Deception

If an animal can purposefully deceive another, one could argue that it must be able to take the perspective of the other. Certainly, functional deception can be trained. Woodruff and Premack (1979) trained chimpanzees to point to the container that held food in order to receive the food. The chimpanzees then learned that one trainer would give them the food for pointing to the correct container whereas the other would allow them to have the food only if they pointed to an incorrect container. Although the chimpanzees learned to respond appropriately, there was no indication that they intended to deceive the trainer (Dennett, 1983). One can find anecdotes in the literature suggestive of intentional deception (e.g., Heyes, 1998) but the problem with the attribution of deception is that intentionality must be inferred from behavior, and intentionality is particularly difficult to assess in a nonverbal organism.

(2011–05–01). The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology) (pp. 320–321). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.