The Invention of Lying

We watched the movie The Invention of Lying this week. It's full of evolutionary psychology themes! And hilarious. It's my new favorite movie. It showed the importance of deception in mate choice, religion, and also in just helping social interaction run more smoothly--something I think about a lot because I have been accused of being "honest to a fault."

In the movie, it has never occurred to anyone in the history of humankind to tell a lie. There also isn't any fiction or story-telling in the society. Then one day a guy discovers he can lie.

When you think about it, to be able to lie is to have a theory of mind, right? You are able to see that another person has their own viewpoint separate from yours, and that if you misrepresent the truth, they won't know because they don't know what's going on in your head. And I think humans might be the only ones who can do this. Although maybe that's not true--there is deception in biology all the time--a bird pretending to be wounded to lure a predator away from its nest might be the classic example. Or, getting beyond behavior to traits themselves, the coloring of a butterfly trying to pass as a monarch. Or weeds that resemble domesticated crops growing among the crop plants, and getting harvested and dispersed by man as he harvests the crop. I think Johnsongrass does this on farms all the time, imitating the corn crop. There must be tons of examples in nature, especially in genetics.

I wonder, though, if purposefully saying something untrue is still another step. Anyway, it makes for an amusing plot.