Free The Folly of Fools by Robert Trivers

Not only will others not detect a pattern, but neither shall we—thus preventing us from inadvertently revealing ourselves.

DECEPTION MAY INDUCE ANGER
     
    How do animals react when they detect deception directed at them? Studies from a range of species—wasps, birds, and monkeys—suggest they often get angry and seek immediate retribution. At least this seems to be true of several species in which individuals have what appear to be arbitrary symbols that confer status—so-called badges—such as greater melanin (darker color) on the chest feathers of sparrows or the mouth-parts (clypeus) of wasps. In each case, the signals are on the part of the body most visible in a face-to-face encounter, and each is positively associated with body size and dominance. How is the association maintained between the arbitrary badge of status and the status itself? In wasps, for example, less than 1 percent of the body’s melanin is found on the clypeus. Why do cheaters not invade the system and produce higher-status badges than their size warrants? Precisely because they are immediately attacked and are usually unable to defend themselves. Those whose clypeuses are painted to look more dominant do not become more dominant but are attacked six times as often by truly dominant individuals, while wasps painted to look less dominant are attacked twice as often as nonpainted controls. And it is interesting that subordinate wasps attack those painted to look dominant more often than they attack those who look dominant to begin with. A key perceptual factor is incongruity between appearance and behavior—when individuals are painted darker and made more aggressive via hormone treatment, they gain in dominance, but when made more aggressive without the change in appearance, the wasps fail to establish stable dominance relations, presumably because others are continually tempted to challenge them.
    When a sparrow’s chest is painted blacker to enhance the apparent badge size and, thus, status of the sparrow, the effect on status is usually the opposite. The altered bird is attacked more frequently than before, especially by those with the same apparent badge size or larger. The result is a drop in status—or ostracism from the group—for the individual with the deceptive badge. By contrast, those who, in effect, deceive downward—that is, who are bleached to appear less dark than they really are—often become hyperaggressive, whirling around and attacking their near neighbors who now act disrespectfully by standing too close to them based on their new (diminished) badge.
    That deception might induce anger and attack was suggested to me very forcefully in my own life some thirty years ago. I was taking a walk, carrying my one-year-old son in my arms, when I spotted a squirrel in a tree. The problem was that my son did not see the squirrel, so I whistled as melodically as I could to draw the squirrel closer to us and, sure enough, the squirrel crept forward, but my son still could not see it. So I decided to reverse my relationship with the squirrel and mimic an attack. I suddenly lunged at it. I expected it to scamper away from me. I would have ruined a budding friendship but allowed my son to see the squirrel as it rushed away from us. Instead, the squirrel ran straight at us, chitter-ing in apparent rage, teeth fully exposed, jumping to the branch closest to me and my son . Now my son saw the squirrel, and I had the fright of my life, quickly running several steps away.
    For my folly, the squirrel could have killed my son with a leap to my shoulders and two expert bites to his neck. Had I begun the relationship hostile, I believe the squirrel never would have become so angry. It was the betrayal implied by beginning friendly, only then to attack (deception), that triggered the enormous anger. There is nothing quite like the humility you feel as you sneak your son back into your home, not telling your wife, of course, that in a little