Much apparent self-deception is public pretense staged to deflect social reproof.

Evidence

In addition to contending with their own self-censure, people are concerned with how they appear in the eyes of others and the threat of social sanctions for engaging in conduct that is morally suspect. This adds social incentives for self-exoneration. Haight (1980) argues that in much of what is called self-deception, individuals are aware of the reality they are trying to deny, but they create the public appearance that they naively misjudged what was going on. Others are thus left uncertain about how to judge and treat persons who seem sincerely to have misled themselves. The public pretense is designed to head off social reproof. When people are caught up in the same moral predicament, the result may be a lot of collective pretense. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 706

Categorization

• XREF: Adds a social-display motive to the vault’s portrait of why ordinary citizens adopt Islamophobic postures — reputational protection rather than internal belief.
• QUESTION: If much self-deception is performative, how would that reshape Cooper’s social-conservatism claim about genuine conviction versus social signaling?
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 706