untouched. If people around us were all rational calculators they
would sometimes behave and sometimes cheat. So it would be danger-
ous to trust them. But what if some people are not rational calcula-
tors? What if they are driven to honesty by emotional urges that over-
ride their best calculations? These would be precious people to have
around because they would be irrationally disposed to honesty even
when it is not to their immediate advantage. If there could be clear
signals that people have such dispositions, one should choose to coop-
erate with such individuals rather than the rational calculators. So a
disposition toward cooperation creates all sorts of opportunities that
[186] would not be open to people identified as potential cheaters. True,
there is a cost, but it is more than offset by the benefits of cooperation.
The disposition must be difficult to fake; otherwise the signal
would be of no value. Indeed, there is quite a lot of experimental evi-
dence to suggest that deception is not quite as easy as we generally
think. That is, emotional cues such as facial expressions and gestures
often give people an intuitive feeling that some deception is going on
even before they can clearly articulate what gives them this feeling.
Obviously, this is not a matter of complete certainty. The strategy
requires only that some signals, on the whole, give a fairly good indi-
cation of people's underlying dispositions, and this seems to be the
case.
The experimental evidence also supports this account. First, people
generally evaluate possible transactions in terms of "fairness," a set of
intuitive criteria that do not seem to match rational economic models.
Indeed, business school teachers often try to correct such "naive"
propensities in their students by demonstrating how they can be dan-
gerous in actual markets.
However, honest dispositions pay off only if certain conditions
obtain. First, people should be prepared to punish cheaters even if it is
costly. So they should have powerful emotions that help them disre-
gard the cost. This is clear in many everyday situations. The anger
triggered by people who cut in ahead of others in waiting lines and
who steal parking spaces is quite disproportionate to the actual dam-
age they inflict. Second, we should be outraged when cheating is not
punished even if we did not incur any cost. The existence of "suckers"
is a threat to our own safety because it makes cheating a viable strat-
egy. So people should punish cheaters, not just because they feel out-
raged but also because others will feel outraged if they do not. This
passion too is a constant in human interaction. The person who skips
RELIGION EXPLAINED