Michele K. Surbey
Shelby Johanson and Cindy Ung
 Humans are self-aware and have
theory of mind
 This also means we are more aware
of our flaws and the unpleasant
aspects of our world
 Self-awareness and processes like
self-deception and repression have
been subject to natural selection

 Gur and Sackeim (1979) – when two contradictory beliefs are
held at different levels of consciousness.
 Mele (1997) – Avoidance of unpleasant information, or
unintentionally and unconsciously viewing things in an
unrealistically positive way
 Trivers (1976, 1985) – Active misrepresentation of reality to
conscious mind, or biased information flow within an
individual
 Kurzban and Aktipis (2007) – Self-deception is an outcome of
preferentially choosing overly positive representations or
biased perceptions of reality instead of more realistic
depictions
 SCI – Social Cognitive Interface – System that stores
representations relevant to social interactions
 Surbey’s definition: Preferential
accessing of overly positive or
idealized representations or
perceptions of the self, others,
and the world
 Taylor and Brown (1988) – Keeps threatening thoughts
out of consciousness and facilitates continued
performance, motivation, and optimism in adverse
conditions
 Trivers (1985) - Arms race between ability to deceive
and detecting deception
 Surbey – may have evolved other evolutionary functions
 Abramson and Martin (1981) and Sackeim (1983) -
People who are depressed lack the normal capacity to
self-deceive
 This lack of capacity to self-deceive in depressed
people is compatible with many evolutionary theories
of depression
 Surbey mentions five areas of evolutionary theories for
depression
 Bowlby (1969) – Depression is a reaction to a loss
of a significant relationship
 Klinger (1975), Nesse (2000) - Adaptive means to
conserve resources/energy in uncontrollable
adverse stimuli
 Welling (2003) - Provide time-out so their
cognitive maps, etc. can be updated
 Price (1967) – Depression is a
mechanism used by losers of
social competitions
 Gilbert (2006) – Depression is for
reducing further challenges to
dominant individuals
 Allen and Badcock (2003) – Depression serves to
reduce social exclusion
 Reduces the risks of social exclusion in individuals that
perceive that they have low social status or who are
already experiencing social rejection
 Hagen (2002,2003) – Depression is a means of
bargaining and advertises an individual’s neediness
 Intrusive and repetitive thoughts
about problems in social relationships
are typical of depression
 Watson and Andrews (2002) and
Andrews and Thomson (2009) –
Ruminations signify an increased
focus on problem solving
 Depression is a way of attending,
regulating, maintaining, and resolving
social relationships with others who
might not have the same fitness
interests as you
 Self-deception facilitates initiation and maintenance
of reciprocal altruism
 People more likely to exhibit cooperative behaviors if
they can’t access their own and others’ selfish motives
and assume a norm of reciprocity
 Surbey and McNally (1997) – Higher self-deception
associated with greater cooperation in Prisoner’s
Dilemma game
 Good model for reciprocal
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altruism and cooperation
Two individuals choose to
cooperate or defect
Payoffs depend on choice
made by competitor
One trial versus multiple
trials
How can a cooperative
relationship be initiated if,
on any first or single trial,
it is always better to defect?
 Why? Because you would have to access positively
biased representations of yourself and of other people
 High levels of SD predicted cooperation on PD
Retest relationship between depression and SD
using two measures of SD
2. Test relationship between SD and conscious feelings
associated with symptoms of depression
3. Replicate previous findings of association between
SD and cooperation and examine the role of
attributional styles and dispositional optimism
4. Examine relationship between depression and
cooperation in social dilemmas based on PD game.
1.
 Induced negative mood or depression related with
reduced cooperation in other types of games
 Results: depressed individuals in power position more
likely to defect on cooperating partner than ‘normal’
individuals
 Problems: didn’t allow assessment of individuals with
depression to cooperate or defect in mixed-motive
social dilemmas
Participants
 80 Undergraduates (23 male, 53 female).
 Queensland Australia
 17-47 years old (M=22.01)
 European descent
 Middle class
 Course credit awarded
Measures
 Self Deception Questionnaire
 Paulhus Deception Scales
 Attributional Style Questioning
 Beck Depression Inventory II
 Life Orientation Test
 Prisoner’s dilemma game vignettes
Measures – Self deception
 Self Deception Questionnaire (SDQ)
 20 psychologically threatening, but generally true statements.
 Denial indicates self deception – taps tendency to deny unflattering
or negative information
 Paulhus Deception Scales (PDS)
 40 questions measuring socially desirable responses
 SDE: Subconscious attempt to look more agreeable
 Secondary measure of self deception
 IM: Conscious tendency to manage reputation
 Control for impression management
Measures - Mood
 Beck Depression Inventory II
 21 questions indicating severity of depression.
 Attributional Style Questioning
 Causal interpretation of 12 situations.
 Locus of control, stability, globility, and personal control.
 7 styles
 The important ones are OP (Optimism), SN (Stable Negative), and the three
negative in general (CONEG: associated with learned helplessness)
 Used composite of 3 negative scores as depression measure.
 Life Orientation Test
 Measure of optimism and pessimism
Measures - Cooperation
 Prisoner’s dilemma game vignettes
 4 hypothetical situations
 Relevant to undergrads.
 Match payoffs in classic game of prisoner’s dilemma.
 T>R>P>S
 “How would you respond in this situation?”
 Demographic variables were not significantly related
with psychological measures
 Older participants had lower LPESS
 SES positively correlated with SE
 Participants with high levels of
depressive symptomology had reduced
levels of SD
 SDQ and SDE modestly but
significantly and positively
intercorrelated
 Higher PDS scores correlated with
lower depression scores
 Higher scores on IM associated with
reduced levels of depression
 High levels of negative attributional styles and low
levels of positive biased cognitive styles associated
with increased depressive symptomology
 Depressed individual didn’t show reduced overall
internal locus of control or personal control
 Several attributional styles and dispositional optimism
significantly related to depression
 Two measures of SD correlated with some but not all
attributional styles and with LOPT
 Reduced levels of each measure of SD along with SN
independently predict greater depressive
symptomology
 After accounting for these three measures, the
remaining attributional styles did not contribute to the
model
 No significant correlations between measures of SD
and intention to cooperate
 Higher self deceivers more likely to intend to
cooperate than low self deceivers
 Low SN and LPESS and high OP
and IM related with higher
intentions to cooperate
 Attributional optimism only
significant predictor – accounts for
19% of variation
 Scores on BDI-II ranged from 0-38
out of a possible 63.
 Average score: 11.64±8.30
 ‘Minimal’ depression = 13
 ‘Severe’ depression = 29
 Tendency to cooperate: 4.86±0.77
 Participants with more severe
symptoms of depression showed
reduced cooperation
Related Findings
 Reduced levels of self deception in
depression.
 High self deceivers. . .
 Feel less pain.
 Are less likely to see things that don’t “fit.”
 Card test
 Individuals with depressive symptoms are. . .
 more capable of detecting cheaters (more
skeptical).
 more logical when confronted with anomalies,
negative situations, and violations of social rules.
Notes on the measures
 SDQ and SDE
 Overlapping tests, yet only moderately correlated and predicted
BDI independently.
 Self enhancement (in SDE) vs. denial (SDQ).
 Conscious management of image (IM) correlated with SDE and
SDQ, but did not predict BDI.
 Attributional styles
 Correlation between
 SDQ/SDE and attributional styles.
 Negative styles and depressive symptoms.
 Stable Negative style and self deception explain 37% of variance in
BDI-II scores.
Attributional styles - interpretations
 Lack of self deception seems to underlie the
negative thinking of depressed individuals.
 Stable Negative (bad things are caused by things that
won’t go away) also important.
 These factors may make individuals more
vulnerable to depression.
 Self deception may be eroded by life events.
Adaptive in that denial only works for so long.
Cooperation
 High self deceivers were more likely to cooperate in a game
of prisoner’s dilemma.
 Only with SDQ, not SDE
 Possibly related to different aspects that they measure.
 Denial of possible negative responses by other person?
 When the stats got fancy. . .
 Neither SDQ not IM predicted cooperation!
 The best predictors were
 Optimism/belief that they had some control of the situation.
 IM was close to significant.
 Possibly related to “the illusion of control.”
Return to Hypothesis
 Hypothesis
 “. . .moderate tendency to self deceive is functional,
promoting both mental health and reasonable levels of
cooperation.”
 Support
 “The finding that mild depressive symptomology was
related to both low levels of self-deception and
cooperation supports this view.”
Interpretations
 Depression is maladaptive and results from low
self deception (Nettle, 2004)
 Depression is adaptive - maintains social relations
 Bargaining tool (Hagen, 1999, 2002, 2003)
 Results show that depressed people do withhold cooperation,
supporting this view.
 Depression and defection are related: methods of
dealing with adverse situations by withdrawing
cooperation.
Predictions
 People will be more forgiving of defection if the
defector is depressed.
 Non depressed, high power individuals were more
forgiving than depressed, high power individuals when
playing with a depressed partner (Hokanson et al.,
1980).
 Repeated exposure to negative events may reduce
self deception and increase depression and
defection.
Clinical Implications
 Therapies adjusting thought to
fit reality may not be effective.
 Instead, not thinking about
negative thoughts, even if they
match reality, may be a better
strategy.
 Even so, if social problems are
not resolved, the treatment will
not have lasting effectiveness.
 Cooperation of a normal individual in a game of
prisoner’s dilemma if the defecting player is seen as
depressed.
 An experimental study, to tease out the causations
they are hinting at.
 Play with actual people?
 Test hypothesis in realistic situation
 Undergraduate subject pool.
 Methods consisted of a huge stack of tests.
 Their conclusions and ponderings do not always
appropriately follow their findings.
 Depression includes lack of activity. Does cooperation
fall into this?