UC Berkley Psychology researchers explain why it’s so easy to lie to yourself and how to stop deceiving yourself
Researchers have found that it is incredibly easy for people to persuade themselves that something is true, even when they know it is not.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you start off believing one thing, only to find yourself within a short span of time having a fully contrarian view? If so, you wouldn’t be alone.
According to new research published in the October issue of the journal Cognition, it is relatively easy for people to persuade themselves into changing their views in order to avoid cognitive dissonance.
Why lying to yourself is so easy
Yunhao Zhang from University of California, Berkeley, and David Rand from MIT performed two large-scale experiments that showed people don’t even need to be given an incentive to take an opposing view to what they think. They hypothesized that mere exposure to information would get people to employ self-persuasion to change their position on a matter.
The researchers explain that this happens because people begin to see nuances when articulating the other side of an argument. It could also be that even though you know something’s a horse that won’t run, you convince yourself otherwise to avoid being a hypocrite or just plain buy into the supposed benefits of which you are trying to convince others.
How to stop deceiving yourself
Susan Krauss Whitbourne, a professor emerita of psychology and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst wrote in Psychology Today that people can “find the fulfillment of following [their] own moral pathway.”
She recommends to “take the time to consider your own honest views.” That you should make the effort not to ditch your “positions that have helped to define who you are as a person,” no matter how easy it is to do so.
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