The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

by Kevin Simler

This is illustrated rather dramatically by the rare but well-documented condition known as blindsight, which typically follows from some kind of brain damage, like a stroke to the visual cortex. Just like people who are conventionally blind, blindsighted patients swear they can’t see. But when presented with flashcards and forced to guess what’s on the card, they do better than chance. Clearly some parts of their brains are registering visual information, even if the parts responsible for conscious awareness are kept in the dark.40 What this means for self-deception is that it’s possible for our brains to maintain a relatively accurate set of beliefs in systems tasked with evaluating potential actions, while keeping those accurate beliefs hidden from the systems (like consciousness) involved in managing social impressions. In other words, we can act on information that isn’t available to our verbal, conscious egos. And conversely, we can believe something with our conscious egos without necessarily making that information available to the systems charged with coordinating our behavior.