Self-Deceit: An Inevitable Response?

Introduction

Have you ever set out to achieve something, only to fail in the end? Did you then go on to tell yourself that the goal was not worth the effort anyway? This is a clear example of self-deceit: hiding truth from yourself and convincing yourself of something that you do not actually believe (Trivers, 2010). This phenomenon is a result of people’s natural tendency to justify their own experience. Indeed, self-deceit is an inevitable result of the self-protection instinct, which can either be seen as a response triggered to reduce cognitive dissonance, or as one of many defense mechanisms people use when faced with difficult situations.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological theory that describes the mental discomfort caused by conflicting ideas (APA Dictionary, 2018). First introduced in Leon Festinger’s book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, the concept explains sudden feelings of discomfort and anxiety (Festinger, 1957). When people’s actions contradict their beliefs, they experience discomfort because of the misalignment, hence “cognitive dissonance”. When this occurs, people have an urge to reduce the misalignment, either by adjusting their actions to match their beliefs or changing their beliefs to align with their actions. Most of the time, this leads to the latter. People form a new way of thinking that fits into what they have done.

Self-deceit can be defined as the result of cognitive dissonance. When experiencing conflicting thoughts, people often choose to adopt beliefs that reduce their discomfort, even as they hold onto their original ideas. Thus, they are deceiving themselves that they have disregarded their previous views (Caudwell, 2022). To illustrate this, suppose that a man who often sunbathes realizes that sunbathing causes cancer. Cognitive dissonance is when he recognizes the harm of sunbathing, but his habit contradicts this belief. To ease the sense of discomfort, he could stop sunbathing—altering his behavior. But more likely, he would change his belief. By looking for benefits of sunbathing, or reasons to disprove the connections between sunbathing and cancer, he could adopt a more permissive attitude toward sunbathing. In such a scenario, self-deceit is about persuading himself that sunbathing is not so detrimental, even though he knows deep down that it can be harmful.

Cognitive dissonance is a common experience in everyday life. We often encounter new ideas that challenge our established views, and we have to decide how to respond. If we do not want to change our actions, then the only way to adapt is to think differently. However, people do not change their beliefs easily. The belief formed through self-deceit is only a temporary resolution to reduce cognitive dissonance. So it is inevitable that we deceive ourselves in what we believe in.

Cognitive dissonance could also occur when our image of who we are is challenged by what we experience. We see ourselves as a particular kind of person, and often have some knowledge of how other people see us. Naturally, we want to act according to this image of us (Aronson, 2019). Sometimes, though, we face situations where we do not have the ability to or should not act according to our self-expectations. Conflict arises between the reality we face and our self-perception. For instance, a person who considers himself an intellectual might want to believe that he already knows everything. Even in areas he knows nothing about, he might convince himself, “I already know this”. Here, cognitive dissonance arises between his self-perception of being knowledgeable and the reality that he is unfamiliar with the subject. To avoid self-doubt, he deceives himself into thinking that he knows more than he actually does and he does not need to learn. Hence, the tension between our self-perception and reality causes self-deceit as a way to maintain a consistent self-image.

Thus far, from the perspective of cognitive dissonance, we can conclude that self-deceit is the result of our mental inconsistencies. We want to lessen the uncomfortable feelings caused by cognitive dissonance, which causes us to engage in self-deceptive thinking (Cooper, 2007).

There is a difference between self-deceit and hypocrisy that should be noted. Hypocrisy involves a contradiction between what a person claims to believe in and what he actually does. Self-deceit is when a person actually does hold a belief, but is persuading himself to think otherwise. Self-deceit is an internal state that might not even be intentional.

Defense Mechanisms

Let’s look at self-deceit from the lens of self-protection. In psychology, this behavior is called defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms are used to protect ourselves when situations make us feel threatened, guilty, or stressed (Cramer, 2015).

There are many types of defense mechanisms that people use to cope with uncomfortable situations, including denial, repression, rationalization and reaction formation (Freud, 1936). In most cases, self-deceit plays an important role in how defense mechanisms shape behaviors.

Denial is a common defense mechanism we use when a situation feels overwhelming. When a thing is “just too much to handle”, a likely response is simply denying that it really exists, or avoiding having to deal with it. In these scenarios, people ignore things they do not want to think about, effectively turning a blind eye to parts of their life that cause pain. This is an easy way to defend ourselves against things we find hard to confront in the short term (Costa, 2020). For example, if a person has to take an exam that he is not prepared for, he could deny the fact that he will struggle on the exam. Denial is a clear form of self-deceit since you know that the thing is still out there; you simply do not want to face it.

Repression is similar. Also termed “motivated forgetting”, repression involves pushing uncomfortable thoughts into the back of the mind. Compared to denial, repression happens with situations that make us feel personal responsibility and guilt. We still know about the event subconsciously, but on a conscious level, repression could make us forget our uncomfortable thoughts entirely, and this reduces the pain we feel (Prasertsri, 2021). When we engage in repression, we often do not even realize that we are deceiving ourselves, but this self-deception gives us a distorted picture of reality.

More subtly, there is rationalization. This defense mechanism does not involve changing our understanding of prior experiences, but it makes us think about them differently. We think of a variety of excuses for what we have done, and reasons why something unwelcome has happened. We become convinced that our experiences are acceptable after all (Knoll, 2016). Yet deep down, we probably have not really accepted what has happened, and know that these reasons are only excuses. In these scenarios, self-deception helps us feel better and avoid dwelling on the unacceptable aspects of our life.

Reaction formation is a more complicated form of defense mechanism. We act in a way that contradicts how we feel, sometimes in an overly exaggerated manner. This seemingly paradoxical psychological state occurs as a response to stress. A classic example of reaction formation is behaving extra-kindly toward someone we dislike. The normal response would be hostility, but because expressing aggression feels unacceptable, we overcompensate by showering that person with warmth and friendliness. Reaction formation replaces our uncomfortable feelings with the opposite emotions (Vinney, 2025). We suppress our authentic thoughts to demonstrate the more acceptable behavior. Self-deceit occurs subtly: we deceive ourselves through our behaviors and thus push our true feelings aside.

These defense mechanisms demonstrate how self-deceit is experienced as a response to uncomfortable experiences, situations, or feelings. We change our understanding of and behaviors relating to these situations. This perspective, though different from the theory of cognitive dissonance, still defines self-deceit as our innate response to what we experience.

The 2017 movie Marrowbone shows an extreme case of self-deceit. Jack, the eldest child in the Fairbairn family, is forced to shoulder the responsibility of the family after his father is convicted of crimes and his mother falls ill. On the surface, he sees himself interacting with his siblings in a normal course of life. The truth, however, is quite startling. As it turns out, Jack’s father had escaped from prison and come to find the family, and when Jack failed to confront him, he killed all of Jack’s siblings. Over the course of the movie, Jack starts to hallucinate the images of his siblings playing with him around the house and deceived himself into thinking that everything is alright. To shield himself from reality, Jack blocks the attic to avoid walking into the painful memories. He covers the mirrors to avoid seeing the reflections of his imagined siblings and even cuts them off from the outside world to maintain an illusion that exists only in his head (Johnson, 2025). In the end, when the tragic truth is finally revealed, Jack is sent to psychiatric care and finds the courage to start his life anew.

Jack’s behavior demonstrates repression and denial: he represses the memory of his siblings’ murder and denies the fact that he is the only one left alive. These are defense mechanisms activated by his catastrophic experiences, which result in self-deceit. When a tragic incident ruined everything that Jack cared for, he deceives himself about the death of his loved ones, and builds an imaginary world where his siblings are still alive. This is Jack’s way of responding to trauma: it is easier to believe that nothing is wrong than to accept that he is left alone in the world. Generally, experiences like those portrayed in Marrowbone are rare, and self-deceit usually does not lead to hallucinations. Nevertheless, for Jack, self-deceit is the inevitable response to his traumatic experience.

Conclusion

Self-deceit is the innate self-protection that people engage in when faced with difficult situations. When we face cognitive dissonance between our thoughts and our behavior, we tend to alter our behavior. When the events we experience in life are too hard to handle, we apply defense mechanisms to avoid having to face them. Essentially, self-deceit is an inevitable response, the mind’s attempt to protect ourselves from things we don’t want to face.

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