What Is Self-Deceit?

Self-Deception (or self-deceit) is hiding the truth from yourself according to the dictionary. It is a psychological process of convincing yourself of a falsehood to avoid acknowledging an unpleasant reality. In other words, it is people distorting reality to fit their desires. Psychologists claim that this is a tension between a person wanting to know the truth and someone wanting something to be true. The classical example of this is cognitive dissonance: holding conflicting beliefs is distressing, so individuals may resolve the conflict by simply “blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe.” In short terms, self-deceit shapes how people perceive and interpret facts, and it is a sort of a defense mechanism to protect your feelings or avoid anxiety. 

Theoretical Perspectives on Self-Deception

Psychoanalytic theory framed self-deception as the ego’s defense mechanism against anxiety. Nietzsche defines defenses by saying “Humans lie to themselves because they can’t handle the truth”. Three key defenses involve self-deception, denial, repression, and rationalization.

 Firstly, denial is -briefly- refusing to acknowledge reality. To give an example, a person in serious debt going around saying, “I’m managing my money just fine” This leads to the person starting to believe that they aren’t in serious debt. Next, repression. Repression is subconsciously holding unacceptable thoughts or memories, someone who thinks that they remember something even though it has never happened. And finally, rationalization. Rationalization is the most innocent one among them, it is making excuses to justify behavior. Rationalization can start small like a student saying he is going to do badly on an exam not because he didn't study, but because his teacher doesn't like him. However, this can lead to bigger problems such as stealing money and justifying himself because he needs the money more. This is a simple example of rationalizing gone bad.

 These defenses build up the person to consistently think that they are right and everyone's ideas are wrong. Sort of like wrapping perception to protect one's self-esteem. In effect, the ego automates positive thoughts about oneself (better memory of success than failure, attributing problems to external causes, etc.) so that the pain the truth causes never enters conscious awareness.

Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory (1957) explains self-deception as a way to resolve inner conflict. In other words, if your actions conflict with your self-image, you may subconsciously rewrite the truth to eliminate the clash. As I described before,  self deception is a battle between “the person wants to believe something” and “the person wants to know the truth,” with whichever side wins determines the outcome. One source notes that self-deception “filters information through biases” much like wearing tinted glasses. In practice, people selectively interpret facts so that they arrive at a preferred conclusion. Our cognitive faculties are subject to these biases, so we think that we are being reasonable when we twist facts to fit our beliefs. In sum, motivated biases allow self-deception to operate by skewing normal information processing. 

In conclusion, self deception (self deceit) is a problem that can get way out of hand. Causing a person to lose their way by tricking their brains to make themselves feel better about what they have done. We as humans are biased, so we think that we are being reasonable when we twist facts to fit our beliefs.