The value of self-deception: consequences of conflict in dual-process action selection

Human decision-making often involves conflicts between competing evaluative processes that generate distinct action preferences. In this talk, I propose self-deception as a product of such conflict and demonstrate how the emergence of self-deception provides a unified framework for explaining a wide range of everyday and psychopathological behaviors traditionally addressed by separate accounts. The core idea is that when a process’s preferred action is rejected due to conflict with other processes, it can still influence choices by promoting attentional biases that shape the agent's beliefs and thereby manipulate the agent into selecting the process’s preferred action. Consequently, over time, the process will learn to assign value to such attentional biases. Across three simulations, I illustrate how such dynamics lead agents to value biased beliefs, maintain uncertainty when it is instrumental, and suppress bias when it becomes maladaptive. I then shortly discuss the behavioral implications of the model and show how it provides a parsimonious account of phenomena such as optimism, self-handicapping, procrastination, and depression- and bipolar-like behavioral dynamics. By integrating computational theory with clinically relevant constructs, the model offers new theoretical insight into the adaptive and pathological functions of self-deception.