People often cheat to win money, get prizes, or beat others. But what if there’s nothing to gain except feeling good about yourself? Would people still bend the rules just to feel a bit smarter, more ...

In the media, often intelligent people make deceitful statements. Are they trying to deceive us or themselves? Professors of philosophy Francisco Marchi and Albert Newen said we have an evolutionarily ...

Let's imagine that we are sitting across from the French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre at one of his favorite Parisian bistros, Le Brasserie Balzar (dogs allowed). Sartre's teasing apart ...

The technology sector is no longer asking what artificial intelligence can do for us. It is asking what AI can do for itself. That shift is already underway. OpenAI has begun describing models as ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about relationships, personality, and everyday psychology. Have you ever been in scenarios where these thoughts occurred ...

When given the opportunity, individuals will cheat to feel smarter or healthier, engaging in diagnostic self-deception to convince themselves that their performance is due to their ability and not the ...

Humans are masters of self-deception. We fool ourselves into believing things that are false and we refuse to believe things that are true. In fact, we lie to ourselves about just about everything — ...

Have you ever lied to yourself or convinced yourself that a harmful habit or something counterproductive or ill-advised is acceptable? Not everyone likes to admit it, but at times, our ego takes us ...