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What is the evolutionary value of blushing? It seems not to be to our advantage to do it, to involuntarily reveal our inner emotions. If we're trying to manipulate or lie, actions in furtherance of individual goals as opposed to the goals of others, blushing would not seem to be helpful. And yet everyone blushes, except the psychopath.
Frans De Waal
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Blushing reveals our true emotions, highlighting a conflict between honesty and manipulation.

Frans De Waal’s quote examines the seemingly paradoxical nature of blushing as an involuntary emotional response that reveals our true feelings, which can be seen as a disadvantage when one is attempting to deceive or manipulate others. Despite its lack of apparent evolutionary advantage, the fact that all humans blush, save for psychopaths, suggests that it plays a significant role in our social interactions and may reflect empathy and honesty, key components of forming trust and connections within a community.

Themes

BlushingEmotionsHonestyManipulationSocial BehaviorPsychology

In practice

Example use cases

During a psychology class discussion on emotional expressions and their social implications.

More from Frans De Waal

As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.
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Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?'
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Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.
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Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than _x000D_ bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.
Frans De WaalRead
If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation.
Frans De WaalRead
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
Frans De WaalRead

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