Von Hippel & Trivers (VH&T) propose that self-deception has evolved to facilitate the deception of others. However, they ignore the subjective moral costs of deception and the crucial issue of credibility in self-deceptive speech. A self-signaling interpretation can account for the ritualistic quality of some self-deceptive affirmations and for the often-noted gap between what self-deceivers sa...

The evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers was the first to address well-known psychological phenomenon of self-deception from standpoint natural science. According Trivers, evolved as an offensive strategy in arms race between deceiver and deceived. Though apparently both tenable plausible, Trivers? theory self-deception, which takes enhancement interpersonal deception proper function is burden...

This paper examines the root of unethical dicisions by identifying the psychological forces that promote self-deception. Self-deception allows one to behave self-interestedly while, at the same time, falsely believing that one’s moral principles were upheld. The end result of this internal con game is that the ethical aspects of the decision “fade” into the background, the moral implications ob...

This study examined the relationship between self-deception and religiosity in two different samples: (1) fifty members of a non-denominational church, and (2) 54 students at a state university. The participants responded to Allport and Ross (1967) Religious Orientation Scale and the Paulhus (1984, 1998) Deception Scale. The results indicated that the nature of the relationship depends upon at ...

How does self-deception affect the appreciation of humor and laughter? Fifty-nine undergraduates at Rutgers University (33 females, 26 males) were videotaped while watching a stand-up comedian for 28 min. Positive emotional expressions associated with laughter were analyzed for short sections of the act (total: 8 min or 14,400 video frames) and were scored for each subject using the facial acti...

-

This paper takes a constitutivist approach to self-deception, and argues that this phenomenon should be evaluated under several dimensions of rationality. The constitutivist approach has the merit of explaining the selective nature of self-deception as well as its being subject to moral sanction. Self-deception is a pragmatic strategy for maintaining the stability of the self, hence continuous ...