Dr. David DeSteno

To basically be able to reproduce and pass on our genetic material.

Because we're a social species—

We need to cooperate with each other.

And therefore, most of the time, when people can see what we're doing, we're gonna try and be good because we don't want a reputation for being a bad person.

No one's gonna cooperate with us.

But if you're in a situation where you can have your cake and eat it too,

That's adaptive.

You're going to take it.

And so as an example, we do studies on cheating in my lab.

And we have the situation where people come to the lab and we say, okay, look, there's two tasks that need to be done.

One is short and fun, takes about 10 minutes.

One is long and onerous, takes about 45.

You are in the role of decider.

You can pick which one of these you want to do.

Most people think the fairest way to do it is to flip a coin because whichever one you don't do, the person behind you is going to get stuck doing.

And everybody says, yeah, that makes sense.

And so we give them a little device that's a computerized coin flipper so they can hit the button and it comes up heads or tails.

The reason we do that is so we can control which side comes up.

Heads, you get the fun task.

Tails, you get the bad task.