Date of Award
January 2013
Degree Type
Open Access Thesis
Document Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Matthew P. Winslow
Department Affiliation
Psychology
Abstract
Self-Deception creates a mental state in which an individual unquestioningly maintains a belief that has clearly been refuted and proven faulty by some information which the self-deceiver has come to possess. However, aside from personality trait measures, no measurement techniques have been developed which capture the act of Self-Deception in a laboratory setting. In order to fill this need, the current research sought to examine the relationship between self-deception and cognitive dissonance, and used this relationship to create the Double Standards scale.
In the current research, participants completed several surveys online. They then came into the lab, where they were be randomly assigned to Affirmed and Deaffirmed conditions. It was found that asking participants to recall their past behaviors condom use caused those participants to significantly lower their estimation of the average person's likelihood to use condoms, but not to change their ratings of their own likelihood. It was also found that Affirmed participants did not lower their ratings of others as much as participants in the Deaffirmed condition. The implications for these findings are discussed.
Copyright
Copyright 2013 Benjamin T. Lindsay
Recommended Citation
Lindsay, Benjamin T., "Double Standards In Self-Deception: The Development Of The Self-Other Double Standards Scale" (2013). Online Theses and Dissertations. 190.
https://encompass.eku.edu/etd/190
