Mitchell and Thompson have compiled the first interdisciplinary study of deception and its manifestations in a variety of animal species. Deception is unique in that it presents detailed explorations of the broadest array of deceptive behavior, ranging from deceptive signaling in fireflies and stomatopods, to false-alarm calling by birds and foxes, to playful manipulating between people and dogs, to deceiving within intimate human relationships. It offers a historical overview of the problem of deception in related fields of animal behavior, philosophical analyses of the meaning and significance of deception in evolutionary and psychological theories, and diverse perspectives on deception—philosophical, ecological, evolutionary, ethological, developmental, psychological, anthropological, and historical.

The contributions gathered herein afford scientists the opportunity to discover something about the formal properties of deception, enabling them to explore and evaluate the belief that one set of descriptive and perhaps explanatory structures is suitable for both biological and psychological phenomena.