Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain, the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird:

“If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?”

The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead?

The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory:

“In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winning move.”

An example is the game called chicken. Two drivers race towards each other on a collision course. The player who swerves loses. Each player can keep going and hope the other guy chickens out. But if the other guy thinks the same way, neither will swerve and a collision may kill you. So what’s the winning strategy?

“Remove the steering wheel from your car and wave it at your opponent. This way, he’ll know you’re locked in, dead set, hell-bent – irrevocably committed to driving straight through, no matter what. And at this point, unless he wants to die, your opponent will have to swerve first, and you’ll be the winner.”

There’s even a term for this deliberate limiting of one’s options: “strategic ignorance”!

“The entire value of strategic ignorance and related phenomena lies in the way others act when they believe that you’re ignorant.”

Of course, this only works when you’re playing against an opponent who can “take your mental state into account”. Which is true in most social situations.

Ok, but wouldn’t it be simpler to just lie? Why deceive ourselves as well? Why not just pretend?

“There are many answers to this question, but they mostly boil down to the fact that lying is hard to pull off.”

Others can detect lies; they ask follow-up questions; it’s hard to stay consistent. Therefore, it follows:

“Often the best way to convince others that we believe something is to actually believe it.”

It doesn’t sound pretty, but it sure has a certain Spock-like logic to it…