Evaluating Von Hippel & Trivers’ (2011) Adaptive Theory of Self-Deception - Progress Review Ted Hennicke

My thesis aims to evaluate and build upon theories of irrationality, and the aim of this chapter is to assess the novel theory of self-deception published in 2011 by biologist Robert Trivers (author of reciprocal altruism theory) and social psychologist William von Hippel (previously at UQ). Theirs is an evolutionary account that seeks to explain why people convince themselves of falsehoods in terms of biological adaptation. They reason that since the capacity to deceive others is adaptive, and self-deception facilitates interpersonal deception, then self-deception is also an adaptive capacity. The overarching paradigm guiding my evaluation is the Theory Construction Methodology (TCM) from psychometrics (Borsboom et al., 2021), which behaves as a quality control filter for psychological theories as informed by the philosophy of science. Following the principles of TCM I chose to decompose the theory into its constituent syllogisms for the purpose of analysis. Many critical errors were discovered, preventing the adaptive self-deception theory from passing successfully through the TCM filter. The search for a coherent, explanatory theory of irrationality continues.