In 1979 Gur & Sackheim developed a questionnaire to test how much people lie to themselves. The questions follow (in their study they asked participants to rank their responses on a scale of one to seven, which is bullshit because the questions are phrased yes or no, and deal with words like “ever” which it is impossible to respond to with gradients).

1. Have you ever felt hatred toward either of your parents?
2. Do you ever feel guilty?
3. Does every attractive person of the opposite sex turn you on?
4. Have you ever felt like you wanted to kill somebody?
5. Do you ever get angry?
6. Do you ever have thoughts that you don’t want other people to know that you have?
7. Do you ever feel attracted to people of the same sex?
8. Have you ever made a fool of yourself?
9. Are there things in your life that make you feel unhappy?
10. Is it important to you that other people think highly of you?
11. Would you like to know what other people think of you?
12. Were your parents ever mean to you?
13. Do you have any bad memories?
14. Have you ever thought that your parents hated you?
15. Do you have sexual fantasies?
16. Have you ever been uncertain as to whether or not you are homosexual?
17. Have you ever doubted your sexual adequacy?
18. Have you ever enjoyed your bowel movements?
19. Have you ever wanted to rape or be raped by someone?
20. Have you ever thought of committing suicide in order to get back at someone?

The idea behind the questionnaire is that the more of these questions you say no to, the more you’re lying to yourself. This seems problematic to me for a bunch of reasons. One problem is that the test assumes that the respondents are being honest in their answers, which is not necessarily going to be the case considering the subject matter. Many of these questions, especially when asked in a face-to-face interview, would provoke negative responses from people who are just embarrassed to say certain thoughts they’ve had out loud. Another is that the test assumes all 20 items to be universal experiences, which I don’t know how you could prove. Some questions are worded problematically as well (in particular #3 and #12). Still, it’s interesting to think about. I give a hearty fuck yeah to pretty much all of the questions, but there are a few which I’m not so enthusiastic about, and the nature of the test forces you to confront certain things about yourself if you examine your responses to it in light of its aims.

I’ve heard that studies show that people who lie to themselves a lot are happier and more successful than people who are honest with themselves, people who “see things as they really are,” so to speak. But I find the claim that any of the relevant factors can be examined objectively to be extremely dubious. If anybody has any information about those studies and their methods, let me know.