Why do people cheat?

Scientists have finally explained why many primates, especially humans, sometimes lie or deceive.

According to the latest research, primate animals develop a cheating ability to form alliances, gather food and mate.

Researchers believe that human ability to deceive may have evolved to help us form alliances, gather food and mate better. (Photo: Corbis)

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) conducted a comparative analysis of the behavior of 24 different primates, including gibbons and monkeys. They found that deceitful behavior is more common in species with greater coordination or collaboration.

"The correlation between deceit and collaboration in non-human primates implies that coordination is an important factor in deceit in human evolution. In the end Our ability to lie convincingly to others may be the result of direct evolution from the nature of cooperation, " cited the research report published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Researchers also believe that a lie or lie lies far beyond the original goal of forming alliances, such as the means for mating or solutions to bouncing bouts. fire. They concluded, deception is common in the animal kingdom.

Luke McNally, a member of the research team, further explains: " Fraud occurs in some spiders, when males offer potential mates with worthless gifts. It can also appear. In bacterial species, when they produce too many signals to seek cooperation from other individuals, this phenomenon has even been discovered evolving in robots.

Our hypothesis is that collaboration can evolve before deception, but cheating will follow the heels, in order to serve collaboration. "