Genuine self-deception works by staying willfully uninformed, not by believing falsehoods

Evidence

In genuine self-deception, people avoid doing things that they have an inkling might reveal what they do not want to know. However, suspecting something is not the same as knowing it to be true. As long as one does not find out the truth, what one believes is not known to be false. Keeping oneself willfully uninformed about an unwanted truth is the main vehicle of genuine self-deception. This is a common self-deceiving way of evading responsibility, as we illustrate in ensuing chapters. By not pursuing courses of action that would reveal the actual state of affairs, individuals keep the knowable unknown (Haight, 1980). Acting in ways that keep one uninformed about unwanted information is self-deception. Acting in prejudicial and mistaken ways is self-biasing. These are different phenomena (Bandura, 2011). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 704

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins down the precise definitional boundary between genuine self-deception (willful ignorance) and self-biasing (prejudicial false belief) — a distinction that matters for attributing moral responsibility.
• XREF: Speaks directly to vault claims about ordinary people rationalizing Islamophobic policy — whether they deceive themselves or are merely biased by ideology. — connects to: The praised Christian ideal of self-denial is built on a falsehood; Post-truth spans a spectrum from bullshit and spin to self-deception and delusion — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 46; Lies we tell ourselves only work when we stop checking whether they are true. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 520 (+4 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 704