Department of Marketing, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA 02163, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Sep 13;108 Suppl 3(Suppl 3):15655-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1010658108. Epub 2011 Mar 7.
Researchers have documented many cases in which individuals rationalize their regrettable actions. Four experiments examine situations in which people go beyond merely explaining away their misconduct to actively deceiving themselves. We find that those who exploit opportunities to cheat on tests are likely to engage in self-deception, inferring that their elevated performance is a sign of intelligence. This short-term psychological benefit of self-deception, however, can come with longer-term costs: when predicting future performance, participants expect to perform equally well-a lack of awareness that persists even when these inflated expectations prove costly. We show that although people expect to cheat, they do not foresee self-deception, and that factors that reinforce the benefits of cheating enhance self-deception. More broadly, the findings of these experiments offer evidence that debates about the relative costs and benefits of self-deception are informed by adopting a temporal view that assesses the cumulative impact of self-deception over time.
研究人员记录了许多个人为自己的遗憾行为辩解的案例。四项实验研究了人们超越简单地为自己的不当行为辩解，主动欺骗自己的情况。我们发现，那些利用机会在考试中作弊的人更有可能欺骗自己，推断他们的高绩效是聪明的标志。然而，这种自我欺骗的短期心理益处可能会带来长期代价：在预测未来表现时，参与者期望表现同样出色——即使这些过高的期望证明代价高昂，他们仍然没有意识到这一点。我们表明，尽管人们期望作弊，但他们并没有预见到自我欺骗，而且那些强化作弊好处的因素会增强自我欺骗。更广泛地说，这些实验的结果为一个观点提供了证据，即关于自我欺骗的相对成本和收益的争论，是通过采用一种随着时间推移评估自我欺骗的累积影响的时间观点来得到启发的。
