In all these ways, our brains can fool us into believing things that are not true. Self-deception allows us to inflate our opinion of our own abilities, so that we believe we are smarter than everyone around us. It means that we overlook the repercussions of our actions for other people, so that we believe that we are generally acting in a moral way. And by deceiving ourselves about the veracity of our beliefs, we show greater conviction in our opinions – which can, in turn, help us to persuade others.
