We all constantly tell ourselves stories—about who we are, about the people around us, and about the world in general. These narratives help us make sense of our lives, but they often drift from reality, shaped by psychological mechanisms that protect our self-image, reduce discomfort, or preserve our sense of being "good" or "in control."
A classic example in the Navi is Shaul Hamelech. Hashem, through Shmuel, commands him to completely destroy Amalek—sparing nothing, including livestock. Yet Shaul spares the best animals and keeps Agag alive. When Shmuel arrives, Shaul greets him enthusiastically: "ברוך אתה לה', הקמתי את דבר ה'!" — "Blessed are you to Hashem! I have fulfilled the word of Hashem!" He genuinely seems to believe he obeyed perfectly, framing his partial compliance as total fulfillment. In his mind, the story he tells himself is one of loyal obedience and success ("I did JUST as He commanded!!!"). Reality, of course, was quite different—he rationalized his disobedience, perhaps to preserve his status, avoid guilt, or convince himself he was still the righteous king.
This is a vivid illustration of self-deception and rationalization, where someone rewrites events to align with a flattering self-narrative. Modern psychology explains this through several well-documented mechanisms [from an article]:
In his groundbreaking book, When Prophecy Fails (1956), Leon Festinger and his co-authors sought to answer that question by investigating a doomsday cult. The group was led by a Chicago housewife who claimed to channel warnings from the fictitious planet, Clarion. Through automatic writing she was told that the Earth would be destroyed by a cataclysmic flood before dawn on December 21, 1954. The faithful quit jobs, left spouses, and gave away money and possessions, in preparation for the arrival of a flying saucer that would rescue them.
When the flying saucer did not appear, and the flood did not happen, the cultists changed the narrative, and then changed it again. They convinced themselves that their clocks were wrong. When they recognized that their clocks were correct, they set a new time for the arrival of the spaceship. When that event failed to occur, they convinced themselves that God had chosen to spare the world at the last minute because of their good deeds.
To explain this behavior, Festinger coined the term “cognitive dissonance.” This theory states that when there is discordance between our beliefs and external events or actions, we either change our actions or change our beliefs. Many people are reluctant to change their behavior, so they double down on their belief. In the case of the Clarion cult, so many had sacrificed so much in preparation for Armageddon, they were unwilling to change their actions, so they changed the narrative of their belief.
Self-deception is familiar to most of us. Willful ignorance allows us to evade examining situations that conjure cognitive dissonance. (“It’s okay to cheat on my diet on weekends.”) Often we rationalize our deceptions under the pretense of not wanting to hurt others (we know those little white lies are lies!), or to not “rock the boat.” This kind of self-deception occurs in various degrees in most of our relationships, but especially where there is disequilibrium in power, as between employee and boss.
Sometimes self-deception is an unconscious protective mechanism that enables one to survive a threatening experience. Prisoners in concentration camps needed a buffer of self-deception to remain faithful to the idea of their liberation even when their daily lives suggested otherwise. We may deceive ourselves about the seriousness of an illness or about our impending death. The difficulties of such situations encourage us to ignore the truth in order to thrive.
Morality and ethics enter the domain of self-deception when our self-deceiving conflicts with the greater good. As Nietzsche wrote in Ecce Homo, “How much truth does a spirit endure? How much truth does it dare?”
At its most devastating, self-deception can demonstrate the human capacity to split off or dissociate the parts of the self that perpetuate war, torture, and abuse. Nobel Prize-winning writer Luigi Pirandello captured this when he wrote in a private notebook, “There is somebody who’s living my life. And I know nothing about him.” We see the fragmentation of self not only in those suffering from dissociative personality disorders, but also in those engaged in brutal and bullying acts while maintaining a “normal” persona. We all know the clichéd trope of the mass murderer who lavishes affection on his dog.
The expression “Post-Fact World” has now seeped into our vernacular. We seem to have entered a time not only of questioning facts, but one of moral ambiguity as it relates to truth. Unless we are willing to try to attend to the truth as it is, not as we wish it to be, and to confront our capacity to self-deceive, we may experience an unprecedented turbulence in our lives.
The Five Faces of Self-Deception
Evasion of examining one’s biases or strongly held beliefs.
Moral forgetfulness.
Avoidance of contradictory beliefs or evidence.
Avoidance of feelings that contradict beliefs.
Over-rationalization and the tendency to blame others.
Christianity has a big problem with the Jewish people because we were supposed to be rejected by G-d [which of course explained our suffering for the last 2000 years - in their narrative. Not funny that they caused much of it]. When the State of Israel was born many had a crisis of faith because why would He give us the Land He promised us if He doesn't like us anymore? So some Christians have decided in recent decades that G-d didn't reject us after all.
Self-serving bias: We attribute successes to our own virtues ("I won because I'm skilled") but blame failures on external factors ("I lost because of bad luck/the ref/the situation"). Shaul takes credit for the victory over Amalek ("I carried out Hashem's will") while excusing the incomplete destruction (blaming the people or logistics implicitly).Everyday examples abound: A student aces a test and credits their intelligence/hard work, but fails another and blames the unfair professor or tricky questions. Or someone in a breakup claims "I was too good for them anyway" to protect ego, ignoring their own role.
Rationalization as a defense mechanism: We invent seemingly logical explanations to justify actions that conflict with our values. Shaul claims the spared animals were for sacrifice (a pious-sounding excuse), masking self-interest or fear. Common modern instances include a smoker who knows the health risks but tells themselves "I have good genes" or "stress is worse for me than cigarettes," preserving their self-view as rational while continuing the habit. Or someone who cheats on a diet/exercise plan and rationalizes "one day off won't hurt—I'll make up for it tomorrow," avoiding guilt.
These mental shortcuts are universal because facing uncomfortable truths threatens our identity and emotional stability. Shaul truly believed his own version—he wasn't cynically lying to others; he was deceiving himself first. The same happens today when people cling to distorted self-narratives despite clear evidence, whether in relationships, careers, politics, or personal habits.
