Self-Deception : Adopting False Beliefs for a Favorable Self-View

This paper explores how an individual can deceive herself in order to acquire a more favorable self-view. I present a theoretical model and a laboratory experiment in which each subject's donation to a charity gets transformed into an ambiguous lottery, i.e., a lottery where the winning probability is unknown. Subjects who hold pessimistic beliefs about this probability have a legitimate excuse to not donate. However, a subject who does not truly hold a pessimistic belief about this probability may still adopt a pessimistic belief, by deceiving herself. This adopted belief would then enable her to use the same excuse that is available to truly pessimistic subjects, which, in turn, would let her continue thinking of herself as an altruistic person, even as she acts selfishly. In a laboratory experiment, I elicit subjects' true beliefs, adopted beliefs, and actions. I find that subjects who refuse to donate systematically adopt more pessimistic beliefs than their true beliefs, whereas subjects who donate adopt their true beliefs. This consistent with the hypothesis that individuals behave altruistically not out of honest-to-goodness altruism, but only because they like to think of themselves as altruistic