Discovery:
By Emily Sohn
For sexually abusing 10 boys while working as an assistant football coach at Penn State, Jerry Sandusky received a sentence this week of between 30 and 60 years in prison.
And yet, Sandusky continues to insist that he is innocent.
"They could take away my life, they could make me out as a monster, they could treat me as a monster, but they can't take away my heart," he said in a recorded statement. "In my heart, I know I did not do these alleged disgusting acts. My wife has been my only sexual partner and that was after marriage. Our love continues."
Despite overwhelming evidence and testimony against him, Sandusky appears to truly believe he did nothing wrong.
How can he possibly be so completely delusional?
Sandusky's faith in his own lies is, in fact, an extremely common and very human trait, experts say. And even though his denial led him to commit destructive and terrible acts far worse than what most people would ever do, his ability to distort and then reinforce his own sense of the truth illustrates the extreme flexibility of the human mind to alter memories.
"Self-deception can become deeply entrenched if it's something we practice and continue to practice and continue to continue to practice," said Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University and author of "The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life."
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By Emily Sohn
For sexually abusing 10 boys while working as an assistant football coach at Penn State, Jerry Sandusky received a sentence this week of between 30 and 60 years in prison.
And yet, Sandusky continues to insist that he is innocent.
"They could take away my life, they could make me out as a monster, they could treat me as a monster, but they can't take away my heart," he said in a recorded statement. "In my heart, I know I did not do these alleged disgusting acts. My wife has been my only sexual partner and that was after marriage. Our love continues."
Despite overwhelming evidence and testimony against him, Sandusky appears to truly believe he did nothing wrong.
How can he possibly be so completely delusional?
Sandusky's faith in his own lies is, in fact, an extremely common and very human trait, experts say. And even though his denial led him to commit destructive and terrible acts far worse than what most people would ever do, his ability to distort and then reinforce his own sense of the truth illustrates the extreme flexibility of the human mind to alter memories.
"Self-deception can become deeply entrenched if it's something we practice and continue to practice and continue to continue to practice," said Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University and author of "The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life."
MORE