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Genuine versus Deceptive Emotional Displays

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EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009

Part of the book series: The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings ((EPSP,volume 1))

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Abstract

This chapter contributes to the explanation of human cooperative behaviour, examining the implications of Brian Skyrms’ modelling of the prisoner’s dilemma (PD). Augmenting a PD with signalling strategies promotes cooperation, but a challenge that must be addressed is what prevents signals being subverted by deceptive behaviour. Empirical results suggest that emotional displays can play a signalling role and, to some extent, are secure from subversion. I examine proximate explanations and then offer an evolutionary explanation for the translucency of emotional displays, by which I mean that visible displays are well, but imperfectly, correlated with genuine emotional episodes. Natural selection acts on the basis of lifetime fitness consequences and, crucially for my argument, the intensity of selection decreases over the course of a lifetime. Hence we tend to possess traits that promote survival when young and, with regard to emotional displays, translucency allows successful maturation over our protracted period of nurturing by close kin. This is due to the vital role played by emotional interactions in the normal cognitive and social development of Homo sapiens.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An interaction in which mutual cooperation is the best collective outcome but where non-cooperation (defection) is each player’s individually preferred action irrespective of the other’s action.

  2. 2.

    An Evolutionarily Stable Strategy is one that, when played by the whole population, cannot be invaded by a novel “mutant” strategy.

  3. 3.

    I think that this second role is much less problematic than Frank’s “commitment model” of emotions.

  4. 4.

    The 206 studies in the meta-analysis do not focus explicitly on the PD and they do not share in common one definition of deception. In the case of Ekman’s studies in the following section, deception consists of attempts to withhold negative emotions.

  5. 5.

    These studies don’t investigate the cues on which judgements are based.

  6. 6.

    In a meta-analysis, of 27 studies of smiling during deception, only two did so (DePaulo et al. 2003).

  7. 7.

    This could also be explained by differences in the techniques of fiction and documentary.

  8. 8.

    Thanks to Mark Bedau for pressing this point.

  9. 9.

    In fact the opposite phenomenon is found. It has been noted that humans exhibit neoteny. That is, childhood traits persisting through adulthood to an unexpected degree (Gould 1977).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to audiences at the University of Bristol and EPSA09 for helpful discussions and to Ken Binmore and two anonymous referees for very useful comments. Research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council project “Evolution, Cooperation and Rationality”. Grant AH/F017502/1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Jonathan Grose

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  1. Jonathan Grose
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Correspondence to Jonathan Grose .

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  1. De Boelelaan 1105, HV Amsterdam, 1081, Netherlands

    Henk W. de Regt

  2. PO Box 90153, Tilburg, 5000 LE, Netherlands

    Stephan Hartmann

  3. Bristol, BS8 1TB, United Kingdom

    Samir Okasha

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Grose, J. (2012). Genuine versus Deceptive Emotional Displays. In: de Regt, H., Hartmann, S., Okasha, S. (eds) EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2404-4_8

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