自我欺骗实证研究述评

A Commentary on Empirical Study of Self-Deception

自我欺骗的施骗者和受骗者都是自我。这个特殊性导致自欺的定义、类型、研究方法等存在着争议。在系统梳理自欺相关实证研究的基础上,比较了自欺的不同定义和不同研究方法,提出了两种新的自欺分类,探析了自欺心理机制未来研究的思路,以期为后续研究提供借鉴和参考。

Self-deception has always been the focus of academic discussion because of two familiar puzzles.The first puzzle is that one cannot intentionally execute any strategy for deceiving oneself(dynamics puzzle);Secondly,one cannot simultaneously believe that something is true and false(state puzzle).At the same time,self-deception is a common psychological phenomenon in real life.Therefore,self-deception provides fertile ground for the study of biologists,philosophers and psychologists.Philosophers theoretically concern about the intentionality and reality of selfdeception,biologists and evolutionary psychologists focus on the applicability of the evolution of self-deception,whereas psychologists are interested in providing empirical evidence for the existence of self-deception and studying the mechanisms of self-deception.However,existing psychological empirical studies have a controversy on the operational definition,classification and research methods,which slows down the progress of self-deception study.In order to clarify the nature of the previous research controversies,we firstly reviewed the existing literature and believed previous operational definition can be summarized into three categories:cognitive conflict orientation definition,cognitive stratified orientation definition and cognitive bias orientation definition.In the current study,we compared the strength and limitations of the three orientation definitions and recommended that a widely accepted scientific definition of self-deception should be established in the future study.Secondly,on the basis of existing self-deception classification,two new classification methods were proposed.After careful analyses of interpersonal self-deception and intrapersonal self-deception,we suggested that self-deception could be divided into conscious self-deception and unconscious self-deception,based internal motivation self-deception and based external motivation self-deception,respectively.Those two definitions could facilitate the future empirical study on the psychological mechanisms of self-deception.Thirdly,we analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the paradigms of the existing studies.Through the analysis of previous studies,we found that the previous experimental research paradigm of self-deception mainly adopted the comparative paradigm.The comparison between beforetest and after-test,the comparison between the test group and the control group,as well as the comparison between the oral report and the actual behavior,were used to determine the self-deception.Among the three comparison paradigms of self-deception,the comparison between groups was a between-subjects comparison,and the other two comparison paradigms were within-subjects comparisons.The self-deception found in the comparison paradigm between subjects could only be a group behavior,while the comparison paradigm within subjects could determine whether the individual had self-deception.The comparison within subjects was better than those between subjects.The comparison between before-test and after-test was delayed,but the oral report and actual behavior were almost simultaneous.The synchronous comparison was better than the delayed comparison.Therefore,the experimental research paradigm of self-deception should be synchronous comparison within subjects.Finally,we made a recommendation on future empirical study of self-deception.Firstly,there should be a well-received,scientific and normative definition of self-deception.Standard definition is beneficial to self-deception in academic exchange.Secondly,more indicators are needed in empirical study of self-deception.Behavioral indicators,physiological indicators and cognitive neuroscience indicators simultaneously used in the same experiment can monitor self-deception in real-time.At last,the mechanisms of self-deception should be studied from multiple perspectives,because different types of self-deception have different psychological mechanisms.