The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

These notes are old and were written while reading — they don’t necessarily reflect my current views.

The freudian school thinks that self-deception is an internal safety mechanism. Hanson argues that its actually an advantageous phenomenon for human interaction.

Why do we laugh?

They argue that often advertising works indirectly. We think of our selfs as not swayed by advertising but think that others are. Hence we think that others associate a product with the advertised message and therefore buy it to please them.

Art: We are not searching beauty, but status. We prefer the ashes of the Mona Lisa to a perfect replica. We advertise our value by doing and buying art. Further, we show off that we are aware of the social norms for art. We are ashamed to like art that is considered bad. The art trends like photo-realism were popular in a time where this was difficult to do. We value the work in the art not the piece itself.

Charity: We do not give to the most effective charities but to the most visible ones. This is to further promote us as an ally or lover.

Religion: Religion is signaling. By openly wearing symbols of a religious group we show that we know their social norms and that we are under the punishment of the whole community if we diviate from them. Further there is costly signaling associated with religion. Making barriers to entry hard to fake is important. The believe in a god is one such thing. The most effective way to fake it is to actually do it. People deceive them selfs into believing in a religion. Furthermore, religion is important for coordination of social norms. Just like in the advertising example above, its not only important that you know the norms but also that you know that others know them and that they know, you know them.

Politics: Also a large signaling function of teams competing against each other.

Concluding call for competition: