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.

We lie to ourselves every day: about how well we drive, how much we're enjoying ourselves - even how good looking we are. In this ground-breaking book, Robert Trivers examines not only how we self-deceive, but also why, taking fascinating examples from aviation disasters, con artists, sexual betrayals and conflicts within families. Revealing, provocative and witty, Deceit and Self-Deception is one of the most vital books written this century, and will make you rethink everything that you think you know. 'Original and important . . . remarkable, thick with ideas.' Financial Times 'One of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought.' Steven Pinker 'A swift tour of links between deception and evolutionary progress . . . fascinating.' Economist 'I devoured it from cover to cover . . . exhilarating.' Guardian 'A powerful book . . . essential for anyone who wants to try to counter their own unconscious biases.' Independent

Think you’ve ever deceived yourself? Then this book is for you. Think you’ve never deceived yourself? Then this book is really for you.

With a new chapter This new edition of Herbert Fingarette's classic study in philosophical psychology now includes a provocative recent essay on the topic by the author. A seminal work, the book has deeply influenced the fields of philosophy, ethics, psychology, and cognitive science, and it remains an important focal point for the large body of literature on self-deception that has appeared since its publication. How can one deceive oneself if the very idea of deception implies that the deceiver knows the truth? The resolution of this paradox leads Fingarette to fundamental insights into the mind at work. He questions our basic ideas of self and the unconscious, personal responsibility and our ethical categories of guilt and innocence. Fingarette applies these ideas to the philosophies of Sartre and Kierkegaard, as well as to Freud's psychoanalytic theories and to contemporary research into neurosurgery. Included in this new edition, Fingarette's most recent essay, "Self-Deception Needs No Explaining (1998)," challenges the ideas in the extant literature.

Unknowingly, too many of us operate from an inward mindset—a narrow-minded focus on self-centered goals and objectives. When faced with personal ineffectiveness or lagging organizational performance, most of us instinctively look for quick-fix behavioral band-aids, not recognizing the underlying mindset at the heart of our most persistent challenges. Through true stories and simple yet profound guidance and tools, The Outward Mindset enables individuals and organizations to make the one change that most dramatically improves performance, sparks collaboration, and accelerates innovation—a shift to an outward mindset.

Self-deception raises complex questions about the nature of belief and the structure of the human mind. In this book, Alfred Mele addresses four of the most critical of these questions: What is it to deceive oneself? How do we deceive ourselves? Why do we deceive ourselves? Is self-deception really possible? Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research on everyday reasoning and biases, Mele takes issue with commonplace attempts to equate the processes of self-deception with those of stereotypical interpersonal deception. Such attempts, he demonstrates, are fundamentally misguided, particularly in the assumption that self-deception is intentional. In their place, Mele proposes a compelling, empirically informed account of the motivational causes of biased beliefs. At the heart of this theory is an appreciation of how emotion and motivation may, without our knowing it, bias our assessment of evidence for beliefs. Highlighting motivation and emotion, Mele develops a pair of approaches for explaining the two forms of self-deception: the "straight" form, in which we believe what we want to be true, and the "twisted" form, in which we believe what we wish to be false. Underlying Mele's work is an abiding interest in understanding and explaining the behavior of real human beings. The result is a comprehensive, elegant, empirically grounded theory of everyday self-deception that should engage philosophers and social scientists alike.

A penetrating analysis of the dark corners of human deception, enlivened by intriguing case histories and experiments.