AN EXPERT OPINION

The following narrative is written by Dr. Alfred R. Mele, a Philosophy professor at Florida State University who is an expert on self-deception. He has done extensive research and authored numerous academic articles on the topic, as well as a book, Self-Deception Unmasked.

Pernod Ricard USA’s multi-pronged “Excuses” ad campaign – with the themes of avoiding self-deception and accepting responsibility at its core – is extremely promising. The more honest people are with themselves about drinking and the more responsibility they take for their alcohol-related behavior, the more likely they are to do the right thing. And it is refreshing to see a spirits and wine marketer emphasize the importance of being honest with oneself, taking responsibility for one’s actions, and exercising self-control – not to mention moderation in the consumption of alcohol.

The driving force behind the “Excuses” campaign is a pair of ideas. First, a major cause of drunk driving, binge drinking, and underage drinking is that people deceive themselves into believing that everything will be just fine and generate convenient excuses for themselves in the process. Second, a campaign that focuses public attention on self-deception while also encouraging people to take responsibility for their actions has a good chance of succeeding where others have not.

The campaign’s strategy is first to identify the major causes of binge drinking, drunk driving, underage drinking, and the like and then to eliminate or weaken the causes. It is likely that self-deception is among the important causes of these activities. And making this fact salient to people who might engage in them is one step toward eliminating or weakening this cause. Another step is to help people to see that they are capable of avoiding self-deception as regards to drinking, while also motivating them to avoid it, for example, by making them aware of the dangers of drunk driving, binge drinking, and underage drinking. The thrust of this second step is to inspire people to accept responsibility for their actions – in connection with alcohol and in all aspects of their lives.

Take drunk driving as an example. No one believes in the abstract that drunk driving is acceptable. But, on particular occasions, people who have had too much to drink do deceive themselves that it’s ok for them to drive. Part of the campaign’s aim is to make it much harder for people to deceive themselves.

When it becomes obvious that an acquaintance often lies to you about his exploits in a certain sphere (his gambling successes, for example), you tend not to believe his future stories about that topic. Similarly, once it is made obvious to you that, when you’ve had too much to drink, you often lie to yourself, you may tend not to believe these lies. The resulting tendency not to fool yourself will be even stronger if the dangers of self-deception about drinking are highlighted, as they are in the “Excuses” campaign. If you don’t believe your own lies, then you’re less likely to get in your car and drive.

Self-deception can be combatted on more than one front. The “Excuses” campaign seeks to inspire people to be honest with themselves about their drinking. By emphasizing the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions, it encourages people not only to stop deceiving themselves but also to take steps to insure they don’t act on their foolish beliefs.

Here’s an example. Let’s assume you decide today never to drive after a certain number of drinks (in say, a three-hour period) and you announce your decision to family and friends. You’ve now expressed a commitment never to do that. Suppose that, tomorrow, you’ve had more than that number of drinks and you’re thinking about driving home. You might be tempted to believe it would be safe to drive: after all, you’ve made it home before under similar conditions. But, even if you fool yourself into believing this, the commitment you expressed to yourself, your family, and your friends may help you carry the day. Given your commitment, it’s no longer just a matter of safety; it’s also a matter of honor. Whereas “safety” may be a somewhat fuzzy concept, it’s obviously dishonorable to announce to the people you care most about that you won’t do something and then turn right around and do it.

To the extent to which you’ve been inspired to take responsibility for your actions, you’ll be inspired to avoid doing what you know is dishonorable (even if you’ve temporarily deceived yourself into believing it would be safe). This is part of the “Excuses” campaign approach.

Another example of self-deception is a parent believing that his or her child is not drinking, despite clear evidence to the contrary – evidence that would convince an impartial observer. The “Excuses” campaign seeks to inspire parents to stop fooling themselves about their children’s drinking; and it encourages them to step up to take appropriate action.

Obviously, self-deception is not restricted to adults. Minors deceive themselves too. The “Excuses” campaign also seeks to inspire young people not to fool themselves into thinking that drinking is harmless – to take responsibility for their actions.

The campaign also highlights various lame excuses that people offer for binge drinking. Again, the two-part strategy described above is at work: make it clear that self-deception is an important cause of the dangerous behaviors at issue and inspire people to avoid self-deception about these matters and to accept responsibility for their actions.

In short, the campaign is well conceived, presents a distinctive and refreshing point of view on alcohol issues, and has the potential to make a difference.

Alfred R. Mele, the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, is an expert on a variety of topics in the Philosophy of Mind and Action, including free will, motivation, weakness of will, and self-deception. He received his B.A. with high distinction from Wayne State University in 1973 and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1979. Professor Mele is the author of Irrationality, Springs of Action, Autonomous Agents, Motivation and Agency, and Free Will and Luck (all with Oxford University Press) and of Self-Deception Unmasked (Princeton University Press). He also is editor or co-editor of four books for Oxford University Press. He has received four year-long fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Fellowships at the National Humanities Center and the Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences. He has given invited lectures in seventeen countries. Currently, with the support of a year-long fellowship from the National Endowment of the Humanities, Professor Mele is writing a book entitled Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will. He also is guest-editing a special journal issue on self-deception, a topic on which he continues to publish. Professor Mele's "Have I Unmasked Self-Deception or Am I Self-Deceived?" will be published soon in an Oxford University Press volume entitled The Philosophy of Deception.

MORE ABOUT SELF-DECEPTION
Learn more about self deception in the following articles by Dr. Mele.

What is self-deception? It’s fooling yourself – normally into believing something you’d like to be true.

Sometimes, self-deception isn’t especially dangerous or costly. For example, in a survey of a million high school seniors, all students ranked themselves as above average in their ability to get along with others – and 25% said they were in the top 1%! Why? It is at least partly because we’d all like to believe that we’re good at getting along with others. In a survey of professors, a whopping 94% thought they were better than average at their job. Why? Because professors don’t know what “average” means? Of course not. Almost everyone wants to believe that they’re good at their job – and good obviously is better than average.

What we’d like to believe can have a powerful impact on what we do believe. Fortunately, believing that you’re friendlier – or a better professor – than you actually are isn’t terribly risky. The same goes for overrating your attractiveness, intelligence, and sense of style – all very common phenomena.

However, sometimes self-deception can be dangerous. A weary surgeon fooling herself into believing that she’s alert enough to perform surgery or a flu-stricken airline pilot believing that he’s fit to fly – both are potentially deadly.

Just so, deceiving yourself into believing that excessive drinking has not impaired your ability to drive safely also is potentially deadly – for you and for anyone else who is unlucky enough to be in your path.

Unfortunately, tens of thousands of people deceive themselves into believing that, even though impaired from drinking, they believe it’s ok to drive because it is what they want to be true. So, they make up excuses to rationalize their behavior:

It’s late … there’s no one on the road. Even the cops have gone home.

I’ve driven home from here so many times I could do it blindfolded.

I’m a better driver after three drinks than most guys who are cold sober.

Home is only two miles away. What can happen?

Lame excuses all. People who believe them are deceiving themselves. They wouldn’t believe these excuses if someone else used them – unless they’re stupid!

Fooling yourself into believing that drunk driving, binge drinking and underage drinking are harmless also is dangerous, of course. Self-deception masks the truth and is an obstacle to well-informed, personal decision-making that is valued by any free society.

We all have a tendency to believe things that we’d like to be true, which is why most people believe they are friendlier than the average person, a better driver than most people, well above average at their job, and so on. Wanting to believe that something is true tends to draw your attention away from evidence that it may be false and toward evidence – however flimsy – that it may be true. This helps to explain why many people procrastinate about making doctor appointments, for example. They hope that they are not seriously ill and, as a consequence, they tend to focus their attention on evidence that they are healthy, rather than on symptoms that their health may be deteriorating. Because these people focus their attention on evidence that they are less ill than they actually are, they don’t seek medical attention until it is painfully obvious to them that they need it.

What you hope is true also can have an effect on your thinking about causes or explanations of unpleasant occurrences. Here’s an example. You are several years into a romantic relationship. Your partner seems less interested than he or she once was in what you have to say, in your hobbies, and in sex; and you’re quarreling more often than ever before. You’re still in love, and you’d like to believe that your relationship is strong. So, you focus on possible explanations of what might account for the changes you’ve noticed:

Your partner is stressed because of work or school

He or she is distracted by family problems

Even good relationships have normal ups and downs

These explanations are comforting. Why? Because, if they’re true, then your relationship is not directly threatened. As a result, you deceive yourself into believing what most disinterested observers would seriously doubt while also overlooking other explanations that might account for the changes, such as your partner has lost interest in you and is waiting to tell you or he or she has found someone else.

Thinking about these possibilities is unpleasant, so you probably don’t spend much time thinking about them. After all, we tend to shy away from doing unpleasant things. Your attention is drawn away from threatening “explanations” and toward non-threatening excuses that make it easier for you to believe your relationship is still on solid ground.

Self-deception happens in the workplace too, of course. Believing you are much better at your job than you actually are can be costly … it can get you fired. If Bill and Betty notice that things haven’t been going well for them lately at work, various hypotheses may occur to them:

It’s just bad luck, not a matter of how hard they work

Their colleagues aren’t pulling their weight

Their boss is irrational.

All of these may be true. But, if the actual source of their problems is their own behavior, they would do well to accept responsibility and make changes. Perhaps spending two hours a day at the office surfing the internet and e-mailing friends is taking its toll on their performance.

Here’s another example. You’ve had a few episodes of binge drinking lately, and the consequences have been unpleasant, to say the least, such as losing the whole next day to a hangover, vomiting, blackouts … and who knows what you did and what happened to you during those blackouts? You’ve been thinking maybe you’d better get a grip on yourself and stop drinking so much, but then some friends invite you to go out drinking. Possibly, you haven’t suffered enough yet to be absolutely sure that this would be a mistake. Perhaps you’d like to believe you can keep drinking without consequences. If so, your attention will be drawn to excuses that support your decision to drink heavily again, including:

I don’t have any fun unless I’m drunk.

If I don’t drink, I won’t have any friends.

What better way to get him off my mind for a while.

So what if I pass out again … no one is going to attack me.

We don’t need to try hard to deceive ourselves. Ordinary effects of hoping that something is true can make self-deception easy.

So should you stop hoping? Of course not! But, you should ask yourself honestly why you believe some things that you know are not rational. Do you believe them because you hope they’re true, or for some other reason? If you believe them just because you hope they’re true, how likely are they actually to be true? The answer is obvious: Not likely at all. What’s likely to be true is a matter of evidence, not hoping.

Plato was one of the smartest people who ever lived. Almost 2400 years ago in a dialogue called Cratylus he said, “There is nothing worse than self-deception – when the deceiver is always at home and always with you.”

Why is self-deception so bad? Because, deceiving yourself can be very dangerous, and your own self-deception isn’t always easy to detect. It’s much easier to tell when someone else is self-deceived. Many of us have seen friends or acquaintances fooling themselves into believing that their kids weren’t using drugs… that their lovers weren’t cheating on them … that they themselves did not have a drinking or gambling problem … that they were sober enough to drive safely.

And, after the fact, many of us remember such things about ourselves. We see we must have been fooling ourselves. After all, how else could we have believed something when we had good evidence that it wasn’t true?

Obviously, it’s better to avoid dangerous self-deception in the first place than to try to undo it. But, there are ways to overcome it. You can start with a question: “Do I believe this because I want it to be true?” For example: “Do I believe that I don’t have a drinking problem because I want it to be true that I don’t?”

“Do I believe that my daughter isn’t drinking because I want it to be true that she isn’t?”

“Do I believe that I’m sober enough to drive, because I want that to be true?”

When you believe something you want to be true, you might not feel like questioning that belief. But, if the belief is potentially dangerous, question it anyway! Try to imagine someone else – some impartial, intelligent person – who has all the evidence you have. Ask yourself whether that person would believe what you believe. That should get you to think about the evidence. And, it should help you to make an informed judgment about why you believe what you believe. Do you believe simply because you want to, or because of the evidence? Looking squarely at the evidence can make foolish beliefs vanish. Sometimes, we believe things partly because of a lack of evidence. “I don’t know why this would be a bad or harmful thing to do, so I’ll do it.” If you don’t have solid evidence for believing something to be true, do the research and examine the evidence closely.

Of course, it’s much more difficult to do all of this when you’ve had too much to drink. So here’s some advice: think about these issues before you drink! Examine the evidence so you know there’s no excuse for driving drunk … ever! Remember how you felt after your last binge and stay home when your friends want you to come out and get wasted with them.

If you have underage children, siblings or friends, learn the facts about the effects of alcohol on a young person’s body and mind. Focusing on facts -- evidence -- is the best way to prevent the self-deceptive excuses we like to use to do what we want, not what we should.

In closing, keep in mind something else Plato said in a dialogue called Protagoras: “To act beneath yourself is the result of pure ignorance; to be your own master is wisdom.” The idea is simple: If you know yourself, you’re in control and things will go much better for you. If you deceive yourself about important things, the opposite is all but inevitable.

Part of knowing yourself is knowing what kinds of situations cause you problems and simply trying to avoid those situations. If, occasionally, you don’t avoid them, are you doomed to screw up again? Not necessarily.

Pre-commitment is a handy technique for avoiding self-deception. If you know your limits, and decide in advance never to exceed them, you’re more likely not to do it. And the probability that you won’t do it increases if you announce that decision to friends and loved ones.

Why is that? You know you’ll lose face if they find out that you’ve violated your own commitment, and you take pride in being a person of your word.

So try this: If you drink and drive, consult a reliable source to learn how much is too much, decide never to cross that line for safe driving, and announce that decision to friends and family. Likewise, if you are a parent, consider signing a pledge at your child’s school that you are against underage drinking, and then telling the parents of your son’s or daughter’s friends. It’s especially useful to remind yourself of your decision before you drive to a bar, host a party, or are involved in other situations where alcohol is present.

Back to self-deception. You’ve driven to a bar or party, you’ve had a great time, and you’ve had more than a few drinks. It’s time to go home. Those lame excuses start coming to mind:

It’s late. There’s no one on the road. Even the cops have gone home.

I’ve driven home from here so many times I could do it blindfolded.

It’s only when I mix drinks that I’ve got a problem.

Here’s a different type of self-deceptive excuse that might occur to you: “Doing it just this one time is ok; I won’t do it again after tonight.” Obviously, it’s a lame excuse intended to give yourself permission to make a bad decision one situation at a time. The problem is that, if you do it once, you’ll probably continue to give yourself permission “just one more time.” At times like this, it is important to stick to your original decision. Do not allow yourself to believe that it would be ok to drive home! You have confronted the evidence; you know the limits. Remind yourself of your pledge never to drive after “x” number of drinks. If you go back on your word this time, you’re more likely to do it again. “Just this once” is always a poor excuse, whether for drunk driving or for condoning underage drinking or binge drinking.

Last – but certainly not least -- drunkenness is never a good excuse for anything. The reason is simple. You alone are responsible for whether you drink, what you drink, when you drink, and how much drink.

Another of Plato’s observations seems relevant here: ”To be your own master is wisdom.” You are your own master. No one else is. You are responsible for what you do. So take charge – accept responsibility.