Deception and self-deception
Peter Schwardmann and Joël van der Weele test Robert Trivers's strategic self-deception hypothesis, that people deceive themselves into higher confidence so that they can better persuade others. After a difficult task, half of the participants were told they could earn money by convincing a partner in a brief face-to-face exchange that they had performed better. Their private beliefs were significantly more overconfident than those of a control group. When a noisy feedback signal raised some participants' confidence, they became more persuasive in later interactions. The authors conclude that overconfidence may be an adaptive cognitive tool with social benefits and not simply a flaw.
Peter Schwardmann and Joël van der Weele test Robert Trivers's strategic self-deception hypothesis, that people deceive themselves into higher confidence so that they can better persuade others. After a difficult task, half of the participants were told they could earn money by convincing a partner in a brief face-to-face exchange that they had performed better. Their private beliefs were significantly more overconfident than those of a control group. When a noisy feedback signal raised some participants' confidence, they became more persuasive in later interactions. The authors conclude that overconfidence may be an adaptive cognitive tool with social benefits and not simply a flaw.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-26 via the publisher or RePEc record.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Schwardmann, P., & van der Weele, J. (2019). 'Deception and self-deception.' Nature Human Behaviour, 3(10), 1055-1061. doi:10.1038/s41562-019-0666-7