Accepting whatever others are communicating only pays off if their interests correspond to ours ―think cells in a body, bees in a beehive. As far as communication between humans is concerned, such commonality of interests ① is rarely achieved; even a pregnant mother has reasons to mistrust the chemical signals sent by her fetus. Fortunately, there are ways of making communication work even in the most adversarial of relationships. A prey can convince a predator not to chase ② it But for such communication to occur, there must be strong guarantees ③ which those who receive the signal will be better off believing it. The messages have to be kept, on the whole, ④ honest In the case of humans, honesty is maintained by a set of cognitive mechanisms that evaluate ⑤ communicated information. These mechanisms allow us to accept most beneficial messages ―to be open ―while rejecting most harmful messages ―to be vigilant.
* fetus: 태아 ** adversarial: 반대자의 *** vigilant: 경계하는