Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

Had I been a FACS-certified seventh grader and known then what I have learned in studying the nonverbal clues of sexual desire (of which Lynn showed not a scintilla), I probably would have been fooled again; it may be in our best interests to be fooled by those we love. Had I trained my ear to discern the fine acoustics involved in playful teasing, I probably would have detected subtle deviations from truthfulness in the artfully elongated vowels of Lynn’s enunciation (“Hey, Daaacher, wanna screeew”) that would have given away her playful intent. Had I read Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict from 1963, I would have understood why I was fooled, or at least known what to look for when Lynn Freitas made her offer.

Schelling observed that most meaningful exchanges—from the promise of undying love or mutual gain in risky business ventures to the strategic threats of diplomats and negotiators—hinge on solving the commitment problem. The commitment problem has two faces. The first is that we must often put aside self-interested courses of action—offers of affairs, chances to gain at colleagues’ expense, opportunities to lie to company stockholders—in the service of our long-term commitments to one another. Long-term relations require that we transcend narrow, in-the-moment, pleasure-seeking self-interest.

The second face of the commitment problem may be more challenging: We must reliably identify who is committed to us, we must find those morally inclined individuals to enter into long-term bonds with, we must know who is (and who is not) likely to be faithful and caring, and disinclined to cheat, lie, and sacrifice us in the service of the pursuit of their self-interest. We must quickly make these decisions to avoid being fooled or exploited by the Lynn Freitases of the world on a regular basis. What helps us solve the commitment problem?

Emotion. The very nature of emotional experience—its seeming absoluteness, heat, and urgency—can readily overwhelm narrow calculations of self-interest, allowing us to honor the commitments integral to long-term bonds: monogamy, fairness, duties and obligations. The potent pangs of guilt help us repair our dearest relations, even at great cost to the self. The single-minded feeling of compassion or awe can motivate us to act on behalf of other individuals or collectives, regardless of costs or benefits to the self.

Just as important is the centrality of others’ emotional displays in our attempts to discern others’ commitments to us. As important as language is, it is striking how impotent it is in conveying the commitments that define the course of life—the sense that someone will really love us through thick and thin, the sense that a colleague will be a lifelong collaborator, the sense that a politician is devoted to the greater good. Words are easy to manipulate. Not so, emotional displays. Emotional displays provide reliable clues to others’ commitments because they are involuntary, costly, and hard to fake (as opposed to words, which Lynn Freitas used to dupe me). Emotional displays have much in common with the peacock’s tail or stotting of the red deer: all are metabolically expensive behaviors that are beyond volitional control, and thus less subject to strategic manipulation or deception.

The general claim that Schelling offered: Emotions are involuntary commitment devices that bind us to one another in long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. As Ekman parsed the intricate realm of facial expression, he arrived at a discovery that would provide anatomical support for Schelling’s commitment thesis, and that would lead to a rethinking of the centrality of emotion to our most important bonds. Of the forty-three sets of facial muscles, most are easy to move voluntarily. For example, the pictures that follow represent common facial actions, pregnant with signal value, that most anyone can produce at the drop of a hat, at the behest of a friend, to pass the time in the hotel bathroom, or to win a drunken bet.

A subset of facial muscles, however, are wired differently; they are controlled by different neural pathways originating in the brain. For about 85 to 90 percent of people—actors, sociopaths, politicians, late-night televangelists, and people who take the hundred hours to learn FACS excluded—these muscles are impossible to move voluntarily. If you’re feeling bold, want to put some braggart to the test, or are lacking a bit in levity, try yourself or test whether some other poor soul can produce the following muscle actions: