Deception and self-deception
Open accessAbstract
There is ample evidence that the average person thinks he or she is more skilful, more beautiful and kinder than others 1,2 and that such overconfidence may result in substantial personal and social costs 3-8. To explain the prevalence of overconfidence, social scientists usually point to its affective benefits, such as those stemming from a good self-image or reduced anxiety about an uncertain future 9-13. An alternative theory, first advanced by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers 14-16, posits that people self-deceive into higher confidence to more effectively persuade or deceive others. Here we conduct two experiments (combined n = 688) to test this strategic self-deception hypothesis. After performing a cognitively challenging task, half of our subjects are informed that they can earn money if, during a short face-to-face interaction, they convince others of their superior performance. We find that the privately elicited beliefs of the group that was informed of the profitable deception opportunity exhibit significantly more overconfidence than the beliefs of the control group. To test whether higher confidence ultimately pays off, we experimentally manipulate the confidence of the subjects by means of a noisy feedback signal. We find that this exogenous shift in confidence makes subjects more persuasive in subsequent face-to-face interactions. Overconfidence emerges from these results as the product of an adaptive cognitive technology with important social benefits, rather than some deficiency or bias.
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Espousing the group's beliefs serves as a form of self-persuasion, further convincing people that the views they endorse must be correct, while moving further away from intellectual humility.
“Espousing the group's beliefs serves as a form of self- persuasion, further convincing people that the views they endorse must be correct, while moving further away from intellectual humility 86-88 .”
From Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility (2022) · cites this paper as [86]
The Abstract reports that a motive to persuade others increased participants’ privately held confidence about their own performance, supporting a link between social persuasion and self-deception. It does not show that espousing a group’s beliefs makes people more convinced those beliefs are correct, or address intellectual humility. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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“…who sincerely profess to follow universal principles pass as being more trustworthy – even in cases where they are also motivated, perhaps unconsciously, by strategic social goals (Schwardmann & van der Weele, 2019; Singh & Hoffman, 2021, 2021; Sperber & Baumard, 2012; von Hippel & Trivers, 2011).”
Danz, D. N. (2020) · Games Econ. Behav. · doi:10.1016/j.geb.2020.10.001 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Falla, D., Ruiz, R. O., & Romera, E. M. (2023) · Current Psychology · doi:10.1007/s12144-022-04229-x · Cited by 19 · see citing works
“…pressure and/or different personal variables, they often resort to cognitive self-deception in order to evade the emotions or moral reproaches implicit in the act of transgressing the ethical norm, while at the same time accruing personal benefits from the act (Schwardmann & van der Weele, 2019).”
BackgroundUncertainty about carbon impact and the willingness to avoid CO 2 emissions
Pace, D. D., Imai, T., Schwardmann, P., & van der Weele, J. J. (2024) · Ecological Economics · doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108401 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Self-citationMasters of suspicion: A Bayesian decision model of motivated political reasoning
Rigoli, F. (2021) · Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour · doi:10.1111/jtsb.12274 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Sharpe, W. H., Nguyen, P. M., & Colombage, S. R. N. (2023) · European Management Journal · doi:10.1016/j.emj.2023.11.004 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Turi, A., Rebeleș, M., & Visu‐Petra, L. (2022) · Acta Psychologica · doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103574 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Heinzelmann, N. C., & Tran, V. (2022) · Erkenntnis · doi:10.1007/s10670-022-00616-9 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
What Is CEO Overconfidence? Evidence from Executive AssessmentsPreprint
Kaplan, S., Sørensen, M., & Zakolyukina, A. A. (2020) · Social Science Research Network · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3680699 · Cited by 73 · see citing works
Absolute Versus Relative Success: Why Overconfidence Creates an Inefficient Equilibrium
Soldà, A., Ke, C., von Hippel, W., & Page, L. (2021) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/09567976211007414 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“On the benefit side, people often defer to their overconfident peers (Anderson et al., 2012; Murphy et al., 2015), in part because overconfidence is persuasive (Schwardmann & van der Weele, 2019; Soldà et al., 2020; von Hippel & Trivers, 2011).”
BackgroundMethodA computational perspective on faith: religious reasoning and Bayesian decision
Rigoli, F. (2020) · Religion, Brain & Behavior · doi:10.1080/2153599x.2020.1812704 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“In this perspective, self-deception during reasoning might have evolved as an e ff ective strategy to persuade others (a possibility which has received empirical support; Schwardmann & Van der Weele, 2019; Smith et al., 2017).”
BackgroundConfidence and career choices: an experiment*
Barron, K., & Gravert, C. A. (2021) · Scandinavian Journal of Economics · doi:10.1111/sjoe.12444 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
A (Dynamic) Investigation of Stereotypes, Belief-Updating, and Behavior
Coffman, K. B., Araya, P. U., & Zafar, B. (2021) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w29382 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
The impact of feedback on self-deception: Evidence from ERP
Fan, W., Mengmeng, R. E. N., ZHANG, W., & Zhong, Y. (2022) · Acta Psychologica Sinica · doi:10.3724/sp.j.1041.2022.00481 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Hagenbach, J., & Saucet, C. (2024) · The Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1093/restud/rdae058 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Self‐deception: Distorted metacognitive process in ambiguous contexts
Mei, D.-M., Ke, Z.-J., Li, Z., Zhang, W., Gao, D., & Yin, L. (2022) · Human Brain Mapping · doi:10.1002/hbm.26116 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
“…behaviors found in the previous study about self-deception (Zoë Chance et al., 2011; Schwardmann & van der Weele, 2019) are not universal (Muthukrishna et al., 2018) and could not be equally applied to non-Western samples (Henrich et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2010; Schwardmann & van der Weele, 2019).”
BackgroundResultInfluentialMotivated Cognition in Cooperation
Fiedler, S., Habibnia, H., Fahrenwaldt, A., & Rahal, R.-M. (2023) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/17456916231193990 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“…with strong social-image concerns (for a similar argument when supporting pres-ent-biased agents overcome self-control problems, see Bénabou & Tirole, 2002) or act as a social signal (Burks et al., 2013; Charness et al., 2018; Ewers & Zimmermann, 2015; Schwardmann & van der Weele, 2019).”
BackgroundFeedback Spillover Effect on Competitiveness Across Unrelated Tasks
Huang, L., & Murad, Z. (2019) · Behavioral Research in Accounting · doi:10.2308/bria-52583 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Image concerns in ex-ante self-assessments–Gender differences and behavioral consequences
Haeckl, S. (2022) · Labour Economics · doi:10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102166 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
What to Blame? Self-Serving Attribution Bias with Multi-Dimensional Uncertainty
Coutts, A., Gerhards, L., & Murad, Z. (2024) · The Economic Journal · doi:10.1093/ej/ueae005 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
This Is How We Do It: How Social Norms and Social Identity Shape Decision Making under Uncertainty
Lipari, F. (2018) · Games · doi:10.3390/g9040099 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
“For example, signaling a high IQ or scoring a high point in a student laboratory experiment is always better than signaling the opposite [18,19], because the identity of “being a good student” is the dominant in such environment, hence any feedback contrasting that ideal identity would be forgotten.”
BackgroundJin, G. Z., Luca, M., & Martin, D. J. (2018) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w24675 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
“Examples from the literature include varying the type of future tasks faced (Schwardmann and Van der Weele, 2019), by adding noise into the feedback provided (Fischer and Sliwka, 2018), varying task difficulty (Moore and Healy, 2007), and having overconfident subjects select into the task (Camerer…”
Foucault’s error: The power of not knowing
Offer, K., Rahwan, Z., & Hertwig, R. (2024) · European Review of Social Psychology · doi:10.1080/10463283.2024.2383085 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
“Furthermore, deliberate ignorance may have evolved to support interpersonal deception (Schwardmann & Van der Weele, 2019; Trivers, 2000, 2011; Von Hippel & Trivers, 2011).”
The evolution of zero-sum and positive-sum worldviews
Sergey Gavrilets, B., & Seabright, P. (2025) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2504339122 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Motivations to connect with like-minded audiences increase partisan sharing on social media
Marie, A., & Petersen, M. B. (2025) · PNAS Nexus · doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf197 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
What Is CEO Overconfidence? Evidence from Executive Assessments
Kaplan, S. N., Sørensen, M., & Zakolyukina, A. A. (2020) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w27853 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
The science of honesty: A review and research agenda
Shalvi, S., Levine, E. E., Thielmann, I., Jayawickreme, E., van Rooij, B., Teodorescu, K., Schurr, A., Furr, R. M., Aglioti, S. M., Zettler, I., et al. (2025) · Advances in experimental social psychology · doi:10.1016/bs.aesp.2025.04.004 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Strategic Competition and Self-Confidence
Brilon, S., Grassi, S., Grieder, M., & Schulz, J. (2023) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.2023.4688 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
A (dynamic) investigation of stereotypes, belief‐updating, and behavior
Coffman, K. B., Araya, M. P. U., & Zafar, B. (2024) · Economic Inquiry · doi:10.1111/ecin.13219 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Belief elicitation under competing motivations: Does it matter how you ask?
Gangadharan, L., Grossman, P. J., & Xue, N. (2024) · European Economic Review · doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104830 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
The Communication of Metacognition for Social Strategy in Psychosis: An Exploratory Study
Hertz, U., Bell, V., Barnby, J. M., McQuillin, A., & Bahrami, B. (2020) · Schizophrenia Bulletin Open · doi:10.1093/schizbullopen/sgaa058 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“1,2 7 Some psychiatric disorders, particularly psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, are characterized by altered social perception 8 raising the question to what extent the cognitive mechanisms underlying social information sharing may be altered in psychosis.”
Cavalan, Q., de Gardelle, V., & Vergnaud, J. (2023) · Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization · doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2023.05.010 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Self-assessment: The role of the social environment
Falk, A., Kosse, F., Schildberg-Hörisch, H., & Zimmermann, F. (2023) · Journal of Public Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104908 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Confidence and Career Choices: An ExperimentPreprint
Barron, K., & Gravert, C. A. (2018) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3099491 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
A note on motivated cognition and discriminatory beliefs
Stötzer, L. S., & Zimmermann, F. (2024) · Games and Economic Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.geb.2024.08.002 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Motivated mislearning: The case of correlation neglect
Bolte, L., & Fan, T. (2023) · Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization · doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2023.11.020 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Investor MemoryPreprint
Gödker, K., Jiao, P.-R., & Smeets, P. (2025) · Social Science Research Network · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3348315 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
How defense rhetoric escalates intergroup conflict
Snijder, L. L., Gross, J., & Dreu, C. K. W. D. (2025) · iScience · doi:10.1016/j.isci.2025.113749 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Self-knowledge: Limits, implications, and paths to change
Thielmann, I., & Burghart, M. (2025) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102056 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Belief Elicitation When More Than Money Matters: Controlling for “Control”
Benoît, J.-P., Dubra, J., & Romagnoli, G. (2022) · American Economic Journal Microeconomics · doi:10.1257/mic.20200017 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
The Computations Underlying Religious Conversion: A Bayesian Decision Model
Rigoli, F. (2023) · Journal of Cognition and Culture · doi:10.1163/15685373-12340161 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Risk Taking Under Limited Liability and Moral Hazard: Quantifying the Role of Motivated Beliefs
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- Authors
- Schwardmann, P., & van der Weele, J.
- Affiliations
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Schwardmann, Peter
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2019-07-29
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 1055-1061
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3121342465
- Cited by
- 215
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 25 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 42.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion)
- Open access LMU (Ludwid Maxmilian's Universitat Munchen) (submittedVersion)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Universitätsbibliothek der LMU
- Funders
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (452-17-004)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Deception detection and forensic psychology
- Keywords
- overconfidence, self-deception, persuasion, deception, belief updating, noisy feedback, self-image, cognitive biases, adaptive cognition
- MeSH terms
- Female, Humans, Deception, Male, Self Concept, Young Adult
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