Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Oct 13:7:1503.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01503. eCollection 2016.

The Co-evolution of Honesty and Strategic Vigilance

Christophe Heintz  1 , Mia Karabegovic  1 , Andras Molnar  2
Affiliations

The Co-evolution of Honesty and Strategic Vigilance

Christophe Heintz et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

We hypothesize that when honesty is not motivated by selfish goals, it reveals social preferences that have evolved for convincing strategically vigilant partners that one is a person worth cooperating with. In particular, we explain how the patterns of dishonest behavior observed in recent experiments can be motivated by preferences for social and self-esteem. These preferences have evolved because they are adaptive in an environment where it is advantageous to be selected as a partner by others and where these others are strategically vigilant: they efficiently evaluate the expected benefit of cooperating with specific partners and attend to their intentions. We specify the adaptive value of strategic vigilance and preferences for social and self-esteem. We argue that evolved preferences for social and self-esteem are satisfied by applying mechanisms of strategic vigilance to one's own behavior. We further argue that such cognitive processes obviate the need for the evolution of preferences for fairness and social norm compliance.

Keywords: cooperation; dishonesty; evolution; honesty; partner choice; prosociality; social cognition.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Ames D. L., Fiske S. T. (2015). Perceived intent motivates people to magnify observed harms. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112, 3599–3605. 10.1073/pnas.1501592112 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ariely D. (2012). The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves. Sydney, NSW: Harper Collins Publishers.
    1. Ariely D., Bracha A., Meier S. (2009). Doing good or doing well? Image motivation and monetary incentives in behaving prosocially. Am. Econ. Rev. 99, 544–555. 10.1257/aer.99.1.544 - DOI
    1. Ayal S., Gino F. (2011). Honest rationales for dishonest behavior, in The social Psychology of Morality: Exploring the Causes of Good and Evil, eds Mikulincer M., Shaver P. R. (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; ), 149–166.
    1. Barclay P. (2013). Strategies for cooperation in biological markets, especially for humans. Evol. Hum. Behav. 34, 164–175. 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.02.002 - DOI

LinkOut - more resources