When Is Self-Deception Helpful or Dangerous?

In the media, often intelligent people make deceitful statements. Are they trying to deceive us or themselves?

Professors of philosophy Francisco Marchi and Albert Newen said we have an evolutionarily developed tendency toward self-deception. With few changes, moderate self-deception helps us feel good about ourselves and others in normal times. But in times of great change, self-deception is costly. The moderate self-deception that helped us get along in the past is splitting us apart in the present. Self-deception, Marchi said, "is catastrophic in times of radically new challenges that require rapid changes in behaviour."

Rather than deal with the challenges of a rapidly changing world, some leaders say we can put the genie back in the bottle and live as we did before. Our inclination is not to adapt but to blame. This is a form of self-deception social psychologists call "self-serving bias," the tendency to take credit for desirable change and blame the undesirable change on others. Since this tendency is built-in, we may believe we are completely objective when we boost ourselves at the expense of others, typically people who are different economically, geographically, racially, or sexually.

According to Marchi and Newen, the pandemic is an example of a change made catastrophic by self-deception. Rather than engaging in safe behavior, we faulted others or denied the existence of a problem. "Self-deception," Newen said, "becomes detrimental in times of crisis that require radical rethinking and new ways of acting, and puts society at risk."

Science makes it clear that climate change is heading us toward catastrophe. But when science delivers undesirable news, science is attacked as unreliable. Researcher James Shepperd explained, "people require more information to accept an undesired hypothesis than to accept a desired hypothesis."

What psychologists call normal defenses yield to evidence. Pathological defenses do not yield. In pathology, the person denies reality and believes what they wish. Denial and delusion are required for the person to function to avoid becoming depressed, homicidal, or suicidal. Because it is indispensable, pathological self-deception is bulletproof. See "A Primer on Psychological Defenses."

In this era of radical change, even normal defenses are a risk. Can we afford them? As a pilot, I learned I could not allow any self-deception when flying. It feels good to let normal defenses protect the ego, but self-deception can cost you your life and the lives of your passengers. A case in point is the worst crash in aviation history, the 1977 collision of KLM flight 4805 and Pan Am flight 1736 on the runway at Tenerife, Canary Islands. A key factor was self-deception by the KLM captain. He was instructed to enter the runway at the far end and taxi the full length of the runway to the takeoff position. Pan Am was also instructed to enter the runway to taxi to an exit halfway down the runway.

When KLM reached the end of the runway, the captain turned the plane around and began the takeoff. The flight engineer expressed concern that Pan Am was still on the runway. The captain, KLM's chief flight instructor, insisted he was right and continued the takeoff. As the KLM 747 reached 160 MPH, the captain saw the Pan Am 747 in front of them on the runway. He exclaimed in Dutch, "Godverdomme." Those words, recorded on the plane's cockpit voice recorder, were his last. The planes collided, costing 563 passengers and crew their lives.

I once told a psychiatrist friend that, as a pilot, I had learned to question everything I do before I do it. He said, "That is an awful way to live." I replied, "As a pilot, that is the only way to live if you want to keep doing it."

We are approaching one-million deaths due to COVID. Many of them were avoidable had it not been for self-deception in the service of the ego. It is time to reconsider so-called normal defenses. The defenses we all, including our leaders and celebrities, use for self-esteem stabilization should no longer be considered normal. Self-deception is a costly psychological luxury.

Like Sisyphus rolling a stone uphill, our fight against self-deception is an eternal uphill battle.

If Marchi and Newen were right, we must engage in this battle to survive. We must be aware of change, desirable or not. We must adapt whether we want to or not.

As philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it, "Hell is truth seen too late. Survival is falsehood detected in time."