For decades, scientists have tried to answer a simple question: why be honest when deception is possible? Whether it is a peacock's tail, a stag's roar, or a human's résumé, signals are means to ...

Honesty survives because exaggeration often leads to worse outcomes later, even when lying seems easy at first.

Sexual selection provides an answer to the existence of lavishly ornate signals in animals, but not to the question of why such signals are attractive—for example, why do females prefer the ...