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Tell me the truth, lizard – am I deceiving myself?
The human capacity for self-deceptionknows no bounds, but why do we do it?  According to biologist 
Robert Trivers
thesimple answer is that it helps us have morechildren. He told 
Graham Lawton
about theevolutionary benefits of lying 
Psychologists been interested in self-deception for years, but you say weneed a new science of self-deception?
Yes. Because the psychologists have notproduced a theory. Self-deception lies at theheart of psychology, but if you read onlypsychology you will go blind and probablycrazy before you discern the underlyingprinciples. A functional view of self-deceptionhas to come out of evolutionary logic. It hasto be a pay-off in terms of reproductivesuccess.
 You argue that we deceive ourselves allthe time, but why do we do it?
One reason is to better deceive others.Deceiving consciously is cognitively demanding. I've got to invent a false story while being aware of the truth, it's got to be plausible, it cannot contradict anything you already know or are going to findout and I've got to be able to remember it so that I don't contradict myself.This takes concentration and I may give off cues that I'mlying. If I try to slip something by you Imay not be able to meet your gaze. For linguistic cues, there are more pauses and fillers while Itry to come up with my story. I'll choose simple action words and avoid qualifiers. Another thingthat gives us away us is the effort to control ourselves. Let's say I'm coming to a key word in a lie. Itense up, but tensing up automatically raises my voice. That's a very hard thing to fight.
So believing the lie yourself can help with this cognitive burden?
Yes. If I can render all or part of the lie unconscious I can remove the cues that I'm deceiving you.So that's one kind of general reason to practice self-deception: to render the lie unconscious, thebetter to hide it.
What other types of self-deception are there?
Another broad category is that there is a general tendency to self-inflation. If you ask high schoolstudents are they in the top half of their class for leadership ability, 80 per cent will say yes; 70 per cent say they're in the top half for good looks. It ain't possible! And you cannot beat academics for self-deception. If you ask professors whether they're in the top half of their profession, 94 per centsay they are.
So we self-deceive in order to give ourselves an ego boost?
The ego boost, again, is in order to deceive others. There is little intrinsic value in deceivingyourself without deceiving others.
What are the benefits of deceiving other people?
There are many, many situations in which you gain personal benefit. If you're going to steal, you'vegot to lie to cover it up. If you're having an affair you lie to protect the relationship Now, what do wemean by personal benefit? Ultimately it is measured in terms of reproductive success. But thereisn't a straightforward relationship between deception and reproductive success. For example, if I 
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Evolutionary guru: Don't believe everything you think
12 October 2011 by
Graham Lawton
Magazine issue2833.
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lie and I rise in the corporation, does this result in extra children? So we have to make a separateargument about why rising in the profession gives you benefits that translate into more survivingoffspring.
There must be costs too?
Yes. The cost takes various forms. One is that you are more likely to be manipulated by others. Aself-deceived person may be the only one in the room that doesn't know what the hell is going on.Con artists use tricks to get your machinery of self-deception going, and then they control you.The general cost is you risk being out of touch with reality.
But still the benefits outweigh these costs?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Self-deception would not have evolved if the costs alwaysoutweighed the benefits.
What is going on in our brains when we deceive ourselves?
At the moment, not a lot is known about the neurophysiology. Much more is known about theimmunology of self-deception. Here's a vivid example of the cost of self-deception. Because of HIV,various aspects of homosexuality have been studied very intensely. It turns out the more you're outof the closet, the better for you. If you're HIV positive, you transit into AIDS much quicker if you'rein the closet about being homosexual.
Let's return to evolution. Are humans the only species with the capacity for self-deception?
No, I do not think so. Lying is widespread throughout the animal kingdom, both between speciesand also within species. One example is mimics, species that are harmless and tasty but gainprotection by resembling a poisonous or distasteful one. Psychologists are getting close toshowing that monkeys practice self-deception.Like humans, monkeys naturally associate members of their "in-group" with positive stimuli suchas fruits, and out-group members with negative stimuli such as spiders.
Do children come into the world as self-deceivers or does it take a while to develop?
That is very tough to say. There's evidence that deception in children starts at six months of age.By eight or nine months they have developed the ability to deny that they care about somethingthat they do care about. But demonstrating self-deception is tricky.
Is it right that self-deception is correlated with intelligence?
Yes, at least for deception. The smarter your child is, the more he or she lies. In monkeys, thebigger the neocortex is, the more often they're seenlying in nature.
In your new book you get into some quite serious stuff about how self-deception fuelswarfare and other evils...
Regarding warfare, if you can get the group believing the same deception, you have a powerfulforce to impose group unity. And if you've sold the population a false historical narrative, say "theGerman people need room in which to live", then it's relatively easy to couple marching orders tothe delusion.
Tell me about the relationship between self-deception and religion.
It's complex. At one extreme you could say religion is complete nonsense, so the whole thing isan exercise in self-deception. I was raised as a Presbyterian and I occasionally attend. I standback and I read the creed that I was taught as a child and it's utter, utter nonsense. But could ithave spread so far by self-deception alone? Religion has been selected for. It has given manybenefits to people - health benefits, cooperative benefits. So I take an intermediate position.
Are you a self-deceiver?
I end the book with a chapter on fighting our own self-deception. I've been remarkably unsuccessfulin my own case. I just repeat the same kinds of mistakes over and over. If you ask me about myself-deception, I can give you stories, chapter and verse, in the past. But can I prevent myself doing the same damn thing again tomorrow? Usually not, though in my professional life as ascientist, I feel that I probably practice less self-deception, I'm more critical of evidence, a little bitharder nosed.
 You could be deceiving yourself about that.
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