Hidden Minds (28 page)

Clearly, the ability comprehensively to deceive others is a talent that can be readily exploited by a social animal; however, such exploitation is constantly associated with the risk of discovery-which, in turn, could prove very costly. To incur the anger of the group might result in expulsion – and as we have already established, in evolutionary terms, expulsion is a disastrous outcome for a social animal.

Were it possible to ensure a good performance, that is to say, were it possible to stem the flow of tell-tale signs that give the deceiver away, then deception would be a much more efficient method of optimising self-interest. But how might this be achieved? How is it possible to produce a genuine, heartfelt smile while plotting the demise of a potential rival? To do so, it would be necessary to conceal one’s real intentions, not only from others but from oneself.

The idea that evolution might have equipped social animals with just such a mechanism for self-deception was originally proposed by sociobiologists Richard Alexander and Robert Trivers in the 1970s,

In his foreword to Richard Dawkins’s book
The Selfish Gene
Trivers noted that if:

In other words, we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better. Evolution favours a really good liar.

In a social hierarchy, the individual is constantly protecting his or her position while simultaneously monitoring the environment for opportunities that might lead to advancement. If the group’s essential resources are limited, securing position and advantage might ultimately be a matter of life or death. In the ancestral environment — as in contemporary society – those at the bottom of the ladder suffer most during times of material hardship.

To optimise one’s chances of survival in a social group, a certain amount of scheming becomes absolutely necessary. For example, it would appear that human beings have an innate tendency to make themselves look good, but at the expense of others. Moreover, they perform this manoeuvre outside of awareness in order to preserve the esteem of their peers and avoid discovery.

In 1978 psychologists Ruben Cur and Harold Sackheim published an article titled ‘Self-deception: a concept in search of a phenomenon’. It contains details of a now famous experiment much cited by evolutionary psychologists, demonstrating how unconscious mechanisms mediate the relationship between self-esteem and self-deception.

When people hear a recording of their own voice they usually produce an elevated SCR. Because we are accustomed to hearing our own voices through a vibrating skull, most people find it quite difficult to establish ownership of a recorded presentation. Nevertheless, even when people are unable to identify their recorded voice, an elevated SCR shows that at some level, unconscious recognition has occurred.

If self-esteem is manipulated, for example by contriving repeated failure on a laboratory task, subjects are more likely to deny that a recorded voice is their own (even though they are still producing elevated SCRs); however, if self-esteem is raised (by contriving repeated success on a laboratory task), they are more likely to claim ownership of their own voice and, further, will claim ownership of voices belonging to other people. Once again, the unconscious seems to be cognisant of the real state of affairs, because the recorded voices of other people fail to produce elevated SCRs.

Reviewing this experiment, Trivers noted that human beings almost expand themselves when succeeding, but shrink themselves when failing. Success inflates the ego. We are happy to make ourselves more conspicuous when we are winning; when losing, we are inclined to lie low in the hope that our poor performance might more readily be overlooked. ‘Yet’, Trivers wrote: ‘we are largely unconscious of this process’. The way we try to play up our successes and play down our failures escapes conscious representation.

What implications do these ideas have for consciousness? Again, the importance of consciousness appears to be much reduced. In a social-evolutionary context, the role of consciousness is simply to execute some slick PR work, while the real business of the day is conducted elsewhere, namely, outside of awareness.

Robert Wright has summarised the position very succinctly in
The Moral Animai
(1994):

Once again, we hear a late reverberation that seems to owe its origin to Freud’s mighty ‘third blow’: consciousness has been very much overrated and our behaviour is determined largely by unconscious processes.

It should be noted that this view is not inconsistent with a prior assertion; namely, that evolutionary pressures encouraged the emergence of consciousness. Consciousness allows the organism to reflect on need states, cope with novelty, and plan ahead. Nevertheless, in a social context, such functions may be secondary to image management. In a social context, consciousness is little more than a mask.

Evolutionary theory – particularly in the guise of evolutionary psychology – has had an almost incalculable impact on the study of conscious and unconscious processes; however, Darwin’s ideas have had an even more profound effect on neuroscience. It was originally Herbart who suggested that ideas compete with each other for entry into awareness; however, this notion of Darwinian style competition has recently acquired considerable currency. For example, the neurophysiologist William H. Calvin and the biologist turned neuroscientist Francis Crick have both proposed theories of consciousness in which competition between nerve circuits is given central importance; however, the contemporary doyen of this approach is Gerald Edelman, whose general framework is tellingly described as
neural Darwinism.

Edelman has suggested that natural selection operates within the brain. Thus, sensations have to vie with each other for space on the brain’s mapping surfaces. Networks of cells are continuously competing with each other -with only a limited number of networks gaining sufficient territory to produce an event in consciousness. Thus, each moment of consciousness is a temporary resolution, punctuating a process of perpetual internecine struggle.

An attractive feature of Edelman’s theory is that it explains the structure of the brain and the emergence of consciousness using the same set of principles. Each moment of consciousness is an adaption to environmental demands, in the same way that the brain itself is an adaption to environmental demands. With respect to the former, demands operate over a time-course of milliseconds; with respect to the latter, demands have operated over a time-course of millennia. Thus, Edelman’s approach is truly unitary, suggesting evolutionary continuities between every fleeting moment of consciousness and the brain’s ancient history.

Darwinian processes – whether they unravel in a single moment or over a period of a million years – are blind and unconscious. This was a sticking point for many of Darwin’s critics. Complex structures such as the eye, the ear, or the brain appear to bear the hallmarks of design; however, they are in fact the result of natural selection and the random mutation of genes. Evolution is not guided by divine will.

In
The Blind Watchmaker
(1986), Darwin’s contemporary champion Richard Dawkins considers the work of the Victorian theologist William Paley, who famously argued for the existence of God by underscoring the seeming implausibility of naturally occurring complexity. Paley pointed out that if, while walking on a heath, one discovered a stone, it would not be absurd to conclude that it had laid there for all of time. On the other hand, if one found a watch – a thing of complexity – one would automatically assume that it had been made by someone. Because the living world is filled with a variety of organisms showing much greater complexity than mere watches, Paley asserted that we are more or less obliged to accept that they, too, were made by someone.

The Darwinian response to Paley is articulated by Dawkins with ruthless eloquence.

If Edelman is right, then the blind watchmaker is also at work in the brain. The same ‘blind, unconscious, automatic process’ that can produce marvels like a tiger or a whale can also produce the marvel of consciousness.

In later life, Alfred Kussel Wallace’s faith in evolutionary theory began to flag. Crucial to this change of heart was his consideration of human psychology. Wallace bad observed that people seem to be endowed with gifts that have no obvious use with respect to survival. For example, he noted that ‘savages’ could be taught to perform calculations and play western musical instruments. These skills were of no use to them in the jungle. So why were they there?

Perhaps, Wallace concluded, our psychology is divine. Natural selection shapes the body, and the brain, but not the human mind. In the human mind, we see a pale reflection of the mind of Cod. Although Wallace always maintained that mankind had physically evolved from animal ancestry, he settled on the belief that our higher powers have a supernatural provenance, in the 1860s, he turned to spiritualism.

Had Wallace fully understood the power of evolutionary principles, he might have been able to deduce their impact on human psychology and the development of the human mind. More importantly, he might have been in a position to deduce their impact on the mind of Charles Darwin. Finally, he would have appreciated why it was that when he came to write his own book on the subject of evolution, he titled it
Darwinism -
not
Wallacism.

I
n 1990, something unprecedented happened: the unconscious was put on trial in America.

Ray Belknap was eighteen and James Vance twenty. Two ordinary young men. Ordinary, that is, until 23 December 1985. Together, they listened to some rock music, had a few drinks, smoked some marijuana, and then – for no apparent reason – put shotguns to their own heads. Raymond Belknap was fatally wounded but James Vance survived. He was, however, grossly disfigured and lived for only a few more years. He died in 1988 following a medication overdose.

Why did Ray and James decide to shoot themselves? They might have been typical examples of a disaffected generation, but nothing in their behaviour had signalled a potential suicide risk. How could such a thing happen?

The families of Ray and James began to search for clues. Their search ended among a pile of CDs, where they discovered the 1978 album
Stained Class
by the British rock band Judas Priest – a favourite of Ray and James. It transpired that Judas Priest had placed subliminal messages on
Stained Class,
promoting satanism and kindling suicidal intent. A civil action followed in which the families of Ray and James sought more than $6 million in damages. They argued that listening to
Stained Class
had caused the boys to make a bizarre suicide pact.

The case of Ray and James was so intriguing that the director David Van Taylor chose to make a film about it – the award-winning
Dream Deceivers: The Story behind James Vance vs. Judas Priest.
Moreover, this unique case posed some extraordinary (and disturbing) questions which touched upon matters well beyond the ambit of civil law.

Is it possible to kill someone by enlisting the support of their unconscious? Can the unconscious aid and abet murder? What are the most effective methods of persuading the unconscious to act against the conscious mind? Could subliminal messages replace the assassin’s bullet?

Such questions seem more appropriate to the plot of a fictional thriller; yet the case of
Vance v. Judas Priest
succeeded in raising these and similar questions ¡n the context of serious scientific debate. Within a few years a special edition of the journal
American Psychologist
was attempting to specify the limits of unconscious influence in a series of invited essays; the first of these-written by psychologists Elizabeth Loftus and Mark Klinger, made particular reference to issues raised during the trial. So what was the verdict?

The judge presiding over
Vance v. Judas Priest
accepted the existence of subliminal messages, but he did not believe that the plaintiffs had produced ‘credible scientific evidence’ favouring their plea. Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead was not convinced that words instructing listeners to ‘do it’ could be interpreted by an unconscious region ofthe mind. Nor was he convinced that such a region could override consciousness. As such, in the eyes of the law, the unconscious is not endowed with sufficient intelligence or influence to precipitate a suicide attempt. In the eyes of the law, the unconscious is relatively stupid – unable to take a hint or respond to the simplest form of instruction. Be that as it may, not everyone agreed then, or agrees now, with these findings.

An altogether different view of the unconscious was taken by Democrats during one ofthe less creditable episodes of the Gore versus Bush US election campaign in 2000. During a Republican Party television commercial the word ‘rats’ appeared for one-thirtieth of a second during a sequence in which fragments of the word ‘bureaucrats’ flickered on and off the screen. The word rats appeared in a larger script, but this could only be detected on careful viewing.