PhD defence Mara Georgiana Moldoveanu

Keywords: False beliefs, Self-deception, Memory errors, Motivated reasoning

"(Motivated) False Beliefs: Individual and Contextual Factors Shaping Self-deception and Memory Errors"

This thesis examined the formation of false and self-deception (defined as motivated false beliefs), with a focus on their underlying mechanisms, influencing factors, and potential consequences for memory, everyday behavior, and legal contexts. Findings suggest that self-deception is common and motivated by internal and external goals, such as avoiding punishments or feeling better. Experimental results indicated that access to (true) information influenced how individuals recalled past performance, leading to inflated future and past self-assessments (self-deception, respectively, self-serving memory bias) and more memory errors, the latter unrelated to self-deception. The research also showed that contextual factors, such as the plausibility and suggested frequency of events, affected the formation of autobiographical false beliefs, with more plausible scenarios more readily accepted when the past event was suggested as happening once, but not for allegedly repeated events. Additionally, dispositional self-deception showed limited and context-dependent associations with aggression and attitudes toward lying in a community sample and a legally-relevant sample (violent offenders). Overall, this thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of false beliefs and self-deception, while highlighting their potential relevance for these topics in legal applied settings.

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