The Science of Deception

“[I]mpressive. Each chapter illustrates that commercial success lies not in good science or good business practices, but instead in convincing the buyer that there is honesty and integrity where there is little or none. The strength of the work lies in Pettit's exploration of how psychology used the tricks of corporations to sell itself. Whether discussing optical illusions, personality testing, or psychoanalysis, the author highlights the role of the scientist as con artist. . . . Recommended.”

“Michael Pettit explores the connections of academic psychology and of established institutions such as courts and bureaucracies with the humbug of hucksters, confidence men, and medically diagnosed pathological liars. In this way he extends the reach of history of science into a world of slippery subjects that so cunningly elude reliable knowledge.”

“A scrupulously researched, kaleidoscopic tour of fraud and fakery in modern America, The Science of Deception brings to light the deeply entangled histories of professional psychology and market culture. With remarkable virtuosity and range, and moving seamlessly among realms as different as advertising, psychotherapy, forensics, food and product regulation, trademark law, and laboratory protocol, Michael Pettit mines a deep vein of anxiety about consumer society—one with surprising dividends for science. This is a fascinating tale of confidence games and conjurers, crime fiction and muckraking, pathological liars and optical illusions, with penetrating insights into how psychology as a discipline, practice, and set of generative concepts about the self infiltrated American life in the twentieth century.”

“Michael Pettit beckons our attention to the neglected underside of the truth technologies of the modern human sciences, persuasively showing how lies, deceptions, illusions, and other fraudulent acts captivated psychologists as they investigated the psychological self. He ties psychological investigations of deception with the uncertainties about truth that were circulating through economic and legal thought and enriches our historical understanding of scientific psychology’s ideals of objectivity. Pettit’s capacious tour of the science of deception that framed much psychological research explores studies of confidence men, self deception, parapsychology, commercial fraud, and dishonest schoolchildren. Having traveled through these cases, the reader henceforth will be aware of the ubiquity of deception in everyday life and ever attentive to how it comprises an organizing principle in the methods and content of twentieth century psychological science.”