Self-deception: An Introduction

Self-deception has been studied by philosophers and psychologists for some time. Frenkel-Brunswik (1939) published the first psychology paper. In Triandis (2009 p. ix) there are references to 24 papers by philosophers and psychologists that examined this concept. All humans have self-deceptions, some more frequently than others. That is, they see the world the way they would like to be rather than the way it is. As I thought about the concept over the years I believe that the most important point for understanding self-deception is to examine what percentage of the information that humans use when constructing (Taylor, 1998b) the way they see the world comes from inside their body or from outside their body. If most of it comes from inside their body there is a high probability that they have a self-deception. The information from inside the body consists of emotions (e.g., hopes), needs (e.g., hunger pangs), desires (e.g., imagined attractive objects), cognitive systems (e.g., prejudices, stereotypes, in-group preferences), memories (e.g., we are descendents of heroes), theories, ideologies, and elements of subjective culture acquired during socialization. The information from the outside the body is reality, and captures aspects of the ecology. Geography, climate, the actions of others, occupations, and events in the environment, are all relevant. For example, when a wild animal is attacking we focus on outside information. But when making judgments about philosophy, economics, religion, education, politics, terrorism, aesthetics and the like we often use inside information to shape our perceptions. The Buddha had the insight that we use information from both outside the body (reality, truth) and inside our body (emotions, ideology) when he said “Where self is, truth is not; where truth is, self is not.” (Spencer-Rogers, Williams, & Pang, 2010). In this paper I will start with some examples of self-deception. Then I will discuss some of the characteristics of self-deception—it is often linked to cognitive simplicity, megalomania, and if we have no self-deceptions we might be depressed, but if we have large self-deceptions we might be mentally ill. Then I will discuss how self-deception is implicated in many of the controversial issues of our times. I will end with some suggestions for further research linking culture and self-deception.