To Cheat Is Human—But There's Something We Can Do About It

From manipulative language to the art of self-deception, a social scientist uncovers the ancient origins of modern exploitation—and how we might outsmart our own worst instincts.

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Did humans evolve to cooperate or compete? There’s likely not a simple answer, and perhaps the more interesting story lies in how we learned to compete with one another by cooperating, or at least by pretending to.

In his new book Invisible Rivals: How We Evolved to Compete in a Cooperative World, Jonathan Goodman argues that human nature is a complex blend of instincts for cooperation and competition, and how those instincts are still playing out today. From political deception to crumbling public trust, he says we’re still being shaped by the same forces that governed our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Jonathan is a social scientist at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Sanger Institute and here he is to share his big ideas.

1. Saying that humans evolved to cooperate or compete is wrong.

A lot of writing about human nature defends one of two extremes: Basically, either we are a cooperative, altruistic species, or we are a competitive and selfish one. Both are wrong. Humans have the capacity to help and hurt each other, and what matters is the context in which these features manifest themselves.

We’re the most dynamic species in the world, and it’s our dynamism that makes us capable of both great and terrible things. If we accept the view that humans are fundamentally cooperative, we risk trusting blindly. If we believe everyone is selfish, we won’t trust anyone. We need to be realistic about human nature. We’re a bit of both, so we need to learn how to place our trust discerningly.

2. Our evolutionary story says a lot about who we have become.

Some academics argue that ancient humans used language to work together to overthrow and eject “brutish dominants”—alphas that ruled social groups with violence and aggression. The opposing view claims that this never happened and that humans are inherently selfish and tribal. Again, this is a false dichotomy.

What happened, instead, is that we selected for the people who navigate social groups effectively. It’s likely true that throughout human history, we have tried to rid our social groups of free-riders, people who take from others without giving anything back. But instead of eliminating free-riders, evolution has just made them better at hiding their deception.

“If a system can be exploited, it will be.”

Humans have evolved to use language to disguise selfish acts and exploit our cooperative systems. This is who I call invisible rivals: people who hide their self-interest best, perhaps even from themselves. If a system can be exploited, it will be, and exploitation of our social and political systems is something we need to learn to expect.

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3. We can learn from our ancestors about promoting the better parts of our natures.

Humans evolved in small groups. Over many generations, we managed to design social norms to govern the distribution of food, water, and other vital resources. People vied for power, but social norms helped to maintain a trend toward equality, balancing out our more selfish dispositions. Nevertheless, the free-rider problem persisted, and language let us get better at hiding our cheating.

Our distant ancestors benefited from risk-pooling systems, whereby all group members contributed labor and shared resources, but this only worked because it was difficult to hide tangible assets, such as tools and food. While some hunter-gatherer societies continue to rely on these systems, they are ineffective in most modern societies in our globalized economy.

Today, most of us rely largely on intangible assets for monetary exchange. People can easily hide resources, misrepresent their means, and invalidate the effectiveness of social norms around risk pooling.

4. We need to expose people who exploit human cooperation for personal gain.

We see the subversion of our norms across the world, as evidenced by the rise of the Julius Caesar of our time—Donald Trump—but it is a situation that evolution has predicted since the origins of life and later, language, and which will only change form again even if the current crises are overcome.

As much as we have evolved to use language effectively to work together and overthrow those brutish and nasty dominants that pervaded ancient society, the most dangerous people among us today use language to create opportunities that benefit themselves. They use language to keep their plans invisible. Humans, more than other known organisms, can cooperate until we imagine a way to compete, exploit, or coerce, and almost always rely on language to do so.

“We can’t prevent people from trying to mislead us and exploit language for their own benefit.”

Think about how politicians in the Republican Party claim “not to know” anything about their policies, whether it’s about the deportation of immigrants or the functioning of the Department of Health & Human Services. This tracks, as the Atlantic journalist David A. Graham writes, with the “Know Nothing” party of the mid-19th century. When asked about their extreme anti-immigrant views, all members were compelled to say, “I know nothing.” This is how language can be used to mislead, just as disinformation from state actors (like Russia) misleads us about news across the world.

We can’t prevent people from trying to mislead us and exploit language for their own benefit. We can’t prevent free-riding behavior in everything, from benefits cheating and tax evasion, to countries dodging action on climate change, and the actions of business leaders and politicians. It’s part of our nature. But if we accept that we all have this ancient flaw, this ability to deceive ourselves and others, we can design policies around that and change our societies for the better.

5. We can take action through self-knowledge, education, and policy.

Contrary to some popular belief, we do reward liars from a young age. This reinforces bad behavior into adulthood. People tell children that cheaters don’t prosper, but cheats who don’t get caught can do very well for themselves. Evolutionarily speaking, appearing trustworthy but being selfish can be more beneficial to the individual. We need to recognize this and make a moral choice about whether we try to use people or work with them.

We need to arm ourselves intellectually with the power to tell who is credible and who is not. Our most important tool for doing this is education. We must teach people to think ethically for themselves and give them the tools to do so.

Exposing free-riders is more beneficial than punishment. Loss of social capital through reputation is an important motivator. Journalistic work exposing exploitation can be as effective at driving behavior changes at the individual, group, and political levels as criminal punishment. The dilemma each of us faces is whether to confront invisible rivalry or to let exploiters undermine society until democracy in the free world unravels—and the freedom of dissent is gone.