Does biology make us liars?

Biologists since E. O. Wilson are finding ever more evidence that what we used to call philosophy or culture are simply biological processes. http://www.aldaily.com has a link to an article about biological foundations of self-deception. The whole article (from New Republic) is interesting, but here are the three paragraphs that I liked best.
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"Can we at least measure the price of our own self-deceit? Trivers offers the interesting suggestion that the strain associated with lying, even unconsciously, takes a toll on the immune system. The reason for this is that immunity is expensive, requiring the burning of energy and consumption of much protein. For the same reason, the immune system has a reservoir that can be drawn upon for other purposes—often, Trivers claims, at the mere “flick of a molecular switch.” A decision has to be made: attack another male for the chance of sex with a female, or invest internally to fight a parasite? Quickly the body apportions its resources, diverting from the immune reservoirs to the fighting mode. No surprise, then, that high testosterone levels are associated with lower immune response, or that disease is associated with lower testosterone levels (the body is shifting investment to the immune system), or that marriage, which lowers testosterone levels in men, is associated with increased lifespan. Monogamy, in other words, can be seen as a disease that improves our health.

"The salient point is that choices involving psychology, of greater or lesser degrees of self-deception, in turn affect our immune systems. Trivers cites studies that show that people who write about their trauma can improve their immune function; indeed, emotional disclosure is associated with consistent immune benefits—this is one of the reasons that going to a shrink might make you feel better. The converse holds as well: HIV-positive patients who deny that they are infected show lower immune function than those who admit it, and tend to suffer from more rapid progression of their disease. Truth seems to be healthy for us. On those grounds alone, Trivers writes, “don’t ask, don’t tell” should be considered an immunological disaster.

...

"Two groups were randomly assigned, and members of the first group were asked to write for five minutes about a situation in which they felt powerful while candy was being distributed among them; at the same time members of the other group were asked to write about a situation of powerlessness and were only allowed to request candy but not to be given any. When all the subjects were asked to snap the fingers of their right hand five times and quickly write the letter E on their forehead, those who had been primed to feel powerless were three times more likely to write the E so that others could read it rather than backward, from their own perspective. Further study showed that the power-primed group was significantly less able to discriminate among human facial expressions associated with fear, anger, sadness, and happiness. It would appear that the ability to apprehend the world correctly, as well as the ability to empathize, is compromised by the feeling of power.

“The ultimate effect of shielding people from the effects of their folly,” Herbert Spencer once observed, “is to fill the world with fools.”
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