Deceit and Self-Deception

Robert Trivers suggests that some animals have a natural, evolved capacity to deceive themselves, i.e., that natural selection favored overconfident animals in particular:

"...I believe that self-deception has evolved in two situations at least in other creatures, and that it can be studied. I’ve suggested a way to do it, but so far nobody’s done it.

For example, when you make an evaluation of another animal in a combat situation—let’s say male/male conflict—the other organism’s sense of self-confidence is a relevant factor in your evaluation.

NC: And that’s shown by its behavior.

RT: Exactly—through its suppressing signs of fear and not giving anything away, and so forth. So you can imagine selection for overconfidence—

NC: —for showing overconfidence, even if it’s not real.

RT: Yes. Likewise in situations of courtship, where females are evaluating males. Again, the organism’s sense of self is relevant. We all know that low self-esteem is a sexual romantic turn-off.

So again, you can have selection—without language it seems to me—for biased kinds of information flow within the organism in order to keep up a false front..."

Read the complete article here:
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/noam_chomsky_robert_trivers/