Lying to ourselves can also be a way of reconciling contradictory beliefs. Psychologists call the uncomfortable state of holding two conflicting ideas, “cognitive dissonance.” For instance, let’s say you meet members of a doomsday cult. (Stick with me, this is based on actual events.) The devotees profess to you and everyone they know that they are absolutely certain the world is going to end in 30 days. They’re so sure Armageddon is nigh that they quit their jobs, sell everything they own, and do everything their cult leader says. (It is, after all, the only way they can save their souls in the apocalypse to come.)
30 days pass, and thankfully the world doesn’t end. But now the cult members have a big problem. What will they do the day after the world was supposed to have ended? The cult members believed with all their hearts that the world would end, but it obviously didn’t. Would they renounce their beliefs on the spot, throw up their hands, and say, “Our bad! Let’s go get a Starbucks?” Not likely.
In the 1956 book, When Prophecy Fails, social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues described their study of a small group called the “Seekers.” The group believed in a UFO religion and professed with utter certainty that the world would end in a great flood on December 21, 1954.
When midnight struck and no cataclysm occurred, the group sat in stunned silence. Then, someone realized a clock was five minutes late. Oops! They sat awkwardly for a few minutes longer, awaiting imminent destruction. Obviously, nothing happened.
After four hours of nervous silence, something finally did happen. The group leader announced she received a message from an alien planet that told her, “The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.” Hooray!!
Clearly, the group members needed to believe a story to help them escape the facts. Lying to themselves was easier than admitting they were wrong all along.
Lying to oneself about an apocalypse that didn’t happen is silly, but the ability for self-deception can, at times, be a surprisingly valuable asset. Steve Jobs, for instance, was said to have a “reality distortion field” that gave him the power to mysteriously manipulate others into working on seemingly impossible tasks and timelines. By getting others to believe in his version of reality, they sometimes put their doubts aside and took his confidence on faith. According to his former publicist, Andy Cunningham, “When you worked with Steve Jobs, everything that seemed impossible he made possible, or he made you make it possible, which was even more important.”
