Lying
The Mind Game: How Self-Deception Leads to Destruction (And How to Recover)
When we cannot change things, we change words.
Benjamin Wilkormiski published a book called “Memories of a Wartime Childhood 1939–1948”. He described his childhood experience as a survivor of the Holocaust and became one of the most famous cases of falsely fabricating an entire autobiography even though he was not a Holocaust survivor, he continued to believe in his fake autobiography.
So, how did he believe his lie?🤔
1. Pathological Lying
Many incidences of pathological lying are linked to childhood trauma, where it has been linked to poor self-esteem and self-image, and often with anxiety. So, people who have faced abusive situations often cultivate a mindset of escaping into an alternate reality.
Constantly changing the story, lies ranging across a variety of subjects, and lying about everything and anything, even when not necessary, all are signs of pathological lying.
Those with pathological lying believe in their delusions. They don’t realize they are lying and continue to lie even when confronted with the truth.
“Self-deception means that we can continue to see ourselves as good people, even when our actions would suggest otherwise. “ says — Gneezy.
So, for example, suspects falsely deny their involvement in a crime to avoid punishment. In contrast, victims (e.g., sexual abuse victims) falsely deny that they were victimized to not re-experience the accident or for fear of accusing someone.
2. Self-Deception
Simply, we can’t ask someone if they are fooling themselves, since it happens below conscious awareness. And as we mentioned above, what marks all of these people is not just the lies they told others — but the lies they must have told themselves. So, when we tell ourselves the lie consistently enough, we believe it and we can convince others easily.
“The lies we tell other people are nothing compared to the lies we tell ourselves.” ― Derek Landy
An experiment from 2011, showed that many people unconsciously employ self-deception to boost their egos when one group was asked to take an IQ test, with a list of answers and as you might expect, these people performed considerably better than the other group who did not have the answer key.
But they did not seem to recognize how much they had relied on the ‘cheat sheet’ since they predicted they would do equally well on a second test without the cheat sheet. Somehow, they fooled themselves into thinking they knew the solutions to the problems without help.
“If you need to convince somebody of something then the first person who needs to be convinced is yourself.” says- Von Hippel
3. The Causes of Self-Deception
- Prefactuals: If we think something will be true later, it can change what we believe today. As a result, we are more likely to believe something is true simply because we are repeatedly told a lie.
- Desire for comfort: Self-deception can arise from a desire to feel more comfortable or avoid unpleasant truths. We deceive ourselves to protect our self-esteem or reduce cognitive dissonance.
- Cognitive biases: The brain uses these shortcuts to simplify complex information, but it can lead to errors in judgment which cause us to perceive information in a way that aligns with our pre-existing beliefs, even if that perception is not accurate.
4. Lying and Memory
- Information available at the time of retrieval can be incorporated into existing memories. This is because our memory is reconstructive. As a result, our original recollections of events can be altered through misinformation.
- Several studies provide insights into how self-deception can influence cognitive processes, including memory. It suggests that the higher the cognitive load of an individual practicing self-deception, the more likely deception becomes.
- So, it can be shortened to “ self-deception can have implications for memory processes, particularly in terms of how individuals remember their abilities, past behaviors, and experiences”.
- So, how do we recover from it?
5. Solutions
- Accept the reality: It is critical to understand that deceiving ourselves doesn’t change the truth, but it will have negative consequences for the decisions we make and behave.
- Strive to be better: You may have been told that failing means you are a failure, but the truth is that was someone else’s lie and you adopted it as your own. Instead, learn to accept your shortcomings and strive to do better rather than avoiding failure with self-deceptive thoughts. The world is full of people who persevere beyond setbacks and there’s no reason you can’t join them.
- Face your fears: We just use self-deception to protect our hearts and minds from fear and we suffer more than we would if we just experienced the feelings we were desperately trying to avoid. Next time when you find yourself in an uncomfortable state, try to explore why a situation may be scary. Then, dismantle any lies you tell yourself. Once you do that, you can distinguish exaggerated fears from actual fears.
- Consider the opposite: Find all the reasons your belief may be wrong as if you were asking yourself. Systematic reasoning is much more effective than telling people to think rationally.
“The trouble with too many people is they believe the realm of truth always lies within their vision.“ — Abraham Lincoln
Final Words
Deluding ourselves may make life easier, but there are often long-term, unforeseen consequences to that behavior.
So, embracing ourselves is the key to being free in life, because we possess the innate capacity to rise & nurture our inner growth.
