Is lying to ourselves the key to success?
The benefits — and the science — of overconfidence
Is lying to ourselves the key to success?
When I was being initiated as a shaman, we spent time at some sacred sites in Peru. At one of those magical places, we went through a process to eliminate our fear of death.
Afterward, everyone had to answer the same question: “Are you afraid of death?” The other initiates indicated they’d overcome their fear, many of them completely. If you ask me, that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment!
I suppose that’s why, when they did ask me, I didn’t give the expected answer. I said that I’d like to think so, but there was no way for me to know for sure until I actually faced it.
I had to find another shaman to continue my initiations.
A decade later, one of the other initiates told me how much she admired my honesty, that I was the only one who told the truth that day. That felt pretty good… until I found out why I was so brutally honest.
It’s Hard to See the Truth About Ourselves
Researchers have discovered that seeing ourselves through rose-colored glasses is part of the human condition. According to Shelley Taylor, social psychologist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, a certain amount of overconfidence is normal, even healthy. She says that most of us experience three types of positive illusions about ourselves:
1. Overconfidence or illusions of superiority: In a PubMed article on the illusion of superiority, Kruger and Dunning share the results of four studies comparing participants’ self-assessments to their results on tests. They found that those who scored in the 12th percentile estimated themselves to be in the 62nd! It seems there’s some truth to the old adage: A little knowledge is dangerous.
It’s also true that increasing your knowledge can make you more realistic. When participants improved their skills, they became more aware of the limitations of their abilities.
2. An exaggerated sense of control: Who wants to admit they screwed up? Whether it means paying for damages or facing the unsettling fact that we don’t always do what’s best for us, owning our mistakes isn’t easy. One of my favorite examples of how people protect themselves from the truth comes from Ian Leslie’s book, Born Liars: “The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out of its way when it struck my front end.” He didn’t make that up; it came from a police report.
3. Unrealistic optimism, especially about our own futures: While this is considered its own type of illusion, it follows naturally from the first two. If we have unrealistic ideas about our superiority to others, we’ll expect unrealistically superior results. And believing we have more control over our lives than we actually do should also translate into higher expectations.
Some people have fewer positive illusions than others. Psychologists refer to this as depressive realism because there’s a correlation between lower-than-average levels of self-deception and mild to moderate depression.
When I discovered positive illusions and depressive realism, I understood why I can be so brutally honest with myself — and why that’s not always a good thing.
Reality Isn’t So “Real” After All
If you’re not convinced that we’re all under some degree of illusion, consider the nature of perception. Scientists know that we don’t perceive reality as it is, but as our brains interpret it. When we look at a glass of water, we see the water… not the molecules that make up the water. Somehow our brains turn those molecules, which are nothing more than energy, into the water we see in front of us.
How do our brains decide what to show (or tell) us? They combine limited sensory input (we don’t take pay attention to everything, even unconsciously), with our expectations. Those expectations are based on our past — more precisely, the conclusions we’ve drawn from our past experiences. Of course, those conclusions may or may not be accurate.
In other words, our brains are busy creating “reality” while our senses are still taking it in. And they’re creating it from limited and sometimes even inaccurate information.
If you find that a bit disturbing, you’re not alone!
Why Those Illusions Matter So Much
Psychologists used to see these and other forms of self-deception as signs of a deeper problem. But now they understand that being completely realistic about ourselves is not only impossible but unhealthy. Taylor and Brown (1988) put it well:
Our motivation to negotiate daily life depends on some degree of misplaced optimism about what we are capable of accomplishing.
We all need positive illusions. They give us the confidence to create ambitious goals. And without them, we might not have the motivation, creativity, or perseverance needed to make them a reality.
The trainers at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health learned this the hard way in the late 1990s. They recognized the importance of giving their more advanced trainees feedback on their progress. But they had to change the way they phrased that feedback.
According to an editorial in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, trainees who were told their performance was average “were mortified and became quite depressed and anxious. They had never been called average in anything before.”
Those doctors aren’t alone. As mentioned previously, people who have a firmer grip on reality are more likely to be mildly to moderately depressed. Maybe being too realistic, especially about ourselves, steals our joy.
Positive illusions also seem useful in sports. When social psychologists Joanna Starek and Caroline Keating studied competitive swimmers, they concluded: “Swimmers who qualified for a national championship engaged in more self-deception than swimmers who did not qualify.”
Their coaches have a different term for it. It’s not “self-deception” — it’s “championship thinking.”
Philosopher and author William Hirstein, PhD has an even more thought-provoking perspective, one that transcends competition. He claims that the opposite of self-deceit is not self-knowledge, but OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).
As someone who deceives myself less than most, I can relate. Being so realistic does hold me back; it might be the reason I had to continue those initiations with another shaman. (Or not. I’ll never know.) And I have suffered from what seems like mild and occasionally moderate depression throughout my life. I also have a bit of that OCD Hirstein referred to.
I like to think the flipside of all this is that I’m better at critical thinking, which is a damned useful skill. Of course, that might just be one of the illusions that keep me from giving up on myself!
It’s not just individuals who benefit from positive illusions. Remember those doctors who became depressed and anxious when they saw themselves as average? We need them to feel good about themselves so they can continue helping people. And what about the mavericks, the people who push us to change the way we think and live? In Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw shared a valuable insight:
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one attempts to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Which is better: truth or illusion?
Clearly “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” is neither attainable nor desirable; it’s a matter of degree.
While severe overconfidence can lead us to make massive mistakes, the right amount can motivate us to persevere, trying out different approaches until we find one that works. I may or may not be as good at critical thinking as I believe I am, but does it matter? Feeling a little too good about myself sure beats the alternative: giving up before I achieve my goals.
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