Trust betrayed (Image: Glowimages/Getty)
PEOPLE are extraordinarily skilled at spotting cheats – much better than they are at detecting rule-breaking that does not involve cheating. A study showing just how good we are at this adds weight to the theory that our exceptional brainpower arose through evolutionary pressures to acquire specific cognitive skills.
The still-controversial idea that humans have specialised decision-making systems in addition to generalised reasoning ability has been around for decades. Its advocates point out that the ability to identify untrustworthy people should be favoured evolutionarily, since cheats risk undermining the social interactions in which people trade goods or…
