The Self Illusion

An underdeveloped theory of mind in children also explains why they can make such bad liars. Initially, when a child realizes that punishment is imminent – ‘Did you eat the cake?’ – they simply say no, despite the fact that they have chocolate cake smeared across their face. Only later do children get more sophisticated in generating plausible stories for why they might have the tell-tale chocolate on their face – invariably they blame someone else.

Those that control eye movement have evolved simply to direct your gaze to the darkest and brightest objects in the world.

Deep in the history of our species, we behaved in this automatic way but eventually we evolved higher levels of brain machinery that enabled us to control these reptilian urges.