A year and a half after the horrific Masonville High mass shooting, Owen is determined to uncover why the Creepers have converged on his land and the school--a necessary step toward his ultimate mission to drive evil forces out of Masonville.
This collection of essays focuses on the interface between delusions and self-deception. As pathologies of belief, delusions and self-deception raise many of the same challenges for those seeking to understand them. Are delusions and self-deception entirely distinct phenomena, or might some forms of self-deception also qualify as delusional? To what extent might models of self-deception and delusion share common factors? In what ways do affect and motivation enter into normal belief-formation, and how might they be implicated in self-deception and delusion? The essays in this volume tackle these questions from both empirical and conceptual perspectives. Some contributors focus on the general question of how to locate self-deception and delusion within our taxonomy of psychological states. Some contributors ask whether particular delusions - such as the Capgras delusion or anosognosia for hemiplegia - might be explained by appeal to motivational and affective factors. And some contributors provide general models of motivated reasoning, against which theories of pathological belief-formation might be measured. The volume will be of interest to cognitive scientists, clinicians, and philosophers interested in the nature of belief and the disturbances to which it is subject.
A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2021 A Next Big Idea Club Best Nonfiction of 2021 From the New York Times best-selling author and host of Hidden Brain comes a thought-provoking look at the role of self-deception in human flourishing. Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being. The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter. Filled with powerful personal stories and drawing on new insights in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Useful Delusions offers a fascinating tour of what it really means to be human.
Thousands of years ago in a land lost to time and since forgotten lived an immortal race of people. Destined to rule the world the immortals would be the reason for humanities downfall. Spreading greed across the globe they would corrupt all they touched. Two versions of the same tale are told within this to me, sometimes blatantly contradiction the other telling of the players involved in the destruction of their civilization. Six immortals set out across the continent in search of ancient relics of unimaginable power. Their reasons are varied from pure greed to a misguided need to do good. Some search for supremacy, others for glory. Who the heroes and villains are all depends on the perspective being told. Decide for yourself who is living in delusion and who the deceiver is. Read their stories in their own words to gain a greater understanding into the last days of the once mighty continent that was Atlantis.
This volume is an interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between delusions and self-deception, bringing recent work on motivated reasoning to bear on the problems posed by these forms of pathological belief. The volume will appeal to cognitive scientists, clinicians and philosophers interested in the nature of belief and the disturbances to which it is subject.
Who tells lies? Where, when, and how? Why do people tell lies, and when are they deemed acceptable? Deceit, Delusion, and Detection is a remarkable book that examines these questions across a variety of institutional and interpersonal contexts. Author W. Peter Robinson explores ways in which people develop their skills of deception and discusses the feasibility and art of lie detection. This volume reveals the cultural biases inherent in varying modes and interpretations of lying, paying special attention to the Western world and its values. Looking at lying from a social psychological perspective, Robinson analyzes it in terms of language and language usage. This book is accessible enough for the general public yet scholarly enough for academia. Deceit, Delusion, and Detection is particularly geared toward advanced students in communication studies and cognate areas such as social psychology, linguistics, or media studies. "Deceit, Delusion, and Detection is appropriate for graduate and postgraduate researchers in social psychology, sociology, and political science. . . . Several of the chapters . . . stand on their own as reviews of the research literature on the development of deception, on lying in face-to-face interaction, and on the history and effectiveness of the polygraph. . . . I have learned much from studying the collage W. Peter Robinson creates in Deceit, Delusion, and Detection." --Marsha D. Walton in Journal of Language and Social Psychology
Explains why self-deception is at the heart of many leadership problems, identifying destructive patterns that undermine the successes of potentially excellent professionals while revealing how to improve teamwork, communication, and motivation. Reprint.
Walter Gratzer's themes in the stories he relates in this book are collective delusion and human folly. Science is generally seen as a process bound by rigorous rules, which its practitioners must not transgress. Deliberate fraud occasionally intrudes, but it is soon detected, the perpetrators cast out and the course of discovery barely disturbed. Far more interesting are the outbreaks of self-delusion that from time to time afflict upright and competent researchers, and then spread like an epidemic or mass-hysteria through a sober and respectable scientific community. When this happens the rules by which scientists normally govern their working lives are suddenly suspended. Sometimes these episodes are provoked by personal vanity, an unwillingness to acknowledge error or even contemplate the possibility that a hard-won success is a will o' the wisp; at other times they stem from loyalty to a respected and trusted guru, or even from patriotic pride; and, worst of all, they may be a consequence of a political ideology which imposes its own interpretation on scientists' observations of the natural world. Unreason and credulity supervene, illusory phenomena are described and measured, and theories are developed to explain them - until suddenly, often for no single reason, the bubble bursts, leaving behind it a residue of acrimony, recrimination, embarrassment, and ruined reputations. Here, then, are radiations, measured with high precision yet existing only in the minds of those who observed them; the Russian water, which some thought might congeal the oceans; phantom diseases that called for heroic surgery; monkey testis implants that restored the sexual powers of ageing roues and of tired sheep; truths about genetics and about the nature of matter, perceptible only to Aryan scientists in the Third Reich or Marxist ideologues in the Soviet Union; and much more. The Undergrowth of Science explores, in terms accessible to the lay reader, the history of such episodes, up to our own time, in all their absurdity, tragedy, and pathos.
These piercing statements apply to Christians because the natural mind is always tending toward deceptive self-righteousness. Also in part he is trying to provoke people who think they are Christians but are “trusting in a refuge of lies,” to reconsider. Some topics are: intellectual assent is not holiness; natural gifts and sentiments are not to be confused with true spiritual life; adopting healthy habits is not necessarily spiritual repentance; and zeal for a cause is not necessarily Christian devotedness. The huge participation rate of all mankind in self-deception should give one pause to reconsider these issues.
This collection of essays focuses on the interface between delusions and self-deception. As pathologies of belief, delusions and self-deception raise many of the same challenges for those seeking to understand them. Are delusions and self-deception entirely distinct phenomena, or might some forms of self-deception also qualify as delusional? To what extent might models of self-deception and delusion share common factors? In what ways do affect and motivation enter into normal belief-formation, and how might they be implicated in self-deception and delusion? The essays in this volume tackle these questions from both empirical and conceptual perspectives. Some contributors focus on the general question of how to locate self-deception and delusion within our taxonomy of psychological states. Some contributors ask whether particular delusions - such as the Capgras delusion or anosognosia for hemiplegia - might be explained by appeal to motivational and affective factors. And some contributors provide general models of motivated reasoning, against which theories of pathological belief-formation might be measured.