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angering someone else as meaningful and comprehensible, while victims tend to depict such an event as arbitrary, unnecessary, or incomprehensible. Victims often provide a long-term narrative, especially one emphasizing continuing harm and grievance, while perpetrators describe an arbitrary, isolated event with no lasting implications. One effect of this asymmetry between victim and perpetrator is that when the victim suppresses anger at a provocation, only to respond after an accumulation of slights, the perpetrator sees only the final, precipitating event and easily views the victim’s angry response as an unwarranted overreaction.
    There is also something called false internal narratives. An individual’s perception of his or her own ongoing motivation may be biased to conceal from others the true motivation. Consciously, a series of reasons may unfold to accompany actions so that when they are challenged, a convinced alternative explanation is at once available, complete with an internal scenario—“but I wasn’t thinking that at all; I was thinking . . . ”

Unconscious Modules Devoted to Deception
     
    Over the years, I have discovered that I am an unconscious petty thief. I steal small objects from you while in your presence. I steal pens and pencils, lighters and matches, and other useful objects that are easy to pocket. I am completely unconscious of this while it is going on (as are you, most of the time) even though I have been doing it for more than forty years now. Perhaps because the trait is so unconscious, it appears to have a life of its own and often seems to act directly against my own narrow interests. I steal chalk from myself while lecturing and am left with no chalk with which to lecture (nor do I have a blackboard at home). I steal pens and pencils from my office, only to offload them at home—leaving me none the next day at the office—and so on. Recently I stole a Jamaican principal’s entire set of school keys from the desk between us. No use to me, high cost to him.
    In summary, there appears to be a little unconscious module in me devoted to petty thievery, sufficiently isolated to avoid interfering with ongoing activity (such as talking). I think of a little organism in me looking out for the matches, the ideal moment to seize them, the rhythm of the actual robbery, and so on. Of course, this organism will study the behavior of my victim but it will also devote time to my own behavior, in order best to integrate the thievery while not giving off any clues. Noteworthy features of this little module in my own life are that the behavior has changed little over my lifetime, and that increasing consciousness of the behavior after the fact has done little or nothing to increase consciousness prior to, during, or immediately after the behavior. The module also appears to misfire more often the older I get. Incidentally, the only time I can remember getting caught is by my brother, born a year after me—we were raised as twins. We each had an ability to read deception in the other that others in the family could not match. Once when we were both in our late forties, I began to pocket his pen, but he grabbed my hand halfway to my pocket and the pen was his again.
    I think I never pilfer from someone’s office when it is empty. I will see a choice pen and my hand moving toward it but will say, “Robert, that would be stealing,” and stop. Perhaps if I steal from you in front of your face, I believe you have given implicit approval. When I stole the principal’s keys, I was simultaneously handing him some minor repayment for a service performed and thinking I might be paying too much. Perhaps I said to myself, “Well this is for you, so this must be for me,” and he went along with the show.
    How many of these unconscious modules operate in our lives? The only way I know about this one is that my pockets fill up with contraband, and I get occasional questions from friends. Stealing ideas will