From: "emily.ma...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : From: "seerdope@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> ..."In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not" (Yogi Berra) In theory, I love science and its methods, despite severe limits. Particularly neuroscience, broadly defined. However, in practice, I am quite leery of psychological studies using interviews with canned questions, particularly if "Yes/No" are the alternatives. Even 10 point scales can be silly responses to complex questions. "More than once it felt good when I heard on the news that someone had been killed” “I could never enjoy being cruel.” Just as a question, why can't someone who has No Problem answering these questions with a simple "Yes" or "No" interpret the inability to do so as self-deception. EM: Someone could - and by doing that they could be deceiving themselves, and also selling themselves and the rest of humanity short in some key way, perhaps? Not to harp on this, but I think this is an important point. And I think you are (possibly intentionally) missing that point. If you -- being completely honest -- can answer "Yes/True" to the first question, then *that is the answer*. If you -- again, being completely honest -- can answer "No/False" to the second question, then *that is the answer*. The problem (IMO) lies with people who hedge their bets and say, "Well...this is a bad question, because although yes, more than one time I *have* felt good when I heard that someone died, I don't feel that way all the time. I'm "really" a good person." Or they would prefer to say, "This second question is bad, too, because although I cannot say that I have *never* enjoyed being cruel, I don't enjoy being cruel all the time. I'm "really" a good person." All of this is self-deception. *The* answers to the questions ARE (respectively) "Yes" and "No." ANY hedging and excuses and "exceptions" a person feels they need to post after that are IMO exercises in self-deception, an attempt to convince themselves that they're good people anyway. Your answer above, Emily, sounds to me like an attempt to portray any person who feels no need to equivocate and lie -- to themselves and others -- and can answer these questions with a simple "Yes" and "No" as a Bad Person. Whereas the person who can't answer them without equivocating and making excuses for answering "Yes" and "No" can still claim to be a Good Person. It seems to me that the very *definition* of the latter behavior is self-deception. If you have taken pleasure in news of someone else's death -- EVER -- *that's who you are*. If you have enjoyed being cruel -- EVER -- *that's who you are*. How *often* you do these things is not the question; it's whether you can honestly admit to doing them when you find yourself doing them. Those who indulge in self-deception *can't* admit this. Think back a few months to Robin Carlsen. For weeks he called Vaj a liar for claiming that he (Robin) had struck one or more of his (Robin's) students. Finally, back against the wall, Robin actually *admitted* to having struck his students. THEN, almost immediately, he went right back to "No, Vaj really was lying because he said I did it 'at a seminar' and I never did." THEN, someone here posted that they remembered him doing it, and the only place that could have happened was at a seminar. And still, Robin continued to call Vaj a liar and claim that he had never done what he *admitted* he had done. THAT is pretty much the ultimate exercise in self-deception as far as I'm concerned. Did he strike his students? The answer is "Yes." The issue of "How often" or "Where" isn't the point. Attempts to try to *make* it the point are self-deception, and in Robin's case an attempt to deceive others. The problem with self-deception is that it becomes a pattern. This all took place (the original events) twenty or more years ago, and Robin *still* can't bring himself to tell the honest truth about it. Just my opinion...
