An adaptive account of self-deception: over-confidence in male martial artists

Abstract

I investigated the influence over-confident self-assessments have on performance within a martial arts tournament. While social psychologists argue that self-deception best serves the individual through the protection and enhancement of the self-concept, an evolutionary perspective predicts that self-deception best serves the individual by allowing them to better deceive others. A sample of male martial artists (N=24) were recruited and asked to provide an assessment of their peer’s fighting ability, while simultaneously providing assessments of their own ability. Results revealed that participants reliably rated themselves as more formidable when compared to the mean rank their peers assigned them. Behaviours were observed across two tournaments in which participants competed against one-another and against non-participants. I expected that the degree to which they over-claimed their relative standing would predict more formidable behaviours, such as the frequency of initiating attack, forcing their opponent to retreat, prolonging conflict, and driving their opponent out of the ring. After controlling for participant’s physical ability I found that the degree to which they over-claimed predicted a higher ratio of attacking, forcing their opponent to retreat, and prolonging conflict, but not their ability to drive their opponent out of the ring. I also hypothesized that the degree to which they over-claimed would predict a higher likelihood of winning their fight – only a marginally significant relationship was observed. These results are discussed within an evolutionary framework. Alternative explanations are considered. I recommend three key questions for further research, and discuss how this paradigm broadens the scope of enquiry beyond the established social psychological theories