If you let me get away with condemning you, while you confess, then you undermine the learning that sustains cooperative behavior. The computers say that if you let me blame you twice, you get what you deserve the second time. In that sense, I hold society together by keeping you alert to my evil. Still, the computers cannot capture all the dimensions of human behavior. They don't account for backbiting and vendetta.
Anger can lead people to seek revenge and damn the personal cost.
But we also transcend simple tests with the power of friendship. We violate simple cause and effect. We defy the calculus of behavior. Scientific American , October 1993, p. 22. Frohock, F.M., Rational Association .