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Authors: Robert Trivers
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the nest. Birds have a variety of other acts they conduct when their nest is threatened. Crakes, ground-nesting birds, will mimic rats scurrying away from their nest, their backs slightly hunched, with both wings partly open and drooping to mimic a fat rat scurrying away in the wide open—an easy prey that looks tasty to various mammals and birds, but one that can suddenly take to the air when attacked. At other times, among reeds, the crake will drop like a stone into the water, creating a big splash, and then move loudly through the reeds, much like a frog staying at the surface. What is noteworthy is that the crake calls attention to itself while acting as if it is not. It must not be such a good rat or frog that it remains undetected, yet it must act like a target trying to avoid detection. Thus, movements are outwardly furtive but louder than usual.
RANDOMNESS AS A STRATEGY
We use patterns to detect deception, and randomness is the absence of pattern. It is often not appreciated how valuable randomness is as part of a deceptive strategy designed to avoid detection. Consider a couple of examples. Fake butterfly eggs are actually plant structures evolved to prevent butterflies from laying their eggs—since butterflies avoid laying eggs where they see some have already been laid. The fake eggs appear at random on the surface of the plant’s leaves. Yet in closely related species, where the plant structures serve their original function, they are symmetrically located on each side of the leaf. Thus, natural selection created the randomness, presumably since butterflies had evolved to treat symmetrical patterns of eggs as if they were not really eggs (as indeed they are not). An ongoing struggle for randomness occurs in a pronghorn antelope. The pronghorn mother leaving her offspring hidden between nursings while she eats initially orients herself away from her offspring, then for much of the time she faces in random directions. Finally, only just before returning to nurse does the mother reveal the offspring’s position by facing it.
Now consider a human example. In the old days, when customs officers routinely searched most bags in the owner’s presence, a tried-and-true method to detect smuggling was to poke around randomly while watching the owner out of the corner of their eye. Whenever the owner became agitated or showed undue attention, the customs officer eliminated the rest of the bag and concentrated on the suspicious section. Again, by poking around (and paying close attention), the officer allowed the owner to guide him or her to the problem, presumably something illegal. Note that lack of preparation for this eventuality—being caught—only heightens one’s anxiety and inadvertent information leakage.
For years, I have been well aware of the importance of information limitation. I have not used it with customs officials, but if a police officer is searching the trunk of my car, I simply turn my back. The officer may think I have something to hide, but he or she will learn nothing from me about where it is, if indeed there is something. Of course, when being watched for other purposes, we may also busy ourselves with semi-random behavior to hide the truth.
Once, when trying to get readmitted to Harvard after a medical leave, I had to take the famous “What do you see in this inkblot?” (Rorschach) test. I had learned that results were graded based on whether you saw a picture or told a story, whether it was in color, whether the story was coherent, and so on, but I had forgotten what the “appropriate” answers were supposed to look like to signify “normal,” so I simply randomized my responses, figuring absence of a pattern was my best hope. Sometimes they got a story, sometimes a snapshot, sometimes in color, and so on. At least I did not appear to be rigid or compulsive. I was readmitted.
It may, indeed, be that a certain degree of randomness is built into the very core of our behavior.
RANDOMNESS AS A STRATEGY
We use patterns to detect deception, and randomness is the absence of pattern. It is often not appreciated how valuable randomness is as part of a deceptive strategy designed to avoid detection. Consider a couple of examples. Fake butterfly eggs are actually plant structures evolved to prevent butterflies from laying their eggs—since butterflies avoid laying eggs where they see some have already been laid. The fake eggs appear at random on the surface of the plant’s leaves. Yet in closely related species, where the plant structures serve their original function, they are symmetrically located on each side of the leaf. Thus, natural selection created the randomness, presumably since butterflies had evolved to treat symmetrical patterns of eggs as if they were not really eggs (as indeed they are not). An ongoing struggle for randomness occurs in a pronghorn antelope. The pronghorn mother leaving her offspring hidden between nursings while she eats initially orients herself away from her offspring, then for much of the time she faces in random directions. Finally, only just before returning to nurse does the mother reveal the offspring’s position by facing it.
Now consider a human example. In the old days, when customs officers routinely searched most bags in the owner’s presence, a tried-and-true method to detect smuggling was to poke around randomly while watching the owner out of the corner of their eye. Whenever the owner became agitated or showed undue attention, the customs officer eliminated the rest of the bag and concentrated on the suspicious section. Again, by poking around (and paying close attention), the officer allowed the owner to guide him or her to the problem, presumably something illegal. Note that lack of preparation for this eventuality—being caught—only heightens one’s anxiety and inadvertent information leakage.
For years, I have been well aware of the importance of information limitation. I have not used it with customs officials, but if a police officer is searching the trunk of my car, I simply turn my back. The officer may think I have something to hide, but he or she will learn nothing from me about where it is, if indeed there is something. Of course, when being watched for other purposes, we may also busy ourselves with semi-random behavior to hide the truth.
Once, when trying to get readmitted to Harvard after a medical leave, I had to take the famous “What do you see in this inkblot?” (Rorschach) test. I had learned that results were graded based on whether you saw a picture or told a story, whether it was in color, whether the story was coherent, and so on, but I had forgotten what the “appropriate” answers were supposed to look like to signify “normal,” so I simply randomized my responses, figuring absence of a pattern was my best hope. Sometimes they got a story, sometimes a snapshot, sometimes in color, and so on. At least I did not appear to be rigid or compulsive. I was readmitted.
It may, indeed, be that a certain degree of randomness is built into the very core of our behavior.
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