Evolution of lies

Have you never told a lie? If you say answer “No.”, you are telling a lie. There is no one who has not told a lie. On the contrary, we tell various kind of lies when we work in society. If we don’t do that, we would be incessantly involved in futile quarrel.Telling lies is ordinary behavior but it is hard to understand the mechanism.
So Kanazawa, a Japanese psychologist, categorized lies. He said that there was hierarchy of levels in this form.

Lv0	Mimicry and deposit which does not intend to do
Lv1	Lies with physical casual relationship
Lv2	Lies with someone guess others mind
Lv3	Lies with someone guess others thinking of someone’s situation

Figure.1 A hierarchy of levels in lies

A lot of animals use mechanism of mimicry in order to survive from enemies. When Chameleons capture flies, it changes its color of skin into the same of backgrounds. Another good example is the behavior of common cuckoos. Common cuckoos do not make their nest. They lay eggs in the nest of other species of birds, such as Meadow Bunting. This behavior is called deposit. If a baby common cuckoo is born earlier than the other babies, the bird will pick the other eggs and kill them. These forms, such as mimicry and deposit, are the lowest levels of lies in the respect of involuntary (Lv0).
Skinner, B. F.(1904-1990) American psychologist, explained the next hierarchy. Some animals can be controlled by rewards and punishments. For instance, when a dog is injured by in a accident, the owner of the dog becomes tender. After that, that dog sometimes pretends to be wounded in spite of the fact that it has already recovered. That behavior seems to be explained with operant conditioning. If once the animals are conditioned, they do the same thing again to get rewards (Lv1).
The higher animals act more interestingly. When So Kanazawa worked at Primate Research Institute, he made a chimp drink cough syrup. And a chimp likes that syrup. He seemed to be sick, but just then, he stopped coughing and began hopping around. Kanazawa and his colleague talked about that occurrence. And they conclude that the chimp had pretended. But they also thought how far the chimp had understood. They assumed there were two possibilities. “The chimp coughed again because it had gotten syrup when it had coughed before.” “The chimp assumed that it was considered to be sick if it coughed.” Kanazawa took latter hypothesis. In other words, the chimp had gotten syrup with he assume others mind. He categorized the situation of mind of chimps.

Lv1	The chimp thought that he would get syrup with it cough.
Lv2	The chimp assumed that if it would cough, humans would think that it was sick and gave it syrup.
Lv3	The chimp even assumed that if it would cough, the researchers would consider that the chimp would think the experimenters would think they would give syrup because the chimp is sick.

Figure.2 A hierarchy of levels in the chimps thinking

It is significant to think about Lv3 in respect of own minds appear the others mind. If we want to tell a lie, we need to distinct our mind from other’s mind. It is not until we can tell a lie that we reach Lv3. Kanazawa illustrated with concept of evolution.

Lv0	Innate behavior	Insects / The reptiles
Lv1	Physical casual relationship	Mammal
Lv2	Assuming other’s mind	Anthropoid
Lv3	Think my mind in other’s mind	Human being

If we evolve higher, what will happen to us? We can not stop thinking but we have to mention that we can not always stay at Lv3. Some tragedies arise because of our staying at Lv2. And also, we need to make our children to be up to Lv3.