So many people consider evolution to just be a theory but if the evidence is analyzed, it can be seen that it is a fact. The study of evolution has opened up many secrets to the researchers and has proven that the human brain has evolved to incorporate programs that help human beings adapt to the environment and the ever-changing times. One of the evolutionary programs is the cheater detection mechanism; the mechanism allows the mind to detect cheaters that one might encounter in social exchange. Read about personality disorders.
Social exchange is a situation where two beings interact in a social setting and there is an exchange that involves cost or risk for any/both parties. Examples of said social exchange can be people trading favors, buying things from each other, or even exchanging favors. Most social exchanges are done with the spirit of providing some level and kind of benefit to the other person. At the end of the exchange, both parties are in a better position than they would have been having they not engaged with each other at all.
What evidence is there that the cheater detection mechanism exists? Most people indeed seem to be able to tell when a person is lying in social interaction but is there any proof of it? To prove that people can tell when a person is not following the simple rule of social exchange “you scratch my back, I will scratch yours”, scientists dug deep to look at the human mind. In an experiment on a man with a compromised brain (especially the part that did social and emotional processing), they found that he did not perform well when it came to reviewing social exchange rules and scenarios.
Another evidence in this arena would be that this mechanism is not limited to the people of the modern and urban societies, it is completely universal. Research done on the traditional people of Amazonian villages in Ecuador presented that people living in that part of the world were apt at all kinds of social exchange tasks. The researcher Cosmides said, “They were just as good as detecting cheating as highly educated students in the developed world,” and “people have developed an evolutionary strategy for determining when somebody has violated a tit-for-tat agreement. It appears to be buffered against cultural variation.”
The other researcher Tooby marveled, “What is quite amazing about their performance on cheater detection is that it flies in the face of all ordinary ideas about learning a higher-level cognitive skill. People are just as good at utterly unfamiliar rules as they are with rules that are personally and culturally highly familiar.”
In an interview on the show called Say it All with Iffat Omar, the famous actor Noman Ejaz admitted to cheating on his wife in an extramarital affair. He confidently boasted, “I am such an intelligent man and actor that my wife never finds out. The husbands of the women don’t find out either.” If we were to go on his statement, he was able to elude his wife’s cheater detection mechanism because of his extraordinary acting skills which is quite a claim and spark one’s curiosity about this remarkable evolutionary mechanism.
According to research, most humans have this mechanism working well, and all the time but there is a population that is not able to detect cheaters. Why is that so? According to studies and experiments are done, it has been proven that most people were able to detect cheaters based mostly on facial cues. It means that when a person is cheating, they have particular facial expressions that can give them away. But some people who are not able to recognize or grasp those facial cues and fall victim to cheating. This can be a possible explanation for the victims that are unable to detect cheating spouses, customers that steal, students that cheat in academic examinations, and much more.
If one is to survey the political history of Pakistan, it could be safely said that the country has had bad luck when it comes to political leaders as most of them have done nothing but damage the nation. The public seems to know that almost every single political leader is detrimental to them as their cheater detection mechanism works but they do not have any choice. Even in the elections of 2018, the public voted but everyone knew from the beginning that the elections were rigged by the army. Despite being able to use the evolutionary mechanism of cheater detection, the hands of the Pakistani citizens are tied so tight that they cannot turn around the system.
The mechanism has lasted for so long and evolved because there is a great deal of usage for it in everyday life. When a person gets cheated on, they suffer loss; the intensity and kind vary depending on the circumstances. Moreover, there is a possibility that the victim might retain some sort of emotional damage as a result of cheating like in relationships, etc. Owing to the evolution of the cheater detection mechanism, people can pick out cheaters and avoid falling prey. According to research, many people even remember cheaters. This means that the mechanism prepares and defends them against future possible scenarios in which they might encounter those cheaters again.
Talking about the importance of the mechanism, Nigel Nicholson, an evolutionary psychologist, and director of the Centre for Organisational Research the London Business School said, “It’s essential we have trusting relationships with people in communities where we are highly interdependent for survival and reproduction. Cheat detection is very important,”
Evolution cannot be denied as the evidence and benefits of it are overwhelmingly clear. It will be prudent to say that beneficial and healthy social exchanges would not be able to take place if it were not for the cheater detection mechanism.
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