关键词: 自我欺骗, 实证研究, 机制

Abstract: Self-deception has always been the focus of academic discussion. Because there are two familiar puzzles: First of all, one cannot intentionally execute any strategy for deceiving oneself (dynamics puzzle); Second, one is not possible simultaneously believing that p is true and believing that p is false (state puzzle). However, 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 self-deception, Biologists and evolutionary psychologists focus on the applicability of the evolution of self-deception, whereas psychologist interested in providing empirical evidence for the existence of self-deception and studying the mechanism of self-deception. However, existing psychological empirical researches have a controversy on the operational definition, classifications and research methods, which slow down the progress study of self-deception. In order to clarify the nature of the previous research controversy, we firstly reviewed the existing literature and believed previous operational definition can be summarized into three categories. There are cognitive conflict orientation definition, cognitive stratified orientation definition and cognitive bias orientation definition. In the current study, we compared the good points and problems of 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 are proposed. After careful analysis of Interpersonal self-deception and Intrapersonal self-deception, we suggest that self-deception can be divided into conscious self-deception and unconscious self-deception, based internal motivation self-deception and based external motivation self-deception. Those two definitions can facilitate the future empirical study the psychological mechanism of self-deception. Thirdly, we also analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the paradigms of existing researches. 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 before test 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, was used to determine the self-deception. In the three comparison paradigms of self-deception, the comparison between the group and the group is the comparison between the subjects, and the other two comparison paradigms are the comparison of within the subjects. The self-deception found in the comparison paradigm between subjects can only be a group behavior, while the comparison paradigm within subject can determine whether the individual has self-deception. The comparison within subject was better than that of between subjects. The comparison between before test and after test is delayed, but the oral report and actual behavior are almost simultaneous. The synchronous comparison is better than the delay comparison. Therefore, the experimental research paradigm of self-deception should be synchronous comparison within subject. Finally, we made a recommendation on future empirical study of self-deception. Firstly, there should have 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 be monitoring self-deception in real-time. At last, the mechanism of self-deception should be study from multiple perspectives, because different types of self-deception have different psychological mechanisms.

Key words: Self-deception, Empirical study, Mechanism