We tell ourselves “lies” all the time. In fact, humans are the masters of self-deception. The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote in his book, “The Anti-Christ” (1895) that “the most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself”, and modern psychology and psychiatry would concur with him. We engage in self-deception on a daily basis. We tell ourselves that we’ll only have one beer when we watch the game, we genuinely “forget” to include the piece of cake/biscuit/snack we had when we’re counting our calories for the day, and if we’re trying to give up smoking for our health, we may make the argument that smoking helps us lose weight and de-stress, so maybe quitting should be something that we put off for another day etc. Although Freud used the term “Repression” rather than “Self-Deception”, to refer to the things that we know to be true but don’t admit to ourselves as true, he understood that consciously deceiving ourselves could act as a “defense mechanism” to protect us against our failings and shortcomings e.g., rather than taking responsibility for how our lives have turned out, we blame our parents for “making us this way” etc. Whilst overcoming our personal self-deceptions may be necessary for us to be fully introspective and actualize who we really are, this article is not about this. Rather, I want to examine how self-deception can compromise our personal safety, and whilst it is something we do naturally and without thinking, there are times when we need to slow down and take a moment to question whether we are being honest with ourselves about situations we may be experiencing and individuals we are interacting with.
Human beings can believe anything about who we are and who others are. We can effortlessly engage in mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that a world that makes no sense actually does. The sociologist, Harold Garfinkel, on a course on psychology, came up with and conducted a very interesting and significant experiment; this can often happen when an academic from one discipline steps outside their box and into another i.e., they question things, and from a new angle/perspective, that those embedded in a discipline aren’t always able to see. He created cards that had a variety of character traits on them. For each “positive” trait card there was a corresponding “negative” one e.g., if there was a card that said energetic, there was one that said lazy, if there was one that said honest, there was one that said dishonest etc. He then presented random sets of these cards to individuals and asked them to give a general description of the person who had this set of – often very contradictory – traits. There was never an instance where a person stated it was impossible that such a person could exist. Every individual in the study was able to “create” a person, even when a set of character traits made no sense and were completely illogical e.g., it was possible/feasible for a person to be both dynamic and lazy etc. It may be that you can imagine such a person yourself, even if “rationally” these traits are contradictory. Whilst I marvel at the mind’s ability to be creative in this way without having to miss a beat, I also recognize the dangers that such creativity poses to our personal safety i.e., we can “rationalize” and “explain away” the warning signs that other people give us, rather than recognizing them for what they really are e.g. the group of excited young people coming towards us holding steak knives must be a culinary youth group on their way to a cooking convention etc. Self-deception allows us the ability to “cope” (deny) the danger and reality of the situation(s) we are facing/dealing with.
Our ability to engage in self-deception can play against us in our relationships with others. In romantic/intimate relationships we may tell ourselves that when a partner needs to know where we are every minute of the day, it’s because they are concerned with our safety. That when they explode with anger and rage towards us over something it is because they are so passionate and in love with us, that even the smallest thing sets them off and/or when they want us to stay in with them rather than go out with our friends that it is a sign of how committed they are to us etc. the ease and simplicity with which we can “deceive” ourselves is alarming. We can convince ourselves that the sports coach who wants to spend more time with our child is only interested in their athletic performance, which is something that our child would benefit from as they no longer seem that interested in playing the sport; there are many reasons that children/teenagers lose interest in an activity or sport but if it is sudden and they seem to have an overly emotional resistance to continuing with it, it may be down to personal dynamics/reasons (this shouldn’t by default be seen as sexual, though it should be considered).
We have the ability to “create”/see people in a number of ways and will engage in self-deception – at a subconscious level - to do so. When our next-door neighbor, or a person we know, who is arrested for child sexual abuse (CSA), we will remember the time they mowed an elderly person’s lawn and/or the time that they went shopping for someone who was sick/ill etc. Only when we hear of the allegations against them will we question how someone who seemed so empathetic, generous and helpful could engage in such offenses. Jimmy Saville flew under the radar at the BBC, because despite all of the warning signs and evidence, the channel’s executives collectively participated in a major act of self-deception based on the extensive and seemingly tireless amount of charity work he engaged in. In areas where we have a self-interest, we are especially vulnerable to self-deception i.e., we want things to be how we see them as this serves our purpose etc. This doesn’t necessarily make us “bad” people, it just makes us human. Taking a moment to question why we believe something about someone and/or a situation and recognizing/admitting to ourselves that as a species we constantly engage in acts of self-deception, we can help improve our personal safety.