Knowra Self-deception Self-deception Self-deception is the process of avoiding or distorting truths about oneself. It can occur without deliberate awareness and help protect a person’s self-image.
Motivated reasoning : Reasoning shaped by desired conclusions, which influences how evidence is sought, interpreted, and remembered. It describes how desires can steer judgments about uncomfortable facts.
Belief : A mental attitude that treats a proposition as true or likely true. Self-deception is often described as acquiring or maintaining a belief against evidence.
Jean-Paul Sartre : French philosopher whose existentialist writings analyze freedom, responsibility, and bad faith. His concept of bad faith treats self-evasion as a distinctive form of self-deception.
Bad faith : In Sartrean philosophy, evasion of one’s freedom and responsibility by treating oneself as fixed or determined. It is Sartre’s distinctive account of self-deception about freedom and responsibility.
Overconfidence effect : A cognitive bias in which confidence in judgments or abilities exceeds their accuracy. Inflated self-assessments can follow from maintaining favorable beliefs about one’s competence.
Cognitive dissonance : Psychological discomfort arising from inconsistency among beliefs, actions, or values. Discomfort from inconsistency can prompt people to revise beliefs or reinterpret evidence.
Self-concept : The collection of beliefs and evaluations a person holds about themselves. Distortions about personal traits or actions alter the person’s self-concept.
Alfred Mele : American philosopher known for work on agency, addiction, and self-deception. Mele develops an influential account that explains self-deception without requiring a divided mind.
Self-knowledge : Knowledge a person has of their own mental states, traits, motives, or history. Self-deception obstructs accurate knowledge of personal motives and characteristics.
Dunning–Kruger effect : A proposed pattern in which limited expertise can impair people’s ability to recognize their own errors. It illustrates how gaps in self-assessment may reinforce mistaken confidence.
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