Does Research Show That Self-Deceived People Are Happier?

Does Research Show That Self-Deceived People Are Happier?

Perhaps you’ve read one of the many books or articles that have come out in the last thirty years with titles like “Why Self-Deception Can Be Healthy for You,”12 or Kidding Ourselves: The Hidden Power of Self-Deception.13 Or “Depressed People See the World More Realistically—And Happy People Just Might Be Slightly Delusional.”14 These books and articles summarize a popular subfield in psychology arguing that our mental health depends on holding “positive illusions” about ourselves and our lives.

However, before you toss my book out the window and start trying to self-deceive your way to happiness, let’s take a closer look at this research. Here’s my summary of the methodology of a typical study from this field, by a psychologist at the University of Washington named Jonathon Brown—see what you think of it:15

1. Brown asks people to rate themselves relative to their peers on positive traits like “responsible” and “bright.”
2. He finds that people with high self-esteem tend to rate themselves as being better-than-average on those positive traits.
3. Therefore, Brown concludes, psychological health is associated with “self-enhancement biases.”

Do any problems jump out at you?

Well, for one thing, Brown never learns whether people’s ratings of themselves are accurate or not. He simply assumes that if someone claims to be better than average, they must be under the influence of “self-enhancement biases.” But of course, for any given trait, a lot of people really are better than average. Some people are more responsible than average, some people are brighter than average, and so on. So another way to summarize these results would simply be, “People with a lot of positive traits tend to have high self-esteem.”16 There’s no need to invoke a “self-enhancement bias” in this story at all.

Calling people’s beliefs “biased” or “illusions” without any objective standard of reality to compare them to is a problem that’s rampant throughout the research on self-deception. One of the most widely cited papers in psychology is a summary of the case for positive illusions, a 1988 review article that Jonathon Brown coauthored with UCLA psychologist Shelley Taylor, titled “Illusion and Well-being: A Social Psychological Perspective on Mental Health.” If you’ve read an article or book on the benefits of self-deception, chances are it cites this paper. And just from skimming its language, you can tell that the field conflates positive illusions and positive beliefs. Here’s a sample paragraph:

Positive illusions have been tied to reports of happiness. People who have high self-esteem and self-confidence, who report that they have a lot of control in their lives, and who believe that the future will bring them happiness are more likely than people who lack these perceptions to indicate that they are happy at the present.17

Notice the switch that occurs between the first and second sentences in that paragraph. The first sentence claims happiness is connected to “positive illusions” about your life. But the supporting second sentence merely says happiness is connected to positive beliefs about your life—beliefs that we have no reason to doubt are accurate.

Sometimes, researchers simply decide ahead of time what must be true of people and then assume that anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. The Self-Deception Questionnaire was developed in the 1970s by psychologists Harold Sackeim and Ruben Gur, who used it to determine that “people who were happiest, were the ones who were lying to themselves more.”18 Your score is based on how you answer a series of questions about yourself on a scale from 1 (“not at all”) to 7 (“very much so”).

One of the questions is “Do you ever get angry?” If you give an answer of 1 or 2 out of 7, you’re classified as self-deceiving. But I have some friends whom I’ve known for over a decade, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen them get angry. If they answered this question honestly, they would be classified as self-deceivers.

And the questions get weirder from there. One is “Do you ever feel attracted to people of the same sex?” Another is “Have you ever wanted to rape or be raped by someone?” Again, if you give an answer of only 1 or 2 (out of 7) to these questions, you are assumed to be lying to yourself.19 This research does not tell us much about self-deception . . . though it might tell us something about the researchers themselves.

Of course, the fact that the “self-deception causes happiness” research is fatally flawed doesn’t prove that self-deception can’t cause happiness. It clearly can, in many cases. It just comes with the downside of eroding your judgment. And given that there are so many ways to cope that don’t involve self-deception, why settle?

Making a plan, finding silver linings, and changing your goal are some ways to manage emotions without giving up on accurate beliefs. Different strategies work for different people. One friend of mine copes with painful criticism by conjuring up a feeling of gratitude toward his critic. This works for him but does not work for me at all. Instead, I cope by focusing on how much better I’m going to be in the future if I can get myself to think honestly about the criticism.

With practice, you develop your own tool kit of coping strategies that work for you. Just remember: don’t settle! Your ability to see clearly is precious, and you should be reluctant to sacrifice it in exchange for emotional comfort. The good news is that you don’t have to.