According to the pragmatic hypothesis testing theory, how much evidence we require before we believe something varies depending on the expected costs of falsely believing and disbelieving it. This theory has been used in the self-deception debate to explain our tendencies towards self-deceptive belief formation. This article argues that the application of this theory in the self-deception debate has overlooked the distinction between belief and acceptance, and that the theory in all likelihood models acceptance rather than belief, in which case it is probably not relevant to the explanation of self-deception. It is suggested, however, that doxastic error costs might be relevant to explaining some types of self-deception, though they feature in an evolutionary explanation of it rather than a psychological one.

根据实用假设检验理论，在我们相信某事之前需要多少证据取决于错误相信和不相信它的预期成本。该理论已被用于自欺欺人的辩论中，以解释我们形成自欺欺人信念的倾向。本文认为，该理论在自我欺骗辩论中的应用忽略了信念与接受之间的区别，并且该理论很可能模拟接受而不是信念，在这种情况下，它可能与解释自我无关-欺骗。然而，有人建议，信念错误成本可能与解释某些类型的自欺欺人有关，尽管它们以进化解释而非心理学解释为特征。