Michael Faraday on Mental Discipline and How to Cure Our

Propensity for Self-Deception

“That point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to

resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is
the most important of all.”

Michael Faraday on Mental Discipline and How to Cure Our

Propensity for Self-Deception

The pioneering English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday

(September 22, 1791–August 25, 1867) planted the seed for the
study of electromagnetism — a cornerstone of our present
understanding of the universe, without which Einstein wouldn’t have
been able to link space and time in his seminal theory of special
relativity. But Faraday, like many great scientists before the dawn of
psychology, was also a man of enormous insight into the human
psyche and its pathologies. On May 6, 1854, he delivered a lecture
at the Royal Institution on the subject of “mental discipline,” later
included in his volume Experimental Researches in Chemistry and
Physics (public library | public domain).

Two centuries before modern psychologists coined “the backfire

effect” — the root of why we have such a hard time changing our
minds — Faraday captures our profoundly human propensity for
self-deception when it comes to confirming our convictions and
indulging our desires:

“Among those points of self-education which take up the form of

mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover,
difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and
equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency
to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of
resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not
been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a
habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error
in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the
temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and
appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those
which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all,
more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising
wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the
thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with
dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required
by every dictate of common sense.”

More than two hundred years before the term “confirmation bias”
entered the popular lexicon, Faraday extols the essential self-
discipline of continually questioning even our most dearly held
beliefs and probing whether what we desire to be true is actually
true:

“The inclination we exhibit in respect of any report or opinion that

harmonizes with our preconceived notions, can only be compared in
degree with the incredulity we entertain towards everything that
opposes them… It is my firm persuasion that no man can examine
himself in the most common things, having any reference to him
personally, or to any person, thought or matter related to him,
without being soon made aware of the temptation and the difficulty
of opposing it… That point of self-education which consists in
teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are
proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of
natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.”
Complement with Carl Sagan’s indispensable Baloney Detection Kit
and Adrienne Rich on what “truth” really means.