Anxiety, attention, self-deception
What we are aware of (or unaware of) is an effect of attention (or inattention). In other words, we are aware only of what our attention rests on, that is, the ideas, perceptions and memories to which our attention is directed at any given moment. This is an infinitesimal part of what exists and affects us, so consciousness is always very limited.
Beyond that, consciousness is deceptive and illusory. In fact, what governs our attention and determines its directions are the stimuli we receive from outside and the filters built by our anxiety defense systems, which keep our attention (and thus consciousness) away from those ideas that would make us feel uncomfortable or cause us suffering.
In his book “Lies, Self-Deception, Illusion,” Daniel Goleman describes for us a connection between attention and anxiety in the sense that conscious thoughts are steered by the unconscious so as to prevent them from giving rise to discomforts such as anxiety, distress, bewilderment, fear, insecurity, suffering, loss of self-esteem, guilt, etc.
This connection is consistent with the fact that, as Freud taught us, the conscious self is not the master of its own consciousness or will. That is, the conscious self is not the agent that chooses what and how to think and not to think, and how to articulate its thoughts. In fact, attention, which is normally involuntary and automatic, plays a role in this choice.
Attention, on the other hand, is always selective in that one can only pay attention to one or very few things (perceptions, ideas, thoughts or mental images) at a time. In fact, it is a passive, unconscious, automatic and involuntary cognitive process of selecting some environmental stimuli from the many available at a given time and ignoring others. The selected environmental stimuli are followed by automatic reflexes, i.e., cognitive, emotional and motivational responses, which, to the extent that they are consciously perceived by the subject, constitute, in turn, stimuli. The mind is thus continually subject to stimuli of both external and internal origin, which mutually influence each other and determine the direction of attention and consequently influence the subject’s behavior automatically and involuntarily.
Despite this, we normally have the illusion that we are free and master of thinking what we want and that what we think is right, that is, logical and rational. This illusion is due, in my opinion, to the fact that the idea that we are not free even to think what we want is so upsetting and frightening that an unconscious defense mechanism removes it from consciousness.
That freedom to think is an illusion can be demonstrated by starting from the principle that everything that happens in the world (and therefore also in the mind) happens either by chance, or by some predefined law or logic (or by a combination of both). Thus, when we think, either our thoughts are random (and in that sense illogical), or they follow logic (or a combination of logic and chance). Well, if it is true, as I assume, that they mostly follow a logic (more or less realistic), this must be stored somewhere, and I assume that it is in the Cognitive-Emotional Map (to which the chapter of the same name is devoted). I mean that the logic to which I refer is not created at the moment of use but exists before it is applied.
We can therefore assume that different logics are stored in the mind for different situations (mostly learned from experience), so numerous that it is impossible to consciously consider them all at the same time. There must therefore be an unconscious and automatic mechanism or agent that, when faced with certain stimuli, chooses the logic of thought and/or behavior to be applied from among many possible ones.
The practical consequences of the above are unsettling from various points of view (existential, ethical, social, philosophical, psychological, pedagogical, etc.). Indeed, not only are our thoughts involuntary (and therefore uncontrollable by the conscious self), but they are also deceptive in that they are not objective. This is because the agent who determines the sequence of thoughts avoids potentially anxious cognitive pathways before they become conscious, resulting in gaps or logical leaps in the thought itself. What is worse, is that we are not aware of such gaps and logical leaps since the agent governing our thoughts prevents our attention from going to the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the thoughts themselves. Only higher thinking, or metapension (i.e., thinking about one’s own thinking) can in fact investigate and question itself and its rationality. However, people capable of metapension are rare, and one of the purposes of this book is to teach how to do so.
About the gaps in our thinking, R. D. Laing wrote:
“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And until we can notice what we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change, until we notice how we fail to notice the shapes of our thoughts and actions.”
Levels of perception and response
A piece of information, before it reaches consciousness, undergoes a number of automatic processes that transform, filter, interpret, classify, organize and evaluate it from one or more external and/or internal stimuli. So what we are aware of is never reality as such, but a transformation of it carried out by our mind in ways that differ more or less from one person to another as they depend on the experiences and temperament of the subject.
An information (or idea) may be more or less pleasant or painful, attractive or repulsive. This quality is not established by consciousness, but by unconscious automatisms (based on previous experiences) even before the information reaches consciousness itself. It is precisely at the stage when a piece of information arouses an unpleasant feeling before it has reached consciousness that the unconscious can censor it in the sense of not getting it to consciousness at all, or getting it there altered, distorted, falsified, mystified, belittled or accentuated by the subtraction of particular aspects or the addition of invented aspects.
The purpose of unconscious self-censorship is thus to avoid the greater suffering that would occur if the information reached consciousness. Indeed, an unpleasant idea is so first of all at the unconscious level, causing a feeling of discomfort of an origin not known to consciousness (as in the case of distress), and secondly it may be so at the conscious level, where the discomfort is associated with a particular cause (more or less corresponding to reality).
Social value of self-deception – Collective lies.
Self-deception (i.e., a mental map of reality that does not correspond to reality itself) has a social valence, in the sense that it is an important factor in social cohesion. Indeed, it is impossible to belong to a community without sharing the collective deceptions that characterize it.
Self-deception affects both theself and the we, and patterns shared with other people prevail over those not shared. Moreover, group cohesion prevails over truth, and any information likely to diminish that cohesion is ignored.
In this regard Yuval Noah Harari wrote:
“Although we have to pay a price for turning off our rational faculties, the benefits of greater social cohesion are often so great that fabricated stories normally trump truth in human history. Scholars have known this for thousands of years, which is why […] they had to choose between serving truth or social harmony. Should they aim to unite people by making everyone believe the same falsehood, or should they make truth known at the price of disunity? Socrates chose truth and was sentenced to death. The most powerful social institutions in history (Christian clergy, Confucian mandarins, communist ideologues, etc.) made unity prevail over truth. That is why they were so powerful.”
Thus, we can say that self-deception, that is, the gaps and logical leaps in conscious thought, serve to avoid being excluded or marginalized from the community to which one belongs. In fact, the absence of self-deception would have two serious consequences.
The first would be an accusation of the falsehood of the majority of the members of one’s community, an accusation that would not be tolerated by those concerned and would result in the punishment and marginalization of the accuser.
The second consequence would be a self-accusation of one’s own falsehood, which would have disastrous effects on self-esteem, both intellectually and morally. For in such a case the subject would feel unworthy of belonging to a community of sincere people.
Take religious beliefs as an example. For those who belong to a community characterized by the sharing of certain religious beliefs, to denounce that these are based on fabrications and falsehoods passed off as truths is tantamount to self-condemnation for exclusion from the community itself. Such an eventuality is so frightening on an unconscious level that any logical argument capable of proving the falsity of the beliefs under accusation is simply ignored. Added to this is the fact that if those beliefs were shown to be false, the subject would be shown to be stupid and naive in that he or she is incapable of seeing what is obvious and willing to believe in the existence of things that do not exist, simply because someone has induced him or her to do so or out of an instinct of imitation. Such an eventuality is also frightening to the subject’s unconscious as it would undermine his self-esteem to the point of making him feel unworthy of belonging to a community of intelligent and realistic people. There are thus two important reasons for ignoring any argument that might reveal the deception.
I assume that the self-deception is based on unconscious axioms such as the following:
- I am part of a community of fair, intelligent and well-informed people
- I am fair, intelligent and well-informed
- I share the beliefs of the majority of the members of the community to which I belong
- I am accepted and approved by the majority of the members of the community to which I belong
Well, any argument that contradicts any of the above axioms is normally censored by the unconscious preventing attention from being placed on it in order to avoid anxiety, loss of self-esteem, suffering, confusion, etc.
For example, the present book may not be accepted as true by most human beings as it would challenge one or more of the above axioms.
Everyone has a worldview that they have constructed as a result of their experiences. That view may be erroneous and misleading as to what is more or less important, good, useful and true. The problem is that we are not used to questioning our worldview, partly because it conditions us to such an extent that we cannot see anything that is not consistent or compatible with it.
We especially tend to deny the truth of anything that puts us in a bad light. In fact, self-esteem defense overrides recognition of truth, and threats to self-esteem are a major cause of anxiety and stress.
A revealing experiment
Solomon Asch’s famousconformity experiment determined that there is a probability of about 33% that an individual will believe what others claim to see even if it is contrary to what he or she sees. In effect, the greater the number of people who think a certain way, the greater the probability that a person will go along with their thinking, even when it does not match his or her own experience.
In Asch’s experiment, it was a matter of choosing the correct answer from three options, as shown in the figure below. The majority of the participants in the experiment, in agreement with the experimenter, deliberately answered incorrectly from time to time without the knowledge of the one person who was really the subject of the experiment.
One-third of the people tested complied with the majority’s incorrect answer even though they thought it was incorrect at first glance. On the other hand, we can assume that the probability of believing in falsehoods asserted by a majority is much higher than 33% in ambiguous situations, where evaluations are not verifiable or when the subject is not completely sure of his or her own ideas and perceptions.
This experiment can be seen as evidence of both conformism in the sense of adjusting one’s behavior to the pressures of the majority and self-deception in the sense that adjusting to the majority requires the subject to self-deceive, that is, to suppress one’s own truth (based on one’s direct experience) in favor of that asserted by others. In this sense, self-deception takes the form of unconscious manipulation practiced on oneself, presumably to avoid punishment or exclusion by a majority intolerant of those who dissent from common certainties.
Mental patterns and social contexts
Each individual’s consciousness and unconscious function on the basis of predefined mental schemas constructed (and modifiable) through experiences. Through such schemas, the subject determines what is (or is not) true, good, beautiful and important, that is, to what extent each perceived entity (object, idea, person, situation, action, etc.) is true, good, beautiful and important.
Mental schemas also define the social contexts (theorized by sociologist Erving Goffman under the name “frames”) in which one can find oneself, the roles one can assume in each context, and what each role can, should and should not do within that context. In fact, any social transaction outside shared contexts, or that does not comply with the rules of the applicable context, is normally considered violent, intrusive or distasteful, or is simply ignored, as if it never happened. We can in this regard imagine the misunderstandings and discomfort that can arise when two people ascribe different contexts, that is, with different roles and different rules, to the same situation.
Mental schemas are determined primarily by the culture to which they belong and are more or less similar from person to person in the sense that, comparing the mental schemas of two individuals, one can find common entities with concordant evaluations, common entities with discordant evaluations, and uncommon entities (i.e., known to one and not to the other).
When discordances emerge in the interaction between two people on the evaluation of certain common entities, I suppose that an unconscious logic is activated in the same people that says something like the following:
My evaluation of entity X (i.e., to what extent X is true, good, beautiful, important) is different from that of my interlocutor. If his assessment were right, then mine would be wrong. In that case, it would be my mental schema that would be wrong, since it determined the evaluation itself. Since my mental schema coincides with my personality, then my personality would be wrong. And since my personality coincides with my person, then this would be wrong, so I would be wrong. However, I cannot admit that I am wrong because that would make me suffer unbearably, so my interlocutor’s evaluation of entity X is necessarily wrong, and consequently so is my interlocutor.
Therefore, in case of discordant evaluations, the unconscious has several options, including the following:
- maintain its own differing assessment by devaluing the interlocutor;
- devalue the importance of the evaluated entity and thus of the evaluation itself by considering it unimportant, meaning that the discordant evaluation has no repercussions in the relationship between the two interlocutors or with other people;
- eliminating one’s own evaluation, that is, refraining from evaluating the entity in question;
- deny the existence of the entity in question.
In all cases this is self-deception, at the root of which is the idea that one’s mental schema (understood as worldview) coincides with one’s own person and that one’s evaluations are absolutely true. Instead, the truth is that our mental schemes are relative, variable, changing, “slanted” (from the English biased), generalizing, simplifying, always limited and never sufficient.
It is also wrong to assume that two discordant assessments cannot both be valid. Actually they can be, since each assessment should be circumstantiated, relativized, that is, contextualized, so a change in context could alter the assessment itself.
Double constraint, self-deception, and lie management
Every human is subject to a “double constraint”: on the one hand, the duty to be truthful (as we have been taught since childhood), and on the other hand, the duty not to denounce the collective lies of the community to which we belong. Indeed, if he did so, others would punish him to the point of excluding him from the community itself. The solution to this double constraint, in order to avoid emotional stress and other mental disorders, is not to see others’ lies nor one’s own, that is, not to consider certain statements as lies.
It is difficult to lie to others without also lying to oneself. To be convincing we must believe in what we say to others, even if it is falsehood. In fact, if we cultivated two different versions of facts in our minds, one true for our own use and one false for others, we would end up either confusing between them and inadvertently revealing to others what we want to keep from them, or believing in some of the falsehoods we say.
In fact, we are so accustomed to being deceived and deceiving that we deceive even ourselves without realizing it. Truth and lies are mixed so well that we are constantly engaged in trying to figure out what is true and false in the narratives we receive. We are also engaged in constructing our own lies and hiding inconvenient truths about ourselves. As a result, we are always afraid (consciously or unconsciously) that truths about ourselves will come to light.
Moreover, we cannot expose all the lies of others with impunity, but must often pretend not to see them in order to maintain good relations with our interlocutors.
The most common lies concern religion, politics, social relations, morals, aesthetics, intelligence, one’s own and others’ status, one’s feelings, desires, and motives, meaning that everyone tries to appear better and more important than they really are, and to make a virtue of necessity or fault.
I suppose that the unconscious and irrational handling of lies is one of the main causes of our emotional stress, inhibitions, and mental and psychosomatic disorders.
Since we cannot help lying nor manage our own and others’ lies, we should then try to do so consciously, pragmatically, with intelligence, restraint, sensitivity and, if possible, with love.
Threat, anxiety, stress and self-deception
Anxiety is the effect of the perception of a real or perceived threat, more or less clear and more or less conscious. Anxiety gives rise to mental stress (aimed at the removal or elimination of the threat), which in the long run can cause fatigue and psychosomatic disorders.
If an event is assessed (consciously or unconsciously) as a threat, anxiety and a series of mechanisms aimed at resolving it are triggered. Attention is then focused on the (real or presumed) cause of the anxiety, and the prevailing motivations are those that lead to attack or escape as opposed to what is perceived as a threat. As a result, attention is diverted away from other behavior options that could more intelligently and effectively neutralize the threat.
We can distinguish anxiety and the resulting mental stress into two categories: that of natural origin (such as when one is in danger of being attacked by a vicious animal or being submerged in an avalanche) and that of social origin (such as when one’s reputation is questioned). Natural stress is usually short-lived, and any physical pain is relieved by endorphins to allow the person to focus on a quick solution of avoiding danger. Social stress, on the other hand, is often of long duration and the associated pain less acute, so the secretion of anesthetizing endorphins does not occur or is quickly depleted. In addition, the source of social stress is much more difficult to determine than natural stress. If the cause of social stress is not quickly overcome, the pain is then attenuated by unconscious palliative defense mechanisms, which tend to deny threats or distort their perception. In this way, stress is reduced at the expense of the realism of perception.
There can in fact be three responses to a stressful situation:
- Coping with the threat and changing the situation by eliminating or distancing the threat itself
- relieving stress by physical (alcohol, drugs, etc.) or mental (self-deception, delusion, etc.) palliation
- not coping with stress and suffering its damage (fatalism, sense of defeat, reduced attention, psychosomatic disorders, etc.).
Psychiatrist Mardi Horowitz summarized in the following list some strategies put in place by the defense mechanisms of the unconscious to avoid or decrease social anxiety:
- Unseen associations, i.e., gaps in cause-effect relationships, i.e., in predicting the consequences of what is evident.
- Insensitivity, i.e., inhibition of emotional responses to certain perceived situations (emotional distancing).
- Attenuation of emotionalresponse, i.e., downsizing of threat.
- Decreasedattention, i.e., less ability to focus on information, including thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations.
- Numbness, i.e., decreased readiness and ability to comprehend and evaluate the meaning of events and messages.
- Narrowed thinking, i.e., inability to explore other possible meanings besides the most immediately obvious one.
- Memory defects, i.e., selective amnesia of events or details of events.
- Denial of evidence, i.e., thinking that something with an obvious meaning has another meaning instead.
- Baring with fantasizing, i.e., escaping reality or its implications through fantasies about what could have been or could be.
Miscellaneous reflections on self-deception and the unconscious
Deception is a totally or partially false statement, illusion an improbable or impossible expectation, i.e., unrealistic. Human beings deceive and delude each other (consciously or unconsciously) out of ignorance, to exploit each other, to conform or to save face; they deceive and delude themselves unconsciously out of ignorance and to suffer less. In fact, the truth can be disarming, ridiculous, painful, atrocious, upsetting, unbearable.
The more certain we are that we are not deceiving ourselves, the more we deceive ourselves. And conversely, the more certain we are of deceiving ourselves, the less we deceive ourselves. In fact, in the former case we are so sure of our ideas that we do not question them, while in the latter case our doubts cause us to test their soundness.
The unconscious selects what it considers useful and ignores what it considers useless with respect to its motives, making it aware only of what it considers useful.
When we look at a painting, our attention goes to certain details more than others in a non-random way. The unconscious determines which parts deserve more attention and which less. The latter are those most likely to evoke anxiety.
The Freudian mechanism of removal is related to that of selective attention. Indeed, the purpose of removal, like that of selective attention, is to avoid stress and suffering for the subject.
Just as a dictator controls the circulation of information according to his interests and policy, the unconscious controls what can surface and what should not surface to consciousness.
Any desire generally considered pathological, criminal, humiliating, shameful or ridiculous (and as such painful) is normally removed, although it continues to seek its satisfaction in hidden or concealed forms. Sometimes it even happens that the subject thinks he has desires opposite to those removed, that is, he believes he hates what he actually loves and loves what he actually hates.
Lying, as well as self-deception serve (or should serve) to be more respected, accepted, recognized, loved by others. They serve to present ourselves to others in a more respectable and socially worthy way than we really are.
Not only the facts can be removed, but also the feelings attached to the facts. Indeed, sometimes the facts are not removed, but only the feelings attached to them, as if we were indifferent to the facts themselves.
Rationalization is a mechanism that constructs an acceptable narrative to explain facts whose truthful explanation would be unacceptable. That is, it involves denying the true motives for a certain behavior by citing plausible reasons other than the actual and more politically correct ones.
We love anything that endorses our lies and hate anything that threatens to expose them.
Alcohol and drugs are palliatives that reduce anxiety by reducing attention to perceived threats.
Advertising and political messages are almost always deceptive, especially in wars and political and economic crises.
How much we hear a certain speech, it is possible that it affects us, that it directly or indirectly says something about us that is not flattering, something that is inconsistent with our self-image and consequently challenges our personality. In such a case, the unconscious causes us not to take that speech seriously, not to give it any weight, to forget it immediately, or to criticize and discredit it.
“Trivers, taking his theory of emotions to its logical consequences, notes that in a world full of falsehood-revealing machines the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You cannot have your hidden intentions revealed if you do not think they are your intentions. According to this theory of self-deception, the conscious mind hides the truth from itself in order to better hide it from others. But truth is useful, and so it should be recorded somewhere in the minds, well protected from the parts that interact with other people.” [Steven Pinker]
Concluding remarks
It is not true that we normally seek truth and justice, as we believe and would have us believe. We actually seek to satisfy our needs and desires even at the cost of being false and unjust.
Man needs to be loved, respected, welcomed, protected, helped, cared for, served, but he does not need to love, respect, welcome, protect, help, care for, serve, even if he does (or pretends to) because if he did not he would not be considered respectable or accepted.
Man needs rights, not duties; to dominate, not to be dominated; his own freedom, not that of others; to use others, not to be used by them. But these truths are hidden, mystified, concealed from us and from others. We are in fact much more selfish than we are willing to admit.
Therefore, if we want to be less selfish and more respectful of others’ needs and desires, we must unveil our self-deceptions and recognize the true extent of our selfishness, without absolving ourselves just because someone is more selfish than we are.
Next chapter: Psychotherapy.