The Elephant in the Brain_Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

by Robin Hanson

  Shortly after his 23rd birthday, Kevin was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. For a while he was extremely reluctant to talk about it (except among family and close friends), a reluctance he rationalized by telling himself that he’s simply a “private person” who doesn’t like sharing private medical details with the world. Later he started following a very strict diet to treat his disease—a diet that eliminates processed foods and refined carbohydrates. Eating so healthy quickly became a point of pride, and suddenly Kevin found himself perfectly happy to share his diagnosis, since it also gave him an opportunity to brag about his diet. Being a “private person” about medical details went right out the window—and now, look, here he is sharing his diagnosis (and diet!) with perfect strangers in this book.

  These two examples illustrate one of the most effective ways to rationalize, which is telling half-truths. In other words, we cherry-pick our most acceptable, prosocial reasons while concealing the uglier ones. Robin really does want to get his ideas out there, and Kevin really is a private person. But these two explanations aren’t the full story.

  To identify other examples, we’ll have to relax our standards of proof. It’s hard to accuse a particular reason of being counterfeit—that’s the whole point; we can never be perfectly certain—but here we appeal to our readers’ common sense and lived experience. We all know that this happens. And even if some of these examples aren’t airtight, we hope they’ll give the general flavor of how people use and abuse reasons:

  •Parents will often enforce kids’ bedtimes “for their own good,” when a self-serving motive seems just as likely—that parents simply want an hour or two of peace and quiet without the kids. Of course, many parents genuinely believe that bedtimes are good for their children, but that belief is self-serving enough that we should be skeptical that it’s the full story.

  •Minor impediments are often exaggerated to avoid unwanted social encounters: “I’m not feeling well today” as an excuse not to go work, for example, or “I’m too busy” to decline a meeting. Typically there’s a grain of truth to these reasons, but it’s often exaggerated, and meanwhile other reasons (e.g., “I simply don’t want to”) are conveniently omitted.

  •People who download copyrighted material—songs, movies, books—often rationalize their actions by saying, “Faceless corporations take most of the profits from artists anyway.” The fact that most of these people wouldn’t dream of stealing CDs or DVDs from Best Buy (an equally faceless corporate entity) attests to a different explanation for their behavior, which is that online, they feel anonymous and are less afraid of getting caught.

  The point is, we have many reasons for our behaviors, but we habitually accentuate and exaggerate our pretty, prosocial motives and downplay our ugly, selfish ones.21

  GETTING OUR BEARINGS

  So far in this book, our focus has been mostly theoretical. We’ve tried to explain why we often hide our motives, even from ourselves. But merely knowing that hidden motives exist doesn’t tell us how widespread they are, nor how big are their effects. For that, we have to turn outward to our behavior and institutions.

  In the chapters that follow, we’ll examine many different areas of life. For each area, we’ll suggest that our visible motives—the usual motives we claim to have—don’t seem adequate to explain our behaviors, and that other quite different motives often explain our behaviors better.

  As you read the chapters that make up Part II of this book, feel free to jump around. Each chapter stands more or less on its own, so you can read what interests you and skip what doesn’t. To recap the relevant section from the table of contents:

  Chapter 7.Body Language

  Chapter 8.Laughter

  Chapter 9.Conversation

  Chapter 10.Consumption

  Chapter 11.Art

  Chapter 12.Charity

  Chapter 13.Education

  Chapter 14.Medicine

  Chapter 15.Religion

  Chapter 16.Politics

  (And don’t forget the conclusion in Chapter 17 at the very end.)

  For better or worse, this book is extremely wide-ranging. In most of the fields we discuss, we—your two coauthors—are relative amateurs. We’ve tried our best to learn the relevant literature, but we could only read so much; no doubt we’re missing a lot of important information. Most of our claims, therefore, and especially the controversial ones, are taken from experts in each field. Of course, we realize that a few expert opinions don’t necessarily reflect a consensus among all experts—nor, it should be noted, is consensus opinion necessarily the truth. If we seem to have selectively chosen our sources and evidence, then it’s probably because we have. So we are no doubt wrong in many places, not just in the details, but also in some larger conclusions.

  Our main goal is to demonstrate that hidden motives are common and important—that they’re more than a minor correction to the alternate theory that people mostly do things for the reasons that they give. For this purpose, we don’t need to be right about everything. In fact, we expect most readers to buy only about 70 percent of what we’re selling—and we’re OK with that. Where we’re lacking in perspective, we expect that others will widen our view and point out our mistakes. But we hope our overall thesis can withstand these individual corrections.

  That said, let’s now set out to investigate specific behaviors and institutions, starting with body language.

  PART II

  Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

  7

  Body Language

  In schools across the country, from the first day of kindergarten through high school graduation, children will spend thousands of hours practicing the skills of verbal communication. They’ll learn to listen, speak, read, and write—to express their own thoughts and to decipher the expressions of others. Many of these children, however, will receive not a single hour of instruction on how to communicate with body language.

  Now, it’s wrong to say (as many have mistakenly repeated) that “over 90 percent of communication is nonverbal.”1 But the myth persists in part because it alludes to something true, which is that, for social creatures like us, body language is very important. Our bodies convey vital information about our emotions—serenity and anxiety, excitement and boredom, pride and shame—as well as our social attitudes—trust and distrust, self-assurance and self-doubt, intimacy and formality, loyalty and defiance. And we use body language (see Box 7) to coordinate some of our most meaningful activities: making friends, falling in love, and negotiating our position in a hierarchy.

  Box 7: “Body Language”

  When we say “body language,” we’re referring not just to arm movements and torso positioning, but more generally to all forms of “nonverbal communication.” In fact, we’re using these terms synonymously. The concept includes facial expressions, eye behaviors, touch, use of space, and everything we do with our voices besides uttering words: tone, timbre, volume, and speaking style.2

  We can see the importance of nonverbal skills even from a very early age. One study of 60 kindergarteners, for example, found that children who were better at reading emotions (from photographs of both adults and children) were also more popular among their classmates. The savvier the child, the more likely he or she was to be chosen as an activity partner.3 These are just correlations, but we also know from personal experience how useful it can be to read body language well.

  So why is it left out of the curriculum?

  Let’s set this question aside for a moment to consider another, related puzzle: the fact that we’re largely unconscious of the messages we’re sending with our bodies.4 Certainly we’re aware of some of these messages, but not nearly to the extent that we’re aware of our spoken messages. And given the importance of nonverbal communication, we might expect to be hyper-aware of it. But in fact the opposite is true. With hardly any deliberate thought, we manage to deftly position our limbs and torsos, flash meaningful facial expressions, laugh at all the right moments, take
up an appropriate amount of space, modulate our tone of voice, make or break eye contact as needed, and decipher and react to all these behaviors in others. As physicist-turned-psychologist Leonard Mlodinow says in Subliminal, “Much, if not most, of the nonverbal signaling and reading of signals is automatic and performed outside our conscious awareness and control.”5

  It’s not just that we happen to be partially oblivious to our body language. In many ways, we seem to prefer it this way. We feel it’s appropriate for people to act spontaneously. When body language becomes a deliberate performance, it seems forced, perhaps even creepy. Consider the glad-handing salesman who (perhaps after reading a book on body language) starts greeting his customers with a clasp on the shoulder in an attempt to cultivate intimacy and affection. Thankfully, this is the exception rather than the rule; most body language remains involuntary.

  In addition to being unaware of our own body language, we’re also (although perhaps to a lesser extent) unaware of what others are doing with their bodies. “I’m pretty sure Sally doesn’t like me,” you might tell your spouse, but when asked to justify your impression, you come up blank. “I don’t know, it’s just a feeling. I can’t quite put my finger on it.” Even Charles Darwin noticed this. In his pioneering work on nonverbal communication, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, he writes, “It has often struck me as a curious fact that so many shades of expression are instantly recognized without any conscious process of analysis on our part.”6 We’re generally aware of the overall gist of one another’s body language, but we often struggle to identify the specific behaviors that give rise to our impressions. (See Box 8.)

  The question, as always, is “why?” Why are we largely unaware of these signals?

  One answer is that consciousness is simply too slow to manage the frenetic give-and-take of body language. When an enemy lunges in your direction, your body needs to react instantly; a delay of even a few hundred milliseconds might prove fatal.7 Consciousness is also too narrow. We can focus our spotlight attention on only a small handful of things at once. But in order to weave through a crowd, for example, our brains need to monitor dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of things simultaneously—a task only the unconscious can perform.

  But these are only partial answers. Even if we grant that consciousness isn’t capable of managing body language in real time, that doesn’t explain why consciousness remains largely in the dark. Our egos—Press Secretaries—could easily arrange to become better informed about what’s going on, even if only after the fact. Indeed, this is exactly what happens to those who study body language professionally, like actors and police interrogators. A more comprehensive answer, then, needs to explain why our conscious minds seem by default to ignore what our bodies are up to.

  Given what was discussed in Part I, the answer we provide in this chapter should come as no surprise: humans are strategically blind to body language because it often betrays our ugly, selfish, competitive motives. To acknowledge the signals sent by our bodies “feels dangerous to some people,” say Alex Pentland and Tracy Heibeck, “as if we were admitting that we are ruled by some base animal nature.”8 Well, so be it. We are ruled by an animal nature: human nature.

  Box 8: Signals versus Cues

  In biology, a signal is a behavior or trait used by one animal, the “sender,” to change the behavior of another animal, the “receiver.”9 Some signals are deceptive and used to manipulate the receiver, but most are honest, providing benefit to both senders and receivers.10 A peacock’s luxurious tail, for example, conveys information about the health and fitness of the male sender to one or more female receivers, and both parties benefit by using the signal to find mates.

  A cue is similar to a signal, in that it conveys information, except that it benefits only the receiver.11 In other words, a cue conveys information the sender might wish to conceal. Sometimes we refer to cues in the human realm as “tells”—like in the poker movie Rounders, when one character unconsciously twists open an Oreo whenever he has a winning hand. Other cues or tells can include sweaty palms (indicating nervousness), shortness of breath (indicating windedness from exertion), and pacifying behaviors such as rubbing one’s neck (indicating anxiety or discomfort).12

  Cues are important for many students of body language, especially those—like poker players or police interrogators—who are hoping to read minds and sniff out deception. In this chapter, however, we’re concerned with (honest) signals, that is, traits or behaviors that help both senders and receivers coordinate their actions.

  HONEST SIGNALS: WHY ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS

  “No, I can’t explain the dance to you. If I could say it, I wouldn’t have to dance it.”—Isadora Duncan13

  Body language differs from spoken language—words—in at least one crucial regard. In spoken language, the mapping between symbols and meanings is mostly arbitrary. Words have a fanciful, airy-fairy quality to them; they aren’t anchored to anything fundamental. The only reason we express gratitude by saying “thank you,” instead of “merci” or “arigatou” or “uggawuggawugga,” is because that’s the way our people have always done it.

  Body language, however, is mostly not arbitrary.14 Instead, nonverbal behaviors are meaningfully, functionally related to the messages they’re conveying. We show emotional excitement, for example, by being physically excited: making noise, waving our arms, dancing up and down.15 Or we show interest by widening our eyes and looking toward the thing we’re interested in, the better to take in visual information. Unlike words, which vary from language to language, most of these signals are shared across cultures.16 No society arbitrarily decides to convey interest by closing their eyes, for example, because the very meaning of interest implies a desire to pay attention and learn more.17 By the same principle, closing one’s eyes or looking away tends to convey some kind of aversion, like boredom or disgust.

  The point is, body “language” isn’t just a way to communicate. It’s also functional; it has material consequences. If we lunge aggressively toward another person, for instance, we better be prepared to fight. And owing to these consequences, body language is inherently more honest than verbal language. It’s easy to talk the talk, but harder to walk the walk.

  This is the principle of honest signaling, which we encountered in Chapter 2.18 Signals need to be expensive so they’re hard to fake. More precisely, they need to be differentially expensive—more difficult to fake than to produce by honest means.19

  Consider how male koalas use mating calls to attract females. Larger and healthier males are capable of making deeper, louder, and more frequent calls—both because large males have bigger body cavities, and because, relative to smaller and weaker males, they have less to fear from rivals and predators. In this way, loud and frequent mating calls are differentially expensive. They’re expensive to produce (even large, healthy males run the risk of being preyed upon), but they’re even more expensive for small and weak males. This helps guarantee their honesty, ensuring that females can use them as a reliable signal for choosing mates.

  Back in the human realm, we find honest signals underlying much of our body language. An open posture makes a person vulnerable, for example, which is more dangerous (i.e., costly) for people in tense situations than for people in calm situations. An open posture is therefore an honest signal of comfort. Similarly, it’s dangerous to hug someone when you feel threatened by them, ensuring that a hug remains an honest signal of trust and friendship.

  And so it’s this quality—honesty—that makes body language an ideal medium for coordinating some of our most important activities. It’s simply too easy, too tempting, to lie with words. So in matters of life, death, and finding mates, we’re often wise to shut up and let our bodies do the talking.

  Let’s now turn our attention to how we use (honest) body language to navigate the often treacherous waters of human social life. As we do, keep in mind that people may have differing levels of awareness in differen
t domains. What’s obvious to you might be revelatory to someone else, and vice versa. Books on “how to read body language” are popular precisely because we don’t all have perfect intuitive awareness of these things.

  SEX

  Considering that our ancestors were mating for millions of years before learning to speak, it’s no surprise we use body language to coordinate this crucial activity. Intercourse itself is mostly nonverbal, of course, but so are many of the events leading up to it: flirting, come-ons, playing coy, seduction (see Box 9).

  All cultures have norms encouraging sexual modesty. Both men and women are expected not to advertise their sexual intentions too prominently and to conduct their sexual activities in private.20 These norms are crucial to keeping the peace, especially in light of the powerful interests each of us has in the sexual activities of others—husbands and wives guarding their mates, ex-lovers jealous of new lovers, and parents trying to restrict the sexual activities of their teenage children. Nevertheless, we often find ourselves negotiating sex in places that aren’t as private as we might like, so we find ways to skirt the norm of modesty. We do this by flirting discreetly, dressing suggestively, and otherwise coordinating to run off for a more private rendezvous.21

  Imagine a stereotypical one-night stand: Alison and Ben meet for the first time at a bar and end up having sex with each other later that night. Let’s set aside the issue of what makes Ben attractive to Alison and vice versa. The question we’re interested in is this: Supposing they’re both attracted to each other, how do they convey their interest and coordinate to go home with each other? How do they move from strangers to lovers in just a few short hours?