Abstract
Robert Trivers has proposed perhaps the only serious adaptationist account of self-deception—that the primary function of self-deception is to better deceive others. But this account covers only a subset of cases and needs further refinement. A better evolutionary account of self-deception and cognitive biases more generally will more rigorously recognize the various ways in which false beliefs affect both the self and others. This article offers formulas for determining the optimal doxastic orientation, giving special consideration to conflicted self-deception as an alternative to outright self-delusion. A novel taxonomy of self-deception, as it relates to the beliefs held by others, is also presented. While Trivers makes a plausible case for the adaptive value of certain cognitive biases, a more fragmented and nuanced account of the social forces impacting the evolution of self-deception is needed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Though, if such means were selected for their use in self-deception, then of course this could serve as further grounds for taking self-deception itself to be an adaptation. I simply assume that these means largely have been co-opted in self-deception, though I am not committed to this.
Trivers’ account is a thesis about the biological evolution of self-deception, and as such I primarily have in mind reproductive success as the relevant fitness value. However, we could also consider self-deception as a non-biological adaptation acquired by individual learning or through the development of culture. We would then need to focus on different fitness values and mechanisms of replication for learning and cultural evolution. Much of the logic and many of the considerations developed here also applies to non-biological evolutionary accounts of belief-forming mechanisms.
An incentive is something that benefits the subject but need not manifest itself as a desire or similar psychological state. Self-enhancing biases could be selected because they tend to benefit subjects (Taylor and Brown 1988), and a subject could possess such an incentivized bias even if she has no desire or similar motivational state to self-enhance.
Some might object that the unconscious mind is incapable of such strategic, flexible, highly context-dependent behavior. Yet, cases of unconscious/conscious conflict, like that given in the main text above and also described in the last paragraph of the next section, do occur. There is nothing incoherent, implausible, or particularly uncommon about them. Fortunately, recent psychological work has recognized that the unconscious/automatic/fixed and conscious/deliberate/flexible dichotomy is overly simplistic. For an excellent discussion of the psychological reality of unconscious but flexible motivation and behavior, see Hassin et al. (2009). Also see Funkhouser and Barrett (2016) for an application to self-deception in particular.
“What exactly is self-deception? Some philosophers have imagined that self-deception is a contradiction in terms, impossible at the outset. How can the self deceive the self? Does that not require that the self knows what it does not know (p/~p)? This contradiction is easily sidestepped by defining the self as the conscious mind, so that self-deception occurs when the conscious mind is kept in the dark” (Trivers 2011, 8–9). Though self-deception often exhibits such conscious/unconscious conflict, we should not simply define self-deception in this way. And based on his examples, he could just as well have “sidestepped” these problems by defining self-deception as cases in which there is only a biased belief that ~p.
Indeed, as an anonymous referee has pointed out to me, the beginnings of this logic can be found as early as Trivers (1974/2002, 141). There, Trivers argues that offspring can be motivated to deceptively signal greater need to their parents in an attempt to induce care that boosts the offspring’s inclusive fitness at the cost of its parent. In such a way, a self-serving bias can initiate an arms race of greater deception on the part of the offspring and greater deception detection on the part of the parent.
Von Hippel and Trivers (2011, 4): “Thus, the central proposal of our evolutionary approach to self-deception is that by deceiving themselves, people can better deceive others, because they no longer emit the cues of consciously mediated deception that could reveal their deceptive intent.” Trivers (2011, 3): “Applied more broadly, the general argument is that we deceive ourselves the better to deceive others. To fool others, we may be tempted to reorganize information internally in all sorts of improbable ways and to do so largely unconsciously. From the simple premise that the primary function of self-deception is offensive—measured as the ability to fool others—we can build up a theory and science of self-deception.”
Trivers (2000/2002) discusses parent-offspring conflict and positivity bias as explanations secondary to self-deception’s social function (interpersonal deception); and Trivers (2011) continues these themes, as well as highlighting self-deception’s immunological benefits and role in promoting in-group biases.
See, for example, von Hippel and Trivers (2011, Section 2).
Trivers (2011, 10). I will not challenge Trivers on this point here, but he likely overestimates our ability to detect lies. And this ability is essential to motivate his theory of self-deception. If we could just lie instead, we would have no need to deceive ourselves also. See Vrij (2011) for objections along these lines.
Van Leeuwen (2007, 334–335) makes this point through an example. Also see Johansson et al. (2011) for the worry that conflicted self-deception can end up being too successful, turning into outright self-delusion (e.g., the conscious falsehood extinguishes the unconscious truth). This is another risk to consider when entering conflicted self-deception: the sustainability of unconscious possession of the truth, when outright false belief is costly.
The disastrous outcome in this case is also largely due to a simple hierarchy bias (as the authors themselves recognize), whether or not self-deception was present.
For example, see von Hippel and Trivers (2011, Section 3).
There are other possibilities that I will not even consider here—e.g., an ignorance orientation, or believing the false but not allowing this belief to affect others. The formulation of the logic in this table is also partially anticipated in Trivers (2011, 50).
Again, we can also consider these strategies in non-biological settings, e.g., determining whether Truth, Liar, or Falsity is a better approach for, say, international negotiations.
Funkhouser (2005), Pinker (2011), and Van Leeuwen (2007) advocate similar usage. Mele (2001) and Lynch (2012) argue that what I am calling cases of conflicted self-deception are not cases of self-deception at all, and they claim that these situations do not display any doxastic conflict. On their views, mere suspicion or escapism (which do not demand any belief-like conflict) better describes what is going on. I make a detailed case for instances of real doxastic conflict in Funkhouser (2009) and Funkhouser and Barrett (2016).
Perhaps in the moral hypocrisy case a similar point holds. Maybe the hypocrite wants to retain some of the truth about the morality of his actions, so as to refrain from drawing attention to them. Compare this to the bald man who wants to retain some of the truth about his hairline in order to take avoidance measures to prevent others from noticing it.
Some have denied this, arguing that some non-belief-like state can be responsible for the avoidance behavior and selective attention to the evidence that I take to be indicative of conflict. Mele (2001, 26–31), for example, argues that hot and cold biases, in conjunction with mere suspicion, can account for this selectivity without positing a true belief “deep down.” But to clarify, I do not intend “doxastic conflict” to mean that the subject possesses conflicting (e.g., contradictory) beliefs. More often, conflicted self-deceivers have belief indicators that make it truly indeterminate what they believe. The emotional and behavioral responses that drive and constitute their avoidance behavior and selective attention to the evidence are indicators of belief. And these are the indicators that support the claim that the conflicted retain the truth to a non-trivial degree. For further discussion, see Funkhouser (2009).
The categories are: (1) self-inflation, (2) derogation of others, (3) in-group bias, (4) biases of power, (5) moral superiority, (6) illusions of control, (7) social role bias, (8) false personal narratives, and (9) unconscious modules of deception. (15–27). (1)–(8) can be grouped together as biases toward inflated beliefs about oneself or one’s group. (9) is unusual, however, as it does not generate false beliefs in the subject. Instead, this category is supposed to include deceptive behaviors—such as Trivers’ own kleptomania—of which we are unaware. These cases involve deception of others of which the self is ignorant. But as the subject is simply ignorant and in no way deceived (e.g., led toward false beliefs on the matter), I fail to see how this is a category of self-deception. Yes, the truth is hidden from her. But such examples do not have to involve unconscious deceptive practices, and any unconscious practice that we are kept in the dark about will do.
Van Leeuwen (2007, 335) also makes the case that self-deception often occurs in situations in which we would not benefit by spreading the deception to others.
Of course, in some cases the impact of the bias will be neutral. In all that follows, one can choose to group the neutral cases with either the beneficial or harmful cases according to their own bookkeeping preferences. I will group the neutral cases with the harm cases.
This is similar to an example from Trivers (1971/2002, 42) in which a person exploits the altruism of others: “Likewise, selection will favor the hypocrisy of pretending one is in dire circumstances in order to induce sympathy-motivated altruistic behavior.”
It is more common to think of these as self-enhancing and world-enhancing deceptions, and I have used these terms up till now. But I here reject this label, as the self could sometimes benefit from a self-lowering bias. For example, we might benefit by underestimating our chances of winning a battle. So too for world-presenting biases—e.g., we might benefit by overestimating the likelihood that the berries around us are poisonous.
Bear in mind that we are now limiting ourselves to cases in which our false belief affects others. But as argued in the previous section, this often is not the case.
As I interpret him, Van Leeuwen lumps my categories (2) and (3) into a “selective attention to the evidence” category. Van Leeuwen (2007, 339–340).
Von Hippel and Trivers (2011, 12).
Indeed, the motives to self-deceive likely descend from deceptive motives that we find in other animals and young children. Certain animals puff themselves up to make themselves look bigger than they in fact are; human babies often cry and depict their hunger as greater than it in fact is. But does the animal believe that it has great strength, or does the baby believe its hunger is so great? Probably not—they lack the cognitive sophistication (e.g., ability to reflect, manipulate evidence, etc.) to self-deceive. But once such animals acquire this cognitive sophistication, they then have a pre-existing motive to self-deceive.
I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for Biology and Philosophy who provided very detailed and helpful comments on this article. This revision has been greatly improved by their insights and careful attention. Thanks also to Neil Van Leeuwen and the graduate students in my fall 2014 belief and deception seminar at the University of Arkansas for being a receptive audience and for your astute comments.
References
Dawkins R (1976) The selfish gene. Oxford University Press, New York
Funkhouser E (2005) Do the self-deceived get what they want? Pac Philos Q 86(3):295–312
Funkhouser E (2009) Self-deception and the limits of folk psychology. Soc Theory Pract 35(1):1–13
Funkhouser E, Barrett D (2016) Robust, unconscious self-deception: strategic and flexible. Philos Psychol 29(5):682–696
Gendler T (2008) Alief and belief. J Philos 105(10):634–663
Gur R, Sackeim H (1979) Self-deception: a concept in search of a phenomenon. J Personal Soc Psychol 37(2):147–169
Haidt J (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychol Rev 108:814–834
Hassin RR, Bargh JA, Zimerman S (2009) Automatic and flexible: the case of nonconscious goal pursuit. Soc Cogn 27(1):20–36
Johansson P, Hall L, Gardenfors P (2011) Choice blindness and the non-unitary nature of the human mind. Behav Brain Sci 34(1):28–29
Lynch K (2012) On the “Tension” inherent in self-deception. Philos Psychol 25(3):433–450
Mele A (2001) Self-deception unmasked. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Pinker S (2011) Representations and decision rules in the theory of self-deception. Behav Brain Sci 34(1):35–37
Taylor S, Brown J (1988) Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychol Bull 103(2):193–210
Trivers R (1971)/2002 The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Q Rev Biol 46:35–57. Reprinted in Trivers (2002)
Trivers R (1974)/2002 Parent-offspring conflict. Am Zool 14:249–264
Trivers R (2000)/2002 The elements of a scientific theory of self-deception. Ann N Y Acad Sci 907:114–131. Reprinted in Trivers (2002)
Trivers R (2002) Natural selection and social theory. Oxford University Press, New York
Trivers R (2011) The folly of fools. Basic Books), New York
Trivers R, Newton H (1982)/2002 The crash of flight 90: doomed by self-deception? Sci Digest 111:66–67. Reprinted in Trivers (2002)
Valdesolo P, DeSteno D (2008) The duality of virtue: deconstructing the moral hypocrite. J Exp Soc Psychol 44:1334–1338
Van Leeuwen DSN (2007) The spandrels of self-deception: prospects for a biological theory of a mental phenomenon. Philos Psychol 20(3):329–348
von Hippel W, Trivers R (2011) The evolution and psychology of self-deception. Behav Brain Sci 34(1):1–16
Vrij A (2011) Self-deception, lying, and the ability to deceive. Behav Brain Sci 34(1):40–41
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Funkhouser, E. Is self-deception an effective non-cooperative strategy?. Biol Philos 32, 221–242 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-016-9550-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-016-9550-2