Research results that we lie to ourselves to trick people and gain social benefit

ByStefano Pepe

Many psychologists have been talking about "reasons why people lie about lying to themselves", "to raise motivation to achieve higher results", or "to overestimate yourself to make you feel better" I thought that. However, in a new study, it is claimed that "to deceive ourselves to deceive ourselves to deceive others more effectively and gain social benefits".

Self-deception facilitates interpersonal persuasion
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487016301854

Self-Deception Helps Us Accomplish Goals | Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intimate-portrait/201703/self-deception-helps-us-accomplish-goals

Living a Lie: We Deceive Ourselves to Better Deceive Others - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/living-a-lie-we-deceive-ourselves-to-better-deceive-others/


In 1976, the theory that Robert Trivers, a biologist, was advocated for the first time, that the "human beings deceive themselves to deceive others more effectively to cheat others and gain social benefits". However, since Mr. Trivers is a theorist, the hypothesis had been left until 2017 without demonstration experiments being done. However, as psychologist William von Hippel showed interest in Trivers' theory, it was decided that the experiment will be carried out after 40 years.

In the experiment conducted this time, 306 subjects on-line asked me to write a convincing speech about the fictitious person "Mark". At this time, the subjects were divided into three groups, group 1 was instructed to write the mark as "preferred person", group 2 was written as "unfavorable person", group 3 was "cuddled about the mark It is said to write impression intact. " At this time, it was explained that the more convincing the speech is, the more the reward you get will be increased.

Next, the researchers showed the subjects a movie that is the source of information about the mark. One of the movies depicts the mark as a good person at the beginning and gradually shows bad parts and the other one is a gradually better human being that the mark depicted as a bad person is on the contrary It was to be drawn.

People in Group 1 who were instructed to draw a mark as "preferred person", although the movie could interrupt viewing at an arbitrary timing, when seeing a movie depicting a good part of the mark at the beginning, the beginning It turns out that the timing to stop viewing is earlier than the person who saw the movie depicting the bad part. In other words, these people never tried to see the whole picture of the mark by watching the movie to the end. The resultant speech highlighted a positive aspect where the person who listened to the speech made a good evaluation about the mark. A similar phenomenon also occurred in a group instructed to "Mark as an unfavorable person."

ByMedieval Media

Also, in the experiments, not only did the subject write a speech but also evaluated the real image of Mark, "People instructed to write as" preferred person "actually look at Mark as a preferred person It seems that there is a bias like "others think that they are evaluating so". Moreover, as the bias was applied, the subjects created more convincing speech. From a series of experiments, the goal is to influence how people receive information, what they trust as truth, and trying to change the view of others' world.

"What is interesting is that if I could make myself believable it seemed to be able to persuade others more effectively." "We process information in a biased way, persuade ourselves , And persuade others, "Hippel says. However, there are researchers who dispute the results of this research, as it is different to intentionally deceive others and to fool others as a result of what they really think.