme Abuse 81

Genomic Imprinting 82

Internal Conflict from Oppositely Imprinted Genes 84

Parental Manipulation and Imprinting 85

The Effect of Marital Conflict on Genetic Conflict 86

Imprinting and Self-Deception 87

Deception in Children 88

Parental Effects on Children's Deception 92

5 Deceit, Self-Deception, and Sex 95

Why Sex? 96

Two Sexes-Two Coevolving Species 97

Deception and Self-Deception at Courtship 99

Whose Baby Is It? 100

Male Response to Female Infidelity 101

Deceit and a Woman's Monthly Cycle 103

Men's Self-Deceit About Female Interest 105

Male Denial of Homosexual Tendencies 106

Is Self-Deception Good or Bad for Marriage? 107

The Appeal and Danger of Fantasy 109

The Pain of Betrayal 110

6 The Immunology of Self-Deception 115

The Immune System Is Expensive 117

The Importance of Sleep 120

Trade-Offs with Immunity 121

Writing About Trauma Improves Immune Function 125

Homosexuality and the Effects of Denial 128

Positive Affect and Immune Function 130

The Effects of Music 132

Positivity in Old Age 133

An Immunological Theory of Happiness 135

7 The Psychology of Self-Deception 139

Avoiding Some Information and Seeking Out Other 140

Biased Encoding and Interpretation of Information 142

Biased Memory 143

Rationalization and Biased Reporting 145

Predicting Future Feelings 146

Are All Biases Due to Self-Deception? 147

Denial and Projection 148

Denial Is Self-Reinforcing 150

Your Aggression, My Self-Defense 151

Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Justification 151

Social Effects of Cognitive Dissonance Reduction 154

Cognitive Dissonance in Monkeys and Young Children 155

8 Self-Deception in Everyday Life 157

Sex Differences in Overconfidence 157

Metaphors in the Stock Market 160

Manipulative Metaphors in Life 161

The Name-Letter Effect 164

Deceiving Down and Dummying Up 167

Face-ism 168

Spam Against Anti-Spam 170

Humor, Laughter, and Self-Deception 172

Drugs and Self-Deception 173

Vulnerability to Manipulation by Others 175

Professional Con Artists 176

Lie-Detector Tests 180

9 Self-Deception in Aviation and Space Disasters 183

Air Florida Flight 90-Doomed by Self-Deception? 184

Disaster 37,000 Feet Above the Amazon 189

Eldar Takes Command-Aeroflot Flight 593 191

Simple Pilot Error-or Pilot Fatigue? 192

Ice Overpowers the Pilots; Airlines Overpower the FAA 194

The US Approach to Safety Helps Cause 9/11 198

The Challenger Disaster 201

The Columbia Disaster 205

Egypt and Egypt Air Deny All 209

When the Head of the Airforce Becomes the Pilot-the Crash That Took Out Poland's Entire Leadership in 2010 212

Saved by Lack of Self-Deception? 213

10 False Historical Narratives 215

The US False Historical Narrative 218

Control Through Small Wars and Installed Proxies 222

US History Textbooks 224

Larger View of US History 225

The Rewriting of Japanese History 227

Turkey's Holocaust Denial 230

A Land Without People for a People Without Land 233

The Founding of the State of Israel 235

Voluntary Flight or Ethnic Cleansing? 237

Arab Deceit and Self-Deception 239

Christian Zionism 241

First Line of Defense: Cry "Anti-Semite" 243

Why False Historical Narratives? 245

11 Self-Deception and War 247

Chimpanzee Raiding → Human Warfare 249

Self-Deception Encourages Warfare 252

Derogation of Others → Fatal Overconfidence 255

The 2003 US War on Iraq 257

Creating Knowledge and Then Walling It Off 263

Can Wars Be Won Through Bombing? 265

Bombing to Eradicate History and to Reinforce It 268

Carnage in Gaza 270

Self-Deception and the History of War 274

12 Religion and Self-Deception 277

Cooperation Within the Group 280

Religion: A Recipe for Self-Deception 282

Religion and Health 285

Parasites and Religious Diversity 288

Why the Bias Against Women? 291

Power Corrupts 292

Religions Impose Mating Systems 294

Religion Preaches Against Self-Deception 295

Intercessory Prayer-Does It Work? 299

Religion and Support for Suicide Attacks 300

Religion → Self-Righteousness → Warfare 301

13 Self-Deception and the Structure of the Social Sciences 303

Precedence of Justice Over Truth? 304

Success of Science Is Based on Anti-Self-Deception Devices 305

The More Social the Discipline, the More Retarded Its Development 307

Self-Deception in Biology 308

Is Economics a Science? 310

Cultural Anthropology 313

Psychology 315

Psychoanalysis: Self-Deception in the Study of Self-Deception 317

Self-Deception Deforms Disciplines 319

14 Fighting Self-Deception in our own lives 321

To Fight One's Own Self-Deception or Not? 323

A Series of Minor Victories Followed by a Major Disaster 324

Signals of Underlying Mental Screw-Ups 324

Correcting for Our Own Biases 326

Why Are We So Compulsive? 327

The Value of Being Conscious 329

The Danger of Fantasy in Propagating Deception 330

The Benefits of Prayer and Meditation 331

Value of Friends and Counselors 332

An Invitation to Self-Deception and Personal Disaster 333

A Never-Ending Extravaganza 334

Acknowledgments 339

Notes 341

Bibliography 355

Index 387

Editorial Reviews

Boston Globe
“Trivers's knowledge of a range of disparate subjects is impressive.... Zooming in from the evolution of group interaction to the adaptations of neurology, Trivers writes in depth about how poor our brains are at grasping anything that could be considered an ‘objective' reality. We're constantly fooling ourselves.”

Financial Times
“[O]riginal and important.... [The Folly of Fools] is a remarkable book, thick with ideas, yet relaxed and conversational in tone. Perhaps most remarkable is how ruthlessly Trivers confronts his own self-delusions…. If we all examined our faults and foibles as honestly as Trivers does, the world probably would, as he hopes, be a more decent place.”

The Daily
“Fascinating”

Science
“Engaging.... Disarmingly honest.... Trivers's book is a thoroughly good read. If his well-informed by modest approach starts a new trend, then The Folly of Fools is a welcome and rather unselfish meme.”
 

Scientific American, Guilty Planet blog
“Trivers is one of the greatest thinkers of our time.... Folly of Fools takes a refreshingly critical look at human behavior.... To fix some of the world's follies, we should lower the shield and better understand deception and our own self-deception by absorbing the wisdom, risky ideas, and generous admissions of his own foolishness in Robert Trivers' Folly of Fools. The truth can hurt, but deceit can, too.”
 
Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution blog
“Brilliant, insightful, with occasional lapses of taste, quintessential Trivers, now the go-to book on its topic, recommended.”
 
Kai Kupferschmidt, Science
“[Trivers is] an immensely original thinker in biology. His strength has been to see conflict where other people see only harmony.... Whereas others see optimism and self-deception as a defensive strategy to stay sane and happy in a harsh world, he sees it as a psychological attack mechanism, ‘fooling yourself to better fool others,' he says.”
 

The Economist
“In The Folly of Fools Robert Trivers...explains that the most effectively devious people are often unaware of their deceit. Self-deception makes it easier to manipulate others to get ahead. Particularly intelligent people can be especially good at deceiving themselves. Mining research in biology, neurophysiology, immunology and psychology, Mr. Trivers delivers a swift tour of the links between deception and evolutionary progress.”
 
Psychology Today
“Read this if…You're hungry for assumption-challenging explanations for your everyday behavior. Well-articulated and convincing, Trivers's theory draws on group dynamics, neuroscience, and even immunology to explain why we're all liars. Ultimately, he concludes that we're best off sensing—and telling—the truth whenever possible.”
 
Salon
“[Trivers] probably knows more about the mechanics and meaning of deception than almost anyone else in the world, and his new book, The Folly of Fools, covers pretty much anything you'd want to know about the topic.... Expansive, smart and deep, the book—a relentlessly fascinating and entertaining read—will utterly change the way you think about lying.”
 

The Guardian (UK)
“After forty years of research Trivers wrote [The Folly of Fools] against the backdrop of a global economic meltdown caused by self-deceived, over-confident egoists grossly out of touch with reality, and when he explains how the human male drive for power and control correlates with ignorance and self-delusion, your blood runs cold.... [The Folly of Fools] is an exhilarating read: the intertwined issues of deceit and self-deception are infinite, involving positive and negative outcomes for the fool and the fooled—roles that can reverse and revert without your even knowing.”

Discover
“Weaving together examples from biology, psychology, history, and immunology, evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers argues that we deceive ourselves in order to better deceive others, and do so in order to survive, procreate, and generally get ahead.... [A] thoroughly researched, thought-provoking read.”

Nature
“[A] provocative and wide-ranging book.... Trivers touches on wide-ranging issues: the role of evolutionary biology in the social sciences; the placebo effect; lie detectors; genocide; the scientific method. But he conveys a powerful and focused message: if we can learn to recognize and fight our own self-deception, we can avoid negative consequences at levels from the individual to the national, and live better lives.”

David Haig, Professor of Biology, Harvard University
“This is an enjoyable, thought-provoking book on how our mind systematically creates distorted perceptions of reality and how these distort our presentation of self to others. I believe the book is an important contribution to psychology and social science more generally and will undoubtedly stimulate debate on these important questions.”

Publishers Weekly
“[A] spirited, provocative exploration of the evolutionary logic of deceit and self-deception.... Stimulating...Trivers's study provides an energetic exploration of a perplexing human trait.”

BBC Focus
“By Trivers's own admission, many of these ideas are speculative. But even if he does suffer from over-confidence—a type of self-deception more common in males—the admirable breadth, clarity and ambition of the result more than vindicate nature's creation of the blind spot.”
 

David P. Barash, Evolutionary Psychology
“[I]t would be folly indeed to ignore the book's scientific insights, its provocative suggestions, and—perhaps most of all—the sheer intellectual delight in reading something that is so cogent, so relevant to one's own daily life, and, it must be said, so damned obvious … once a genius like Robert Trivers points it out! (Please note: I don't use the ‘g-word' often, or lightly.)”
 
Seattle Times
“If we can convince ourselves that we are stronger, smarter, more skillful, more ethical or better drivers than others, we're a long way toward convincing other people too. This fundamental insight frames Trivers' wide-ranging exploration of deceit and self-deception in the human and animal worlds…. Believing you can achieve some goal – climbing a mountain, getting a new job, rebuilding an engine – can give you the incentive to actually work at it. The trick, of course, is to not slide into overconfidence or blithely deny unpleasant facts – behaviors which, as Trivers shows time and again, almost always precede disaster.”

Frans de Waal, C. H. Candler Professor, Emory University, and author of Our Inner Ape and The Age of Empathy
“Here a topic very few people think about, perhaps because the degree to which self-deception permeates our lives is itself subject to powerful denials. Robert Trivers, one of the brightest minds in evolutionary biology, leaves us little escape, however. No denying: an eye-opening read.”
 
William von Hippel, Professor of Psychology, University of Queensland
“Great books contain important new ideas, and this book is no exception. What makes Trivers' book unusual even among great books is the density of new ideas. Like other great popular press books in science, this book advances an important new idea in an entertaining and accessible manner. This book goes beyond that, however, by providing dozens of new hypotheses for those of us who have been laboring in this field for the last twenty years. In that sense, this book is not just exporting science to the lay public, but is also an important piece of scholarship.”
 

John Horgan, New York Times Book Review
“Trivers's scope is vast, ranging from the fibs parents and children tell to manipulate one another to the ‘false historical narratives' political leaders foist on their citizens and the rest of the world.... The Folly of Fools reminds me of other irreducibly odd classics by scientific iconoclasts.... May [Trivers's] new book give him the attention he so richly deserves.”

New York Times Book Review
“An intriguing argument that deceit is a beneficial evolutionary ‘deep feature' of life.”

Washington Post
“A celebrated evolutionary biologist, Trivers uses the tools of his trade to answer a basic question: Why are deception and self-deception so prevalent?.... The Folly of Fools assumes the unity of all nature and seeks to comprehend it not merely by observation and reason, but also by subjective impressions, intuition and imagination. And thus Trivers ranges across biology, anthropology, history and politics to find examples of deception and self-deception in action.”

Richard Wrangham, Professor of Biological Anthropology, Harvard University, and author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
“The problem of why natural selection favors self-deception is as poorly understood as it is riveting. Robert Trivers uses examples from insects to international relations to guide us to the fundamental logic. The result is a startlingly original and important book that should start a global conversation on a topic of both scholarly and personal interest.”
 
Richard Dawkins, emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford, and author of The Greatest Show on Earth
“This is a remarkable book, by a uniquely brilliant scientist. Robert Trivers has a track record of producing highly original ideas, which have gone on to stimulate much research. His Darwinian theory of self-deception is arguably his most provocative and interesting idea so far. The book is enlivened by Trivers' candid personal style, and is a pleasure to read. Strongly recommended.”
 

Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Self-deception has long been a dark, opaque side of our behavior, but the author brings a bright flashlight to his investigation of why we alter information to reach a falsehood.... Trivers examines our biases and rationalizations, denials and projections, misrepresentation and manipulations, and his writing is comfortable and suasive, resulting from his familiarity and command of the subject's broad application and investigative history.... A gripping inquiry. Trivers is informal but highly knowledgeable, provocative, brightly humorous and inviting.”

Library Journal
“Looking at self-deception in broader areas like war, religion, false historical narratives, and even plane crashes, Trivers presents a convincing argument for why this type of dishonesty is as harmful to the individual as it is to society as a whole.... This provocative book examines an often unexamined subject, but one with which all readers are familiar. Recommended for professional social scientists as well as readers of popular science.”
 

From the Publisher

Trivers is not an elegant stylist like Dawkins, Wilson or Pinker…But [his] blunt, unpolished manner…makes me trust him more than some slicker writers. The Folly of Fools reminds me other irreducibly odd classics by scientific iconoclasts like The Fractal Geometry of Nature, by the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, and The Society of Mind,by the artificial-intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky…May his new book give him the attention [Trivers] so richly deserves.
—The New York Times Book Review

John Horgan

Are there biological advantages to the practice of deceiving oneself and each other? The two are related, says noted Rutgers biologist Trivers in a spirited, provocative exploration of the evolutionary logic of deceit and self-deception: “we deceive ourselves the better to deceive others.” The self-deception Trivers is concerned with is unconscious, not planned. Deception, whether in family relations, in religion, sex or historical accounts, occurs at every level of life: parasite and host, predator and prey, plant and animal, male and female, neighbor and neighbor, parent and offspring. Even though our senses show us the truth of the world around us, our conscious minds often distort it: we project onto others traits that in fact characterize us; we repress painful memories, rationalize immoral behavior, and act repeatedly to boost self-opinion. But the costs of self-deception include the misapprehension of reality, especially social reality, and the possibility of making ourselves immune to the needs of others and ourselves. For example, airline pilots sometimes commit deadly errors out of self-deception that arises from overconfidence in their skills and lack of awareness of the dangers posed by a certain situation. Stimulating but also challenging for lay readers, Trivers’s study provides an energetic exploration of a perplexing human trait. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Renowned evolutionary biologist Trivers (Rutgers Univ.) has spent 40 years studying the purpose of bias, distortion, and self-deception in human evolution as traits that would seem to undermine the species' success. Examining the evolutionary logic of self-deception in nature, neuroscience, immunology, and social psychology, Trivers concludes that it arose to allow humans to lie better. While he admits that deception can be a critical evolutionary leg up, he argues that it is ultimately perilous for human survival. Looking at self-deception in broader areas like war, religion, false historical narratives, and even plane crashes, Trivers presents a convincing argument for why this type of dishonesty is as harmful to the individual as it is to society as a whole. He concludes with thoughts on how readers can resist self-deception in themselves. VERDICT This provocative book examines an often unexamined subject, but one with which all readers are familiar. Recommended for professional social scientists as well as readers of popular science.—Gloria Maxwell, Metropolitan Community Coll., Penn Valley, Kansas City, MO

Library Journal

Trivers (Anthropology and Biological Sciences/Rutgers Univ.) searches for the evolutionary biology behind why "we are thoroughgoing liars, even to ourselves."

Self-deception has long been a dark, opaque side of our behavior, but the author brings a bright flashlight to his investigation of why we alter information to reach a falsehood. Because Trivers approaches the questions from the standpoint of evolutionary costs and advantages, his functional answer is that we lie to ourselves the better to lie to others, that through self-deception we hide reality from our conscious minds to make a better job of our often self-glorifying, self-justifying, self-forgiving deceptions. But through his research, the author has found self-deception to be a two-edged sword, with positive effects on our survival and reproduction, but negative effects on the immune system. He tenders evidence of self-deceit on all levels—gene, cell, individual and group—from the neurophysiological to parental subterfuge (and the child's subterfuge back) to sex (an absolute snake-pit of deceit and self-deception). Trivers examines our biases and rationalizations, denials and projections, misrepresentation and manipulations, and his writing is comfortable and suasive, resulting from his familiarity and command of the subject's broad application and investigative history. At the same time, the author is disarmingly intimate about his own self-deceptive weakness: "I have noticed that 'inadvertent' touching of women (that is, unconscious prior to the action) occurs exclusively with my left hand."

A gripping inquiry. Trivers is informal but highly knowledgeable, provocative, brightly humorous and inviting.

Kirkus Reviews