self-deception sinks ship many planes
fall out of the sky because of
overconfidence of the pilots
self-deception encourages ignorance it
eliminates the need for self control and
you can get saw intoxicated with the
sense of power that you can end up
saying something like I can kill someone
in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get
away with that so we don’t really we the
intelligent people don’t really engage
in self they said do you engage in self
discipline no but your husband he is
full of it yeah so the point is that we
don’t do it when others do it is so
transparent to us we can see exactly
when other people engage in
self-deception so it’s obvious to the
other people so let’s look at these two
guys this is Johnny comes back to his
dorm room after a party and tells Danny
is roommate that he just met the love of
his life
he met the mother of his future children
she is so wonderful and then he says
well what is it so special about her in
genesis she is so smart and sensitive
and she has a fantastic sense of humor
and she’s curious about so many
different things and he goes on and on
about things she knows absolutely
nothing about the real reason for the
that’s the real reason okay we don’t see
the here it is why is it that Danny is
buying all this from Johnny
because because he would have thought
and said exactly the same thing under
these same circumstances
so it’s not that obvious to us when
others are doing that
so let’s look now at another
misconception about self-deception which
is is it always about promoting our ego
what do you think is self-deception
about promoting ego Alber well I’m about
to tell you it’s not only about that
there’s so many other ways in which with
the severe selves we trust our memory
and our memory is so fragile it is so
easy to instill memories in your heads
the episodic memory which is the type of
memory that eyewitness testimonies calls
upon is so fragile and so reconstructed
that there is actually an inverse
relationship between the level of
conviction you have as a witness and the
veracity of what you’re saying
totally inverse relationship what other
things about ego don’t appear there we
have a belief that we know what makes us
happy we have a perception of well-being
that is actually the major motivation we
have in life we design our life in order
to meet the goals of I would like to be
happy in life actually we are terribly
wrong about that too let’s talk about
mental states don’t we have what’s
called privileged access do I know I’m
in pain I’m in love I’m infatuated by
the way infatuation has
self-life right and you can see from the
journey and any story why the shelf life
is about nine weeks only if it’s based
on such ignorance right these are
glorious nine weeks I’m not taking
anything away from them do you think
that you know why you laugh laughter is
something that we practice almost every
day we think that we laugh because
something is funny yes I got news for
you more than eighty percent of the time
you laugh there was nothing funny around
absolutely nothing we think that we
laugh because we communicate pleasure
no we laugh in a movie house when we are
all alone looking at the screen we think
that laughter indicates pleasure know
laughter also has a sinister side to it
the Columbine murderers were laughing as
they were shooting their friends do we
think that self-deception is a mark of
some mental disease like narcissism or
pathology do we think that it should be
eradicated at all cost I hope that after
my 15 minutes in the Sun today you will
think otherwise okay so memory is a
self-deception that we engage in on a
constant basis personal stability we
think that we are exactly the same
person we’ve always been or if we are
smart enough to notice a change we think
that we are the person that will be
tomorrow and for the rest of our lives
and actually we don’t we don’t know
ourselves that well Milgram’s notorious
experiment some 50 years ago show that
the majority of people are capable of
doing incredibly terrible things that
they would never do in they can do with
the slightest amount of pressure not
even any risk to their life just someone
in a white coat in the room with an air
of authority yes so self-deception is
not about
ego not all the time just some of the
time okay so let’s look at this raise
your hand if you think that you’re
better than the average driver some
forms of self-deception come highly
recommended and not only by me by bigger
brains than me we need to have a some
optimistic view of the future that is
not well warranted we need to have a
sense of self-efficacy that is not
actually sustained by defect Helen
Keller for instance we would have never
known about her if she only lived up to
their visible potential that she had at
the time so here they recommended
self-deception right this was a seminal
paper that came up in 1988 or so and it
says exercise unrealistic optimism and
why would you do that because you want
to have better relationship with your
wife you want to forget these daily
mistakes and so on you want to
overestimate control of yourself in the
environment so the question is how do we
go about doing that
how can we do that okay
so I like you to see a my racquetball
partner this is Ethan okay I’d like you
if you look really really hard you’re
gonna notice that there are some
discrepancies in the initial resources
right like k maybe wingspan right in the
testosterone level like so chances are
that he’s gonna wipe the floor with me
yes okay what do I do in order to
mitigate the pain of defeat I walk to
the court like yeah I’m willing me on my
shoulder I want it this and the racket
ideally string it for three months now
this is called
handicapping and it works like a charm
because if I fail in this endeavor it
was expected and if I beat him I get
twice the glory at no price right and
some handicapping is actually so
prevalent that there is an attempt for a
student who actually pretends not to not
to learn for a test and it actually
violates this its social contract right
it’s called sneaky Booker so now we know
about that and there are some other ways
might we have a built-in system that
tells us that gives us incredible tools
for managing a terrific healthy level of
self-deception one of them is
rationalization I’d like you to imagine
that you come out of say Walmart and
realize that you got more change than
you deserve
you gave the cashier 50 bucks we gave
you change from a hundred bucks you take
to yourself to be a citizen a good
citizen a decent person yeah what do you
do you keep walking to your car by the
time you get to your car you have 37
solid valid reasons for keeping the
money that you don’t deserve right
rationalization saves us right and left
attribution attribution is a fantastic
way to hypocritically assign causes to
your success and failure yes so let’s
call external causes those that are
cause right like I had the flu and
internal are due to your personality or
attributes right so the two of us are
taking a test right in the toughest are
doing when I did well because I’m smart
you did well because you had the
teacher’s pet okay the two of us are
applying for a job and neither one of us
got it why do you think I would say that
she didn’t get it
excuse me stupid yeah you’re just
incompetent right why is it I didn’t get
it I had the flu on the day of the
interview so attribution is something
that you can put a mirror in front of
people and show them that they are
hypocritical about how their sign
internal causes to their success and
external causes to other people’s
success right I failed because the dog
ate my homework you fail because we are
in idiot okay denial is something that
we are doing right and left we rewrite
history and so on magical beliefs are
incredible source of amusement actually
when people were given a golf ball the
day that was they were told it was
magical they actually were 35% more
successful in cutting it so it works it
works now
ethical fading means that the more you
do something that is immoral or goes
against your values the less painful it
becomes so just more do like the first
light comes hard that’s the second one
it’s a little easier and so on okay so
why is it that we do that we have
incredible adaptive benefits the major
one is economize on mental resources our
brain consumes over 20% of the body’s
energy the glucose and the oxygen the
brain parts constantly fight for real
estate when we engage in self-deception
and we eliminate reality so to speak the
brain is much better capable of actually
meeting daily goals it satisfies basic
dispositions like a sense of control
that we need we have better relationship
if we just gloss over the daily little
things if we actually a confront our
spouse for everything we can create more
damage then initially was done by the
source of the conflict which reduces do
you know that it is we actually produce
more t-cells in our immune system as a
result of self-deception yeah and it
lowers depression the people
who actually view life with really a
city’s have a tendency for clinical
depression so watch it yeah okay
hives high self-efficacy which is your
sense of how well you can do something
is right depends on that you don’t go to
a job interview without believing that
you can get it okay so now we are about
to exercise to practice what we preach
okay so can I ask you all please to get
up everyone stand up we’re gonna do a
very low-key jumping Jake like that okay
we are gonna do five of them and then
you don’t have to go to the gym for a
week okay
can you all count with me ready and one two three four five yes thank you
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