2. ANOMALOUS PSYCHOLOGY DECEPTION AND SELF- DECEPTION, SUPERSTITION AND COINCIDENCE

3. Deception The act of making someone believe something that is not true. …an agent acts or speaks so as to induce false belief in a target or victim…including practical jokes, forgery, imposture, conjuring, confidence games, consumer and health fraud, military and strategic deception, white lies, feints and ploys in games and sports, gambling scams, psychic hoaxes and much more…

4. The function of deception Why has deception been passed on, why is it adaptive (the evolutionary approach). DISCUSS the purpose of deception.

5. Power Power, control, manipulation Machiavelli wrote The Prince in the early 16 th century. How to manipulate in order to gain power.

6. Self-deception Misleading ourselves eventually leading us to accept something that is incorrect. Think about someone who thinks they are really good at what they do, but isn’t really. This is a paradox. Why didn’t they realised the truth?

7. Self-deception The process of misleading ourselves to accept as true or correct that which is clearly not true. (Carroll, 2005)

8. Adaptive advantages of self- deception Trivers, 1985 Those who deceive themselves may become better at deceiving others. This would ensure survival and the passing of genes to the next generation. However, Moomal and Henzi (2000) disagree that deception is beneficial in the long run.

9. Psychoanalytic view Self deception may protect from pain, e.g. ego defence of denial. Freud suggested that a person consciously believes one thing while unconsciously believing another. Gur et a;/ (1979) asked participants to recognise their own voice on a tape.

10. Gur et al’s study (1979) Gur’s participants were monitored using a skin-conductive response (to measure unconscious recognition). Participants who heard their own voice but didn’t verbally identify it showed a skin reaction. This suggests that they consciously denied it was their own voice while unconsciously recognising it.

11. Cognitivism Ray Hyman read palms before becoming a researcher Clients were usually happy with what they were told. When he told them the exact opposite, they were even happier?

12. Superstition A belief that a behaviour will have an effect in another area.

13. Operant conditioning Skinner’s pigeons behaved oddly in the hope it would bring a pellet of food (because it had randomly happened before).

14. But why does superstition persist? Intermittent rewards are more powerful than rewarding every time. The behaviour is harder to extinguish.

15. Tom Daley’s toy monkey The monkey is present at all diving competitions and sits on Tom’s bag where he can see him because The first time Tom put his monkey on his bag he happened to perform extremely well compared with other times when the monkey was not there.

16. Evolutionary perspective It is worth noting (adaptive) that some behaviours lead to trouble, e.g. eating poisonous toadstools) Sometimes incorrect links are made.

17. The origin of superstitions Coincidence leads to superstition – discuss A teacher wears red on the day of an Ofsted visit and gets ‘outstanding’ for a lesson observation. The teacher then wears red for every inspector observation. On most occasions the teacher gets ‘outstanding’.

18. Probability Some people judge probability better than others. What are the odds of getting tails when tossing a coin? You have just got 3 heads in a row. What would you bet on for your 4 th throw? What is the probability of getting tails? Is that greater than the probability of getting another heads?

19. Understanding coincidence People often misjudge probability. This leads to a belief in coincidence. Marks and Kammann (1980) suggest that when two random events happen with a link, it is easy to believe this link is meaningful (you are thinking of a friend and they phone). BUT

20. Explaining coincidence continued Marks suggests that other factors play a role. Our memories are selective. Significant memories remain while others fade. We often reconstruct and add memories, emotions and even fantasies. We cannot, therefore, be sure we recall things correctly.

21. CONCLUSION Anomalistic experiences may be the product of our own self- deception – failure to be rational and logical.

22. Key points Self-deception is a term not commonly used or understood. The effects of self-deception are observable in most social situations.

23. Key points 2 Explanations for the purpose (function) of deception and self- deception are offered by: Clinical psychology Psychiatry Evolutionary psychology Psychoanalysis Cognitive psychology

24. Key points 3 Ray Hyman, using palm reading, suggests people want the reading to be right and will convince themselves that the reading is correct even when it clearly isn’t!

25. Key points 4 Superstition is an anomalistic power that exerts great influence over daily behaviour.

26. Key point 5 Research into coincidence is still developing, but the research by Marks and Kammann (1980) suggests coincidence could simply be put down to fallibility of memory and elaboration.