An allusion that everyone is familiar with is called hiding one’s ears and stealing one’s bell. The story is so vividly described that we can easily picture a self-deceiving little person in our minds. Self-deception is obviously a derogatory term.

But there are many new interpretations of this word. This article combines my recent learning and thinking, and hopes to redefine it in many different dimensions: self-deception.

The famous physicist Feynman has a famous saying: "The first principle is that you should not deceive yourself, because you are the easiest to be deceived by yourself."

This famous saying sounds a little bit Counter-intuitively, how could I deceive myself?

Sometimes you deceive yourself to satisfy your own inner self-consistency. There is a concept called cognitive dissonance, which is when you find that your behavior is inconsistent with your self-image, you will create an illusion to explain your behavior.

For example, an aunt is deceived into buying a large amount of unreliable health care products. This is a behavior. Of course Auntie herself doesn’t think she is stupid. Of course Auntie’s self-image is that she can distinguish right from wrong. Then, there is a discrepancy between behavior and self-image. At this time, the aunt will generally not admit her mistake, but will have the illusion that the health care products are effective and worth the money.

For another example, there used to be a religious organization that firmly believed that a certain day would be the end of the world. When nothing happened on that day, its members and congregants did not repent, but became more convinced of its teachings, thinking that this was the end of the world. Their piety moved Almighty God and prevented the disaster from happening.

In 1973, two criminals kidnapped four bank employees in Stockholm. After a 130-hour standoff with the police, they finally surrendered. The abductees showed kindness to the criminals when testifying in court, and one of the women even fell in love with one of them. criminal. This became known as Stockholm Syndrome.

From the above examples, we can see that I am really not very reliable, and I was deceived by myself accidentally.

Looking at the above description, we find that we are very unreliable and can easily be deceived by ourselves. We should strengthen our rational thinking. But sometimes it does pay to lie to yourself.

There is a psychological symptom called "Imposter Syndrome", which refers to habitual hesitation when faced with opportunities, low self-evaluation, and feeling like an impostor and not worthy of what you currently have. something.

The way to get rid of impostor syndrome is to deceive yourself with kindness and pretend that you are confident. After pretending for a long time, you will really become confident.

Amy Cuddy gave a speech on "Your body language shapes who you are" at TED, in which she used her own case to describe how to break the impostor syndrome. There is a saying in it: : "Fake it till you make it." It seems that deceiving yourself can sometimes make you stronger.

In addition, deceiving yourself is sometimes to better deceive others. This sentence is not what I said, but in 1967, the American economist Nobel Prize winner Thomas Schelling put forward a theory.

Parents interfere too much with their children. What they often say is, "I am doing this for your own good." This sentence is said so much that the parents themselves believe it to be true. I don't even realize it, it's just to satisfy my desire for control, vanity or other things.

It seems that everything has two sides, and self-deception cannot be beaten to death with a stick. The third point below is even more subversive.

We all know the story about the fox who couldn’t eat the grapes and said the grapes were sour. This is obviously deceiving himself, because in fact the grapes may be very sweet.

But from a psychological point of view, there is another explanation. Does the fox think that the grapes are sour and its happiness is high? Or does the fox think that the grapes are sweet and it cannot eat them, so its happiness is high? It's obviously the former.

The Beatles are popular all over the world and are known as the greatest rock band. The band's former drummer Peter Best quit the band and stayed in London before the band decided to go global and become famous.

Years later, a reporter asked Best. How did you feel about not being part of the great Beatle? Best's answer showed the heart of a perfect fox: I'm happier than I was when I was in the Beatles.

So is Best's happiness and joy real? Or is it just pretending? The scientific explanation is: that happiness is real happiness.

When we face an event, our psychological process usually has three steps:

This is actually the standard ABC emotional model. Inciting event A is not the direct cause of emotion and behavior C; the analysis and explanation B of inciting event A is the direct cause of emotional behavior C. By changing your analysis and interpretation of events, you can influence your emotions and behavior.

So Best changed his analysis and explanation of missing the Beatles and believed that his peaceful and peaceful life was better than the Beatles' life full of trouble and danger. So Best also gained a real sense of happiness.

Then the question arises, if what we pursue is happiness. Can we say that Best was deceived by himself? Or is he just living in another version of reality?

I heard the live broadcast of the regular meeting a few days ago, and Tuobuhua laughed at their CFO. In 2007, he chose the Big Four in the face of two offers from the Big Four and Tencent. Ten years later, Tencent's stock price has soared like that... According to the theory of this article, their CFO may not be really depressed, he is just experiencing another kind of happy life.

When I heard this part of the live broadcast, I counted the time when I gave up Tencent’s offer and came to Shanghai, and cursed in my mind: TMD, that was also 2007...