self-deception that directly benefits self (without fooling others). The placebo effect provides an interesting example.
Our logic also applies with special force to family and sexual interactions (see Chapters 4 and 5), each involving both conflict and cooperation over reproduction, life’s key aim. Family interactions can select for a divided self, in which our maternal half is in conflict with the paternal half, leading to a kind of “selves deception” between the two halves. Sexual relations are likewise fraught with conflict—and deceit and self-deception—from courtship to long-term life partnerships.
And there is an intimate association between our immune system and our psyches, such that self-deception is often associated with major immune effects, all of which must be calculated if we are to understand the full biological effects of our mental lives (see Chapter 6). There is a whole world of social psychology that shows how our minds bias information, from initial avoidance, to false encoding, memory, and logic, to incorrect statements to others—from one end to the other (see Chapter 7). Key mechanisms include denial, projection, and perpetual efforts to reduce cognitive dissonance.
The analysis of self-deception illuminates daily life, whether the evidence is embedded in personal experience or unconscious and uncovered only through careful study (see Chapter 8). One example from everyday life that has an entire chapter devoted to it is airplane and spacecraft crashes—they permit the cost of self-deception to be studied intensively under almost controlled conditions (see Chapter 9).
Self-deception is intimately tied to false historical narratives, lies we tell ourselves about our past, usually in the service of self-forgiveness and aggrandizement (see Chapter 10). Self-deception plays a large role in the launching of misguided wars (see Chapter 11) and has important interactions with religion, which acts as both an antidote to self-deception and an accelerant (see Chapter 12). We are hardly surprised to note that nonreligious systems of thought—from biology to economics to psychology—are affected by self-deception according to the rule that the more social a discipline, the more its development is retarded by self-deception (see Chapter 13). Finally, as individuals, we can choose whether to fight our own self-deceptions or to indulge them. I choose to oppose my own—with very limited success so far (see Chapter 14).
DECEPTION IS EVERYWHERE
Deception is a very deep feature of life. It occurs at all levels—from gene to cell to individual to group—and it seems, by any and all means, necessary. Deception tends to hide from view and is difficult to study, with self-deception being even worse, hiding itself more deeply in our own unconscious minds. Sometimes the subject must be ferreted out before it can be inspected, and we often lack key pieces of evidence, given the complexity of the subterfuges and our ignorance of the internal physiological mechanisms of self-deception.
When I say that deception occurs at all levels of life, I mean that viruses practice it, as do bacteria, plants, insects, and a wide range of other animals. It is everywhere. Even within our genomes, deception flourishes as selfish genetic elements use deceptive molecular techniques to over-reproduce at the expense of other genes. Deception infects all the fundamental relationships in life: parasite and host, predator and prey, plant and animal, male and female, neighbor and neighbor, parent and offspring, and even the relationship of an organism to itself.
Viruses and bacteria often actively deceive to gain entry into their hosts, for example, by mimicking body parts so as not to be recognized as foreign. Or, as in HIV, by changing coat proteins so often as to make mounting an enduring defense almost impossible. Predators gain from being invisible to their prey or resembling items attractive to them—for example, a fish that dangles a part of itself like a worm to attract other fish, which it eats—while prey gain from being invisible to their predators or mimicking items noxious to the predator, for example, poisonous species or a species that preys on its own predator.
Deception within species is expected in almost all relationships, and deception possesses special powers. It always takes the lead in life, while detection of deception plays catch-up. As has been said regarding rumors, the lie is halfway around the world before the truth puts its boots on. When a new deception shows up in nature, it starts rare in a world that often lacks a proper defense. As it increases in frequency, it selects for such defenses in the victim, so that eventually its spread will be halted by the appearance and spread of countermoves, but new defenses can