Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled by Jennifer Freyd, Pamela Birrell Page A

First, we are extremely vulnerable in infancy, which gives rise to a powerful attachment system. Second, we have a constant need to make “social contracts” with other people in order to get our needs met. This has led to the development of a powerful cheater-detector system. These two aspects of our humanity serve us well, but when the person we are dependent on is also the person betraying us, our two standard responses to trouble conflict with each other. To understand this better, let's consider these concepts one by one.
     
    Dependence on the Caregiver and Attachment
     
    Human infants emerge from the womb with almost no ability to fend for themselves. If you think about almost any other animal at birth, you'll appreciate how relatively helpless the human baby is. Although the human baby gradually acquires various skills that can aid survival, this maturation process takes a very long time. In fact, human infants are almost entirely dependent on adult caregivers for months, and after that they remain very dependent for years. This long period of dependence is possible in part because of our highly inbred attachment system. The attachment system is the name researchers have given to all of the various processes that together ensure that babies love their caregivers and that caregivers love their babies. This includes the smiling and cooing sounds a baby makes, the desire to hold and be held, the pleasure in the scents of a baby, and so on.
     
    It is important to realize that both the caregiver and the baby have attachment systems—that the relationship is reciprocal, in the sense that attachment depends on both parties behaving in ways to inspire the attachment of the other. If a baby consistently fails to smile or coo or if a young child will not hug or make eye contact, that child is risking not only his or her own attachment to the caregiver, but also the caregiver's attachment to the child. Without caregiver attachment, the baby or the child is at risk of not being cared for, and this means at risk of dying. This is a crucial point, because it means that the baby and the child have an essential “job”—to attach to a caregiver and thus promote the caregiver's attachment and care. Attachment is essential when there is dependence. Humans are often dependent on others, even after infancy and childhood. As we will see, this attachment system and the need to maintain relationships, even in adulthood, drive our blindness to the betrayal of people who are important to us.
     
    Social Contracts, Trust, and Cheater Detectors
     
    In addition to being dependent on one another for caregiving, we are interdependent in another sense: we make deals with one another constantly. These deals have been called “social contracts,” and they include everything from explicit major contracts, such as marriage, to much more mundane everyday agreements that occur when I give you half of a sandwich in return for half of your piece of pie. We exchange goods, we exchange work, we trade, we barter, and we are constantly making cost-benefit negotiations. This extremely high number of social contracts is at the heart of what makes us such social creatures. Our most intimate relationships are no exception to this. In fact, in close relationships we have some of our most important social contracts: you keep my secrets and I keep yours; you remain faithful to me and I to you; and so on.
     
    Social contracts depend on trust. This is particularly the case whenever there is a time discrepancy between the agreement and the resolution of it. I agree to keep your secret—that is an agreement about time. I agree to send you a check after you provide some service—that is an agreement that takes place over time. When an agreement is made at one point in time but can be completed only at another point, trust is required.
     
    Whenever there is a social contract, and especially one depending on trust, there is also the opportunity for a violation