People demonstrate an impressive ability to self-deceive, distorting misbehavior to reflect positively on themselves-for example, by cheating on a test and believing that their inflated performance reflects their true ability. But what happens to self-deception when self-deceivers must face reality, such as when taking another test on which they cannot cheat? We find that self-deception diminis...

Self-deception is widespread in humans even though it can lead to disastrous consequences such as airplane crashes and financial meltdowns. Why is this potentially harmful trait so common? A controversial theory proposes that self-deception evolved to facilitate the deception of others. We test this hypothesis in the real world and find support for it: Overconfident individuals are overrated by...

The paper sets out to reveal conditions enabling diagnostic self-deception, people's tendency to deceive themselves about the diagnostic value of their own actions. We characterize different types of self-deception in terms of the distinction between intervention and observation in causal reasoning. One type arises when people intervene but choose to view their actions as observations in order ...

Problems with self-report measures for smoking motivate the use of biochemical tests in treatment trials for smoking. These biochemical tests, unfortunately, are not perfect. In this paper, we present an algebraic model of bias in treatment trials for smoking. Bias is expressed in terms of the deception rate among continued smokers in a control group, the relative deception rate among continued...

Self-deception and impression-management comprise two types of deceptive, but generally socially acceptable behaviours, which are common in everyday life as well as being present in a number of psychiatric disorders. We sought to establish and dissociate the 'normal' brain substrates of self-deception and impression-management. Twenty healthy participants underwent fMRI scanning at 3T whilst co...

Bermúdez, J. L. 1997. Defending intentionalist accounts of self-deception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20: 107–8. Bermúdez, J. L. 2000. Autoinganno, intenzioni e credenze contraddittorie. Un commento a Mele. Sistemi Intelligenti 3: 521–1. Haight, M. 1980. A Study of Self-Deception. Brighton: Harvester Press. Mele, A. 1997. Real self-deception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20: 91–102. Mele, A...

Consciousness and self-awareness, juxtaposed by the ability to self-deceive, are legacies of our evolutionary heritage. As a purposive outgrowth of modularity, self-deception may serve to isolate threatening thoughts from consciousness and facilitate cooperation. The primary goal of the present investigation was to determine if individuals with depression exhibit both low levels of self-decepti...

Questions about truthfulness occur in many contexts—when parents ask their children if they are using recreational drugs, when an employer ask applicants about the reasons they left their last job, when international leaders consider each others’ threats or promises, when voters evaluate candidates’ promises, when physicians consider a patient’s complaint, when at the start of a romantic encoun...