The Elephant in the Brain_Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

by Robin Hanson

  What’s more important in the space we have left, however, is thinking about what to do with all these explanations. How can we use an awareness of the elephant to live better lives, both as individuals and as a society?

  Your two coauthors have spent a lot of time thinking about this question, but we certainly don’t have all the answers. In fact, we struggle—both personally and intellectually—with many of the issues raised in this book. The facets of human nature we’ve tried to illuminate here are complex, full of moral gray areas, and open to many interpretations. In what follows, we’ll attempt to sketch out some of the implications of our thesis, but we do so with considerable humility. As we’ve mentioned, we’re hardly the first thinkers to grapple with these questions, and if the answers were clear and easy, our species would have already put them into practice.

  The biggest lesson from Part I is that we ignore the elephant because doing so is strategic. Self-deception allows us to act selfishly without having to appear quite so selfish in front of others. If we admit to harboring hidden motives, then, we risk looking bad, thereby losing trust in the eyes of others. And even when we simply acknowledge the elephant to ourselves, in private, we burden our brains with self-consciousness and the knowledge of our own hypocrisy. These are real downsides, not to be shrugged off.

  That said, there are benefits to cultivating an awareness of our species’ darker motives. Let’s look at some of them now.

  PUTTING THE ELEPHANT TO USE

  Better Situational Awareness

  The first benefit is situational awareness—a better, deeper understanding of the human social world. It’s easy to buy into the stories other people would sell us about their motives, but like the patter of a magician, these stories are often misleading. “I’m doing this for your benefit,” says every teacher, preacher, politician, boss, and parent. Even friends do it, for example, when they give smug “helpful” advice. The prosocial explanations offered for these behaviors may contain partial truths, but what’s left unstated is often just as important (if not more so), and it helps to know what to look for.

  When other people’s body language makes us uneasy, in some sense, it may be intended to do so, even if they don’t realize or acknowledge it.1 When meetings at work seem like an unnecessary waste of time, such waste may in fact be the point; costly rituals can serve to keep a team cohesive or help anxious leaders cement control over their subordinates. And if we want to waste less time on such activities, we’ll need to address the root of the problem, or else find other ways to fulfill the same functions.

  The next time we’re worried that we can’t afford the best medicine, we may find comfort in the idea that it’s not necessarily our health that’s at stake, but maybe just our self- and social images. The next time we feel manipulated by an advertisement, sermon, or political campaign, we should remember the third-person effect: messages are often targeted at us by way of our peers. We may still choose to go along with the message, but at least we’ll know why. The next time someone at a party exhorts us to visit some great museum or exotic travel destination, it helps to consider that such advice may not actually be for our benefit, even if it’s presented that way. We shouldn’t let other people make us feel inferior—at least, not without our consent.

  Physician, Heal Thyself

  Yes, it’s useful to understand the motives of others. But if that’s all readers take away from this book, they’re missing the much larger and more important point: we often misunderstand our own motives. We have a gaping blind spot at the very center of our introspective vision. If we’re going to second-guess our coworkers and friends, we shouldn’t give ourselves an easy pass. In fact, knowing about our own blind spots should make us even more careful when pointing fingers at others. After all, many of our perceptions are colored by self-interest, including our perceptions of what other people are up to. So let’s set aside the speck in their eyes, and attend to the log in our own.

  If you felt any pangs of indignation or self-righteousness while reading about other people’s behavior in this book, try hard to un-feel them. That boss who calls “unnecessary” meetings might well be you (though of course you won’t see them as unnecessary). That friend offering smug advice? That’s you too. This kind of self-knowledge is the small gift that Robert Burns pined for in his poem “To a Louse”: to see ourselves as others see us.

  The next time you butt heads with a coworker or fight with your spouse, keep in mind that both sides are self-deceived, at least a little bit. What feels, to each of you, overwhelmingly “right” and undeniably “true” is often suspiciously self-serving, and if nothing else, it can be useful to take a step back and reflect on your brain’s willingness to distort things for your benefit. There’s common ground in almost every conflict, though it may take a little digging to unearth it beneath all the bullshit.

  Above all, what the elephant teaches us is humility. It’s a call for more thoughtful interactions with our fellow self-deceivers, a spur to step outside our own conniving minds. There’s a second side to every story, if only we can quiet our egos enough to hear it (see Box 17).

  Box 17: No Direct Accusations

  A good rule of thumb for applying “hidden motive” explanations is not to use them in the second person, but only in first and third (and ideally in the plural).2 In other words, we should avoid accusing the specific person or people across from us of harboring selfish motives. Such an accusation would not only be rude, it would also be tenuous. People are complex, and we can never know all that’s going on in another’s mind or life. To admit the ubiquity of selfish motives is not to deny the existence of lofty motives; both can (and do) coexist within the same person.

  In general, the kind of explanations we’ve advanced in this book are more compelling at the species level, as distal explanations for overall patterns of human behavior. When applied to individuals, as proximal psychological causes of specific behaviors, the same explanations are often hollow and unpersuasive.

  Showing Off

  While it may not suit everyone, an ability to talk candidly about common human motives can signal some attractive qualities. People who are able to acknowledge uncomfortable truths and discuss them dispassionately can show a combination of honesty, intellectual ability, and perhaps even courage (or at least a thick skin). And those who can do so tactfully, without seeming to brag, accuse, or complain, may seem especially impressive. Not every community values these qualities to the same degree; in particular, many communities prioritize a commitment to orthodox views over impartial truth-seeking. Nevertheless, some readers may find themselves rewarded for acknowledging hidden human motives.

  Choosing to Behave Better

  Another benefit to confronting our hidden motives is that, if we choose, we can take steps to mitigate or counteract them. For example, if we notice that our charitable giving is motivated by the desire to look good and that this leads us to donate to less-helpful (but more-visible) causes, we can deliberately decide to subvert our now-not-so-hidden agenda.

  Of course, we should realize that, at any one time, we have a limited budget for self-improvement. Some of us might be tempted to swear off hypocrisy all at once, and vow always to act on the ideals we most admire. But this would usually go badly. In all likelihood, our mind’s Press Secretary issued this “zero hypocrisy” edict without sufficient buy-in and support from the rest of our mental organization. Better to start with just one area, like charity, and try to adjust our mixture of motives there in ways that we can sustain. Once that first area is stable, then we can lather, rinse, and repeat for other areas.

  Another promising strategy is to put ourselves in situations where our hidden motives better align with our ideal motives. For example, if we want to express sincere yet accurate beliefs, we might get into the habit of betting on our beliefs. Or, for charity, we might join the effective altruism movement, in order to surround ourselves with people who will judge our charitable giving more by its effects tha
n by superficial appearances. Incentives are like the wind: we can choose to row or tack against it, but it’s better if we can arrange to have the wind at our backs (see Box 18.).

  Please note, however, that other people may care much less about our motives and more about the consequences of our actions. Yes, we might really work hard to become a great scientist or surgeon for personal glory (rather than for the greater good), but if a selfish motive is what it takes to create a great scientist or surgeon, the rest of the world may be OK with that.

  Box 18: Kevin’s Alignment of Motives

  I’ve been lucky enough in my professional life to experience both circumstances: having the wind at my back and struggling to tack against it.

  In my previous role as an engineering manager, I felt remarkably little tension between my selfish and prosocial motives. I can count on one hand the number of times I felt tempted to prioritize personal gain over doing what was best for the team—not because I’m a saint, but because the corporate culture was healthy enough to reward me for doing the right thing. I acknowledge I’m probably a bit self-deceived here and fail to remember many situations where my motives were divergent. But on the whole, the wind was at my back, and I felt highly motivated and fulfilled.

  While writing this book, however, I had the opposite experience. As mentioned in Chapter 9, this book is more of a “vanity project” than something I’m doing because I expect it will be useful to others. Certainly some readers will find value in it, but it’s unlikely to be valuable enough to justify the opportunity cost of taking on other projects. Partly as a result, I often found myself reluctant to talk about the book, even among friends and family. The tension between my selfish and prosocial motives was acutely painful.

  Enlightened Self-Interest

  While some readers will take the elephant as a challenge to behave better, others may be tempted to throw up their hands. If it’s in our nature to be selfish, why beat ourselves up over it? Why bother striving for higher ideals?

  There’s some evidence to suggest that our standards and our behavior can indeed degrade in this way, as the economist Robert Frank has argued. In one study, undergrads reported a greater willingness to act dishonestly after taking an economics course that emphasized self-interest as a model for human behavior. (This effect was stronger than for students who took other courses, such as an astronomy course, or even the same economics course when taught by a professor who didn’t emphasize self-interest.3) More generally, people who are “cynical,” that is, who attribute lower motives to others, tend to cooperate less.4 Are we doing the world a disservice, then, by calling attention to the elephant and by describing it as “normal” and “natural”?

  Perhaps. Certainly we admit that teaching students about the elephant may have the direct effect of inducing selfishness. But this won’t necessarily be the only effect in a community that takes the ideas in this book seriously. Such a community may learn to enforce better norms against selfishness, for example, by being less willing to accept the shallow appearances of prosocial motives. There’s a whole complex game to be worked out here, well beyond the scope of this final chapter.

  In any case, we need to be careful to avoid the naturalistic fallacy—the mistaken idea that what’s natural (like some amount of human selfishness) is therefore good. So let us be clear: this book is not an excuse to behave badly. We can acknowledge our selfish motives without endorsing or glorifying them; we need not make virtues of our vices.

  At the same time, however, it would be a mistake to conclude that virtue requires us to somehow “rise above” our biological impulses. Humans are living creatures through and through; we can’t transcend our biology any more than we can transcend the laws of physics. So if we define virtue as something that arises from nonbiological causes, we set a literally impossible standard. If we want to improve ourselves, it must somehow be through our biological heritage.

  By the same token, we can’t ignore incentives—for example, by telling people that “good behavior” requires them to abandon their self-interest. The more sacrifice and suffering we demand in the name of virtue, the less rewarding it will be—and taken to an extreme, it means that “bad” people will fare better than “good” ones in our society.

  Where does this leave us, then? By what path can we hope to improve our collective welfare?

  Enter here the philosophy of “enlightened self-interest.” This is the notion that we can do well for ourselves by doing good for others. It’s the philosophy described by Alexis de Tocqueville, preached by Adam Smith, and practiced by Benjamin Franklin.5 In the biological literature, it’s known as “indirect reciprocity” or “competitive altruism.”6 Remember the Arabian babblers we met in Chapter 1? Each bird works its tail feathers off to provide food and protection for the group, not from the goodness of its heart but largely out of self-interest. And so too in our species.

  In light of this, we absolutely need ideals—not just as personal goals to strive for, but also as yardsticks by which to judge others and to let ourselves be judged in return. There’s real value to be had in promising to behave well (and in staking our reputation on that promise), in large part because it makes us more attractive as an ally. Such a pledge can’t guarantee our good behavior, of course. We may still cut corners here and there, or cheat when no one’s looking. But it nevertheless incentivizes us to behave better than if we refused to be held to any standard.

  And yes, if we profess high ideals but then fail to live up to them, that may make us hypocrites. But the alternative—having no ideals—seems worse. “Hypocrisy,” writes La Rochefoucauld, “is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” In other words, it’s taxing to be a hypocrite, but that very tax is a key disincentive to bad behavior.7

  Designing Institutions

  Beyond what we can do in our personal lives, however, is what we can do when we’re in positions to influence policy or help reform institutions. This is where an understanding of the elephant really starts to pay off. Maybe most laypeople don’t need to understand their hidden motives, but those who make policy probably should.

  A common problem plagues people who try to design institutions without accounting for hidden motives. First they identify the key goals that the institution “should” achieve. Then they search for a design that best achieves these goals, given all the constraints that the institution must deal with. This task can be challenging enough, but even when the designers apparently succeed, they’re frequently puzzled and frustrated when others show little interest in adopting their solution. Often this is because they mistook professed motives for real motives, and thus solved the wrong problems.

  Savvy institution designers must therefore identify both the surface goals to which people give lip service and the hidden goals that people are also trying to achieve. Designers can then search for arrangements that actually achieve the deeper goals while also serving the surface goals—or at least giving the appearance of doing so. Unsurprisingly, this is a much harder design problem. But if we can learn to do it well, our solutions will less often meet the fate of puzzling disinterest.

  We should take a similar approach when reforming a preexisting institution by first asking ourselves, “What are this institution’s hidden functions, and how important are they?” Take education, for example. We may wish for schools that focus more on teaching than on testing. And yet, some amount of testing is vital to the economy, since employers need to know which workers to hire. So if we tried to cut too much from school’s testing function, we could be blindsided by resistance we don’t understand—because those who resist may not tell us the real reasons for their opposition. It’s only by understanding where the resistance is coming from that we have any hope of overcoming it.

  Not all hidden institutional functions are worth facilitating, however. Some involve quite wasteful signaling expenditures, and we might be better off if these institutions performed only their official, stated functions. Take medicine, for example. To
the extent that we use medical spending to show how much we care (and are cared for), there are very few positive externalities. The caring function is mostly competitive and zero-sum, and—perhaps surprisingly—we could therefore improve collective welfare by taxing extraneous medical spending, or at least refusing to subsidize it. Don’t expect any politician to start pushing for healthcare taxes or cutbacks, of course, because for lawmakers, as for laypeople, the caring signals are what makes medicine so attractive. These kinds of hidden incentives, alongside traditional vested interests, are what often make large institutions so hard to reform.

  Thus there’s an element of hubris in any reform effort, but at least by taking accurate stock of an institution’s purposes, both overt and covert, we can hope to avoid common mistakes. “The curious task of economics,” wrote Friedrich Hayek, “is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”8 In this regard, our approach falls squarely in an economic tradition.

  One promising approach to institutional reform is to try to acknowledge people’s need to show off, but to divert their efforts away from wasteful activities and toward those with bigger benefits and positive externalities. For example, as long as students must show off by learning something at school, we’d rather they learned something useful (like how to handle personal finances) instead of something less useful (like Latin). As long as scholars have a need to impress people with their expertise on some topic, engineering is a more practical domain than the history of poetry. And scholars who show off via intellectual innovation seem more useful than scholars who show off via their command of some static intellectual tradition.