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Chapter 1: What is self-deception and how does it manifest?
Your procrastination deserves a destination. Welcome to The Last Show with David Cooper. We all know what lying to other people feels like, but what about those strange moments where you're not quite lying, you're just very optimistic about your own greatness. You're deceiving yourself even. Turns out your body might know what's really going on when that happens.
I'm here with Giulia Romano Cappi, a researcher in social neuroscience at the University of Turin in Italy who studied this. Giulia, welcome to the show.
Thank you, David. I'm very happy to be here.
So self-deception, what do we mean when we say that? What might I be doing if I act in self-deception?
So, you know, sometimes we don't really like the truth around us. So sometimes we may decide to tell something to ourselves just to feel better about the actual truth. Sometimes, you know, the truth is hard.
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Chapter 2: How does the body respond to self-deception?
And so we try to deceive ourselves first. And then maybe we also use these as a means to present ourselves in a more positive way to others. So it's not really about the fact that we align to others, but first we align to ourselves so that we may be more convincing somehow.
Yeah, so we're talking to friends and we're bragging about something, but maybe we exaggerate a little bit too much. And while we do it, we might even believe that it's true, something like that.
Yeah. And that's because, you know, they always speak about the use of polygraph in court. And we always ask ourselves, why don't we use that? And the reason is because our body actually responds to lying because it's stressful, you know, so you start sweating, actual sweating. And that's what we did. We recorded the people sweating. So not as you can imagine, like heavy sweating.
But we have some sensors that we can put on people's hands and they are able to capture some micro sweating. And the thing is, everything can be a source of anxiety, no? And lying is, I mean, you get anxiety when you lie, if you are an honest person, at least.
Yes. That's what I was just thinking. And there's probably people who love lying, but okay. So how do you set up this test? How do you convince people to speak wired up to all this stuff and then maybe brag a little bit? How do you even know they're bragging?
So what we did is that we presented them with some tasks, some mathematical tasks, and we said like, okay, solve them. And then when you solve them, after solving them, we will ask you how you think you performed. And so they could say like, I think I performed well, I think I performed bad. After that, we said, okay, now we're gonna tell you how you actually performed.
And we presented them with a random score, so it was not really true.
Not even the truth, yeah. No, exactly. It's a little deceptive.
So we were the first one to lie. And after that, we asked them to convince an expert in lie detection, which was, of course, not an expert in lie detection. So we asked them to convince these experts, like, have you seen Lie to Me, the TV show?
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Chapter 3: What experimental methods were used to study self-deception?
So it was the truth, no? You say, okay, you did good. Now tell me you did good. And you say, well, yeah, I did good. So that's a true answer. Or maybe I told you, you did bad. You did really bad. Now you have to tell me, to convince me that your score was actually good. And you will start maybe sweating. You're like, yes, yes, I
I'm great. Yeah, I love that. That's such a fun experiment. Okay, so what did you end up finding for those who didn't do well or perhaps didn't do well but were told they did well randomly? That's an interesting group, the ones that probably know they did badly or they just got lucky and they're still convincing everyone that they're great.
Yeah, so what we really wanted was to investigate those that... So one of the possible scores was you were probably good or you were probably bad. And in that uncertainty, we found the self-deception, no? Because if I don't tell you a certain answer, if I don't tell you you're certainly among the best, you're certainly among the worst, but I tell you probably...
then there's the space where you can play with yourself. I mean, where you can actually say, okay, maybe I can convince myself I actually did good. And so that was our target participants. And what we found is that you can actually see a difference, a significant difference, of course, between the truth and the lie. That is something that is well known in research.
But also we could find that there's a difference between the outright lie and the lie.
Subtle exaggeration.
Yeah, exactly.
What about confidence? Like, I don't know if you've seen the show Seinfeld, but there's a character, George Costanza, that lies a lot.
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Chapter 4: What were the findings regarding confidence and self-deception?
And another character is asking how he can get away with lying. And George famously says, it's not a lie if you believe it. For people who lie very confidently, does their body still give them away?
That's the actual question. So I don't know. I would say that there's a saying that's fake it until you make it, no?
Sure, yeah, yeah.
I think it's that. So if you tell yourself something long enough, maybe you end up actually believing that.
And when you do, will you still show off those subtle signs or you don't know based on this research?
I mean, in our research, we found that if you believe that, your response is not comparable to an actual lie, but not comparable to an actual truth. So that's the novelty here, the fact that there's an in-between law and a gray area between truth and deception. And that gray area is where our participants found themselves.
Like, yeah, you're lying, but you're also telling the truth to yourself, to the other.
Why do you think we self-deceive in little ways? Is it sort of like a coping strategy, a way to boost your self-esteem without the full stress of lying or the full embarrassment of lying if you get caught? Like maybe I just say I'm slightly better at a sport than I am, and I kind of believe it when I say it. I feel like people do this a lot, and why?
So there's a theory there that it's an evolutionary skill behavior that we have because it helped us survive, or at least it helped our ancestors to survive. So, you know, we all like to be liked, no? Everybody likes that. We are social creatures, we like to be perceived in a positive way, and nobody likes a liar.
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Chapter 5: How does self-deception relate to social perceptions?
that will bring us to exclusion, social exclusion. We don't want that. So the theory is that it's an adaptive behavior that we had, evolutionarily speaking.
Yeah, I'm imagining our ancestors. If you liked me slightly more, you'd be more likely to share the food with me. I'd be more likely to survive. Exactly. Look, the title of your research paper says or sort of suggests that the body knows what the mind doesn't. So I guess my last question is, if our bodies are giving off these tiny signals, are we less good at lying than we think we are?
I don't know. So I think partly yes. If you're a spy in the 80s and you're trying not to be caught by the enemy, maybe you will be trained to... not show any sign. They call it the telltale signs.
So we actually recorded the muscular activity as well, because there's not only the sweating, but also, you know, when you try to put a poker face and you're like, you try to maintain a pose with your face, which is impossible, of course. So the more you try to do that, the more you sweat. Or you can decide to, okay, let's try to relax and then the face moves, you know?
Yeah. Well, it sounds like we're okay liars, I guess is the bottom line. Well, Julia, I've enjoyed this chat. Thanks so much for talking to me. I appreciate you coming on the show.
Thank you. Thank you for your invitation.
Julia Romano-Cappi is a researcher in social neuroscience at the University of Turin in Italy.
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Chapter 6: What role does anxiety play in lying and self-deception?
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Chapter 7: Why do people self-deceive and what are the evolutionary implications?
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