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Self Deception In Psychology

2133 Words9 Pages

Self-deception is an important concept in psychology because it is encompassed in our effort to better describe, explain, predict, and change human behavior. It’s the process by which an individual unconsciously blinds him or herself from hard truths or situations. “It [self-deception] is important not only because it’s common and universal, but also because it is responsible for the vast majority of human tragedies, both tragedies of omission and commission” (Burton 1). These terms refer to how humans act and fail to act, due to situations or feelings. There are instances when self-deception is healthy, but if a person never confronts what he or she has oppressed, there can be harmful emotional, mental, and physical consequences. Because self-deception …show more content…

Implicit biases are unconscious and everyone everywhere is affected by them. “In fact, one can simply turn to the front page of just about any newspaper to see implicit bias play out in instances of police brutality against communities of color and blatant Islamophobia plaguing communities throughout the country”(Partelow). These biases help develop self-deception because they impede and influence the thinking process without the person realizing it, and they result in negative long term effects such as promoting discrimination and stereotyping. A common way for self-deception to emerge in humans is when we are confronted with uncomfortable or tragic situations. Our mind fabricates ego defenses to distract us from resulting thoughts and emotions such as fear, despair, and anxiety. “[Ego] defense mechanisms are psychological strategies that are unconsciously used to protect a person from anxiety arising from unacceptable thoughts or feelings” …show more content…

Sometimes self-deception prevents people from dealing with big problems which results in emotional and physical harm (Truth About Deception). This includes abusive relationships, for example, when a partner is having an affair, or when a man is arguing, angry and hits his partner. Immediately afterward, he smothers her in compliments, apologizes, gives her flowers in order to remedy the action. She forgives him, even though this is chronic behavior. Because the abuse is complicated is continually suppressed, it is harder to acknowledge and leave the relationship. A person needs to be able to differentiate between destructive behaviors and healthy self-deception. Some people use self-deception to avoid making difficult decisions. When it comes to health and fitness, people may lie to themselves, put off exercising or diet changing. A Texas former football player who was gaining weight told himself he didn’t need a personal trainer because he believed he was in control of his situation. When he finally changed his mind, a trainer helped him lose over 50 pounds in one winter

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For instance, controlling abuse is the way that an abusive person gains and maintains power and control over the person. In the essay it states “An abusive partner is controlling. They are manipulative. They might make a special point of coyly sharing information that they actually know will upset you”.

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arthur miller gave us a great example of this in his play “the crucible” by representing the pandemonium that could occur if one isn't honest through two characters, Abigail Williams, and John Proctor. the main protagonist, John proctor, always ends up in a tossed up frenzy of either situational dishonesty, or veracity to protect himself and others from being treated or tried in an unjust manner,

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Hawthorne once said, “Deception may give us what we want for the present, but will later take it away in the end.” Thus being said, it is inevitable to portray the actions of deception toward others. Many adolescents today seek pleasure in this particular behavior. The continuous cycle occurs in asking oneself, “Why do we put others down in order to put ourselves up?” In the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, selfishness and intentional dishonesty is intensely demonstrated throughout the characters.

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From early studies of police departments and law enforcement agencies, their culture is described as authoritarian, cynical, distrustful, elitist, homogeneous, macho, misogynist, monolithic, pessimistic, suspicious, insular, socially isolated and highly resistant to change. Relationships between police officers and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve is often times tense and difficult to maneuver. Police departments can implement an effective mechanism for change as "fish rot from the head first. "

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936 Words | 4 Pages

The attribution theory is a theory that proposes that people attempt to understand the behaviour of others by associating it with either situational (external) or dispositional (internal) factors. While this an interesting and popular theory, it has been discovered that when attributing behaviour, we often make errors, as we are more biased and judgemental than we would like to think. The two attribution errors that I will bring up in this essay are The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) and the Self-Serving Bias (SSB). The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) implies that when we observe the behaviour of others, we tend to over-attribute their behaviour to dispositional factors and underestimate the influence that situational factors may have had.

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627 Words | 3 Pages

My results from the race implicit association test (IAT) suggested that I have moderate automatic preference for white people over black people. This came as a surprise to me. Given that I have always considered myself a strong liberal and have consistently placed equality as a top priority, the test definitely changed my perspective on how people think automatically. Compared to other people 's results, they most likely had the same realization I had. Many explicit attitudes did not correlate to the study of implicit attitudes.

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986 Words | 4 Pages

Within social psychology lies the study of attitudes and stereotypes. These phenomena include a type of bias known as implicit bias; the term implicit bias describes attitudes towards people or associate stereotypes with them without conscious knowledge. We can measure this type of bias through the Implicit Association Test (IAT), Go/No Association Test (GNAT), Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), Evaluative Priming Task, Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST). Each measure has their own strengths and weaknesses; this essay will compare the Implicit Association Test to the Go/no-go Association Test and will conclude why IAT is a greater way of measuring bias in contrast to GNAT.

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1069 Words | 5 Pages

Implicit bias is defined as attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These stereotypes are brought upon us by everyday interactions, ideas, and experiences shared with other people. Culpable ignorance is defined as the lack of knowledge or understanding that results from the omission of ordinary care to acquire such knowledge or understanding. While listening to other people you may feel as if they are telling the complete truth and that there is no other side of their story. The time that you decide to not look any further into their stereotypical thoughts is the moment you become a victim of implicit bias and also become culpably ignorant because you know that there may be something

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880 Words | 4 Pages

Everybody has unconscious bias. But what role does it play in our daily lives? And how does it affect us? In the TED talk “What Does My Headscarf Mean to You”, speaker Yassmin Abdel-Magied aims to encourage the audience to acknowledge that everyone has unconscious bias, and to look past their own bias in order to promote equal opportunity, particularly when it comes to the workplace. “We all have our own biases.

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1538 Words | 7 Pages

With the fast development of modern society, people suffer from stress from their family and work, so they start to seek ways to release their pressure in their lives. Moreover, people usually unconsciously sums up their own experience in positive views . In the essay “Immune To Reality” by Daniel Gilbert, he refers to the idea of “psychological immune system”, a tendency of human to adjust their negative perspective to another one, when people are suffering from wrenching setback. The tenacity of human psyche and its ability of self-protection make people form walls to protect themselves. Although some people use their walls unintentionally, they rely on those walls to protect themselves from adversity and to support these untrue beliefs.

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1272 Words | 6 Pages

The same aspect of tragedy befalls Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun, who is a victim of her own making because she deceives self in the pursuit of frivolous undertakings and squanders her money (Hansberry, 1957). The outcome is that self-deception for the above-mentioned characters that they are doing the right thing, while in truth; they were doing the wrong thing leads to their downfall in one way or the

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177 Words | 1 Pages

Stephanie Ercission in The Way We Lie (1993) asserts that we all lie, occasionally, to avoid problems and disagreements, to keep secrets, and trying to protect/help others. The thing is though that we often see ourselves as honest, and we don’t realize that we are hurting people and things in return. Ercission supports this assertion by inserting quotes and explaining all the different type of lies people make and the negative consequence of each. The different types of lies include: the white lie, facades, ignoring the plain facts, omission, stereotypes, groupthink, etc. There are many words trying to get to the point of lies being wrong such as; ignorance, destructive, ignoring, victim, or difference.

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821 Words | 4 Pages

Being Deceitful Lead to Deaths Being deceitful is kind of like saying a little white lie, and lots of people are being deceitful nowadays. Some people do not think twice when they are being deceitful, so they end up in bad situations. An example of this is in Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy written by Shakespeare. There are scenes where it showed Romeo and Juliet being deceitful, which led to terrible results, or in their case, their death. For example, Juliet was being deceitful to her parents when she asked permission to have confession, Romeo was being deceitful to Tybalt when he insulted Romeo, the second time Juliet was being deceitful was when she told the nurse about going to Friar Laurence for confession.

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761 Words | 4 Pages

In her talk, Pamela Meyer lists examples of everyday lying statements we would make to each other such as “you don’t look fat in that” and “I just fished that email from my spam folder”. Meyer uses many comparison and contrast between cases to prove that all lies can be spotted. For example, she shows the reactions of two mothers after their children died. In these clips, she points out that even if the two mother’s words are equally devastating and sad, the unserious tone and calm demeanor of the mother who killed her kids gives away the fact that she was lying.

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538 Words | 3 Pages

Relationship abuse is a pattern of coercive and abusive behaviors. Most of the time when abuse goes on during a relationship, it is kept a secret because the victim is afraid of telling. The behaviors that go on are to maintain total control over a spouse or an intimate partner. Relationship is a choice or in other words it’s a learned behavior. Most abusers believe that they can do what they want and get away with it.

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