MIT during the cold and miserable month of January. To fulfill the requirements, I had to take many classes in ballroom dancing, poetry, tie tying, and other such cotillion-inspired skills. And in truth, the longer I have the certificates on my office wall, the more I believe that I am indeed quite charming.
WE TESTED THE effects of certificates by giving our participants a chance to cheat on our first math test (by giving them access to the answer key). After they exaggerated their performance, we gave some of them a certificate emphasizing their (false) achievement on that test. We even wrote their name and score on the certificate and printed it on nice, official-looking paper. The other participants did not receive a certificate. Would the achievement markers raise the participants’ confidence in their overstated performance, which in reality was partially based on consulting the answer key? Would it make them believe that their score was, indeed, a true reflection of their ability?
As it turns out, I am not alone in being influenced by diplomas hanging on the wall. The participants who received a certificate predicted that they would correctly answer more questions on the second test. It looks as though having a reminder of a “job well done” makes it easier for us to think that our achievements are all our own, regardless of how well the job was actually done.
THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELIST Jane Austen provided a fantastic example of the way our own selfish interests, together with the help of others around us, can get us to believe that our selfishness is really a mark of charity and generosity. In
Despite the satisfaction John gets from this idea and the ease with which the gift can be given, his clever and selfish wife convinces him—without much difficulty and with a great deal of specious reasoning—that any money he gives his step-family will leave him, his wife, and their son “impoverished to a most dreadful degree.” Like a wicked witch from a fairy tale, she argues that his father must have been light-headed. After all, the old man was minutes from death when he made the request. She then harps on the stepmother’s selfishness. How can John’s stepmother and half sisters think they deserve any money? How can he, her husband, squander his father’s fortune by providing for his greedy stepmom and sisters? The son, brainwashed, concludes that “It would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and his father’s three daughters …” Et voila! Conscience appeased, avarice rationalized, fortune untouched.
SELF- DECEPTION IN SPORTS
All players know that steroid use is against the rules and that if they are ever discovered using them it will tarnish their records as well as the sport. Yet the desire to beat new (steroid-fueled) records and to win media attention and fan adoration drives many athletes to cheat by doping. The problem is everywhere and in every sport. There was Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his Tour de France victory because of steroid use in 2006. The University of Waterloo in Canada suspended its entire football team for a year when eight players tested positive for anabolic steroids. A Bulgarian soccer coach was banned from the sport for four years for giving players steroids before a match in 2010. And yet we can only wonder what steroid users think as they win a match or while receiving a medal. Do they recognize that their praise is undeserved, or do they truly believe that their performance is a pure tribute to their own skill?
Then, of course, there’s baseball. Would Mark McGwire hold so many records if not for steroid use? Did he believe his achievement was owing to his own skill? After admitting to steroid use, McGwire stated, “I’m sure people will wonder if I could have hit all those home runs had I never taken steroids. I had good years when I didn’t take any, and I had bad years when I didn’t take any. I had good years when I took steroids, and I had bad years when I took steroids. But no matter what, I shouldn’t have done it and for that I’m truly sorry.”2
Sorry he may be, but in the end neither his fans nor McGwire himself can know exactly how good he really is.
AS YOU CAN see, people tend to believe their own exaggerated stories. Is it possible to stop or at least decrease this behavior? Since offering money to people to judge their performance more accurately did not seem to eliminate self-deception, we decided to intervene beforehand, right at the moment people were tempted with the opportunity to cheat. (This approach is related to our use of the Ten Commandments in chapter 2, “Fun with the Fudge Factor.”) Since our participants were clearly able to ignore the effect that the answer key had on their scores, we wondered what would happen if we made the fact that they were relying on the answer key more obvious at the moment that they were using it. If using the answer key to boost their scores was blatantly obvious, would they be less able to convince themselves that they had known the correct answer all along?
In our initial (paper-based) experiments, it was not possible to figure out exactly when our participants’ eyes wandered to the answer key and the level to which they were aware of the help that they got from the written answers. So in our next experiment, we had our participants take a computerized version of the same test. This time the answer key at the bottom of the screen was initially hidden from sight. To reveal the answers, participants had to move the cursor to the bottom of the screen, and when the cursor was moved away, the answer key was hidden again. That way the participants were forced to think about exactly when and for how long they used the answer key, and they could not as easily ignore such a clear and deliberate action.
Although almost all of the participants consulted the answer key at least once, we found that this time around (in contrast to the paper-based tests) they did not overestimate their performance in the second test. Despite the fact that they still cheated, consciously deciding to use the answer key—rather than merely glancing at the bottom of the page—eliminated their self-deceptive tendencies. It seems, then, that when we are made blatantly aware of the ways we cheat, we become far less able to take unwarranted credit for our performance.
Self-deception and Self-help
So where do we stand on self-deception? Should we maintain it? Eliminate it? I suspect that self-deception is similar to its cousins, overconfidence and optimism, and as with these other biases, it has both benefits and disadvantages. On the positive side, an unjustifiably elevated belief in ourselves can increase our general well-being by helping us cope with stress; it can increase our persistence while doing difficult or tedious tasks; and it can get us to try new and different experiences.
We persist in deceiving ourselves in part to maintain a positive self-image. We gloss over our failures, highlight our successes (even when they’re not entirely our own), and love to blame other people and outside circumstances when our failures are undeniable. Like our friend the crab, we can use self-deception to boost our confidence when we might not otherwise feel bold. Positioning ourselves on the basis of our finer points can help us snag a date, finish a big project, or land a job. (I am not suggesting that you puff up your resume, of course, but a little extra confidence can often work in our favor.)
On the negative side, to the extent that an overly optimistic view of ourselves can form the basis of our actions, we may wrongly assume that things will turn out for the best and as a consequence not actively make the best decisions. Self-deception can also cause us to “enhance” our life stories with, say, a degree from a prestigious university, which can lead us to suffer a great deal when the truth is ultimately revealed. And, of course, there is the general cost of deception. When we and those around us are dishonest, we start suspecting everyone, and
