Reintegrating Our Diverse Personas: How Vulnerability and Adaptability Restore Genuine Human Connection

They Changed Their Story—But Did They Really Lie?

Ever wonder why someone changes their story in public—but it doesn’t quite feel like a lie?

What we often perceive as deception may actually be confabulation—an unconscious, self-protective response triggered by cognitive dissonance, faulty affective forecasting, and deep-rooted neural imprinting.

When faced with outgroup pressure, the brain activates the salience network, flagging social threats. To reduce discomfort and maintain a sense of belonging, individuals may unconsciously revise their responses—not to deceive, but to emotionally self-regulate, save face, and conform. This isn't manipulation; it's often a habitual, autodeductive coping strategy, rooted in implicit memory and unresolved psychological data.

🔍 Coachable Inquiry: In what situations do you find yourself editing your truth—more to feel safe than to be vulnerably transparent?

A respected peer within the behavioral science field recently shared her findings in the following group-study scenario:

“We had assembled a small group based on specific criteria. My client and I were exploring how her offering was being perceived and wanted clear, honest input.”

“Each participant filled out a brief form in private—just a few simple questions about their behavior. No pressure, no spotlight. Their answers were candid.”

Then came the group discussion.

“I asked a question—direct, but casual—about one of the behaviors they had reported. What followed was surprising.”

“Several participants gave completely different answers than what they had shared on the form.”

“Through a few intentional prompts, it became clear: the original responses were likely more accurate. The newer ones were shaped by something else.”

“Five out of eight shifted their story.”

• The group members weren’t inherently ‘lying’—they were merely confabulating and conflating their unconscious narratives to feel more accepted and welcome within the group.

Why?

Because the behavior in question didn’t align with what’s often praised in certain professional or social circles. They knew that. And when placed in a group setting—among unfamiliar eyes—they recalibrated. Their public persona took over.

But here’s the insight: this wasn’t lying in the traditional sense.

It was adaptive.

Performative behavior—shaped by context, social filters, and implicit emotional responses—is part of being human. We all shift between versions of ourselves depending on who’s watching. It’s not manipulation—it’s self-preservation, identity and emotional regulation, and an attempt or ‘bid’ to belong.

And once we understand that, we stop asking, “Why did they lie?” and instead ask, “What were they trying to protect?”

All human behavior is inherently performative. As sociologist Erving Goffman observed, we present different “selves” based on context—shifting between front-stage and back-stage behaviors depending on the social roles we inhabit. This isn’t inauthentic—it’s adaptive.

We tend to stigmatize adaptive, performative behaviors—like shifting one’s narrative in public versus private settings—as deceptive or disingenuous because of how cognitive dissonance and meta-cognitive shortcuts shape our interpretations of behavior.

Here’s how and why this happens:

🔍 1. Performative Behavior Challenges Our Belief in a Unified Self

Erving Goffman's dramaturgical metaphor disrupts the comforting idea of a single, consistent identity. Instead, it reveals that our "self" is contextually constructed—a mosaic of shifting roles, norms, and social performances.

This clashes with the cultural ideal of authenticity as unchanging and absolute. When we see someone present differently in different contexts, we experience cognitive dissonance:

“How can both be true? If they were genuine before, are they lying now?”

Rather than resolving that dissonance through a deeper, dialectical understanding of identity, we often reduce the tension by stigmatizing the behavior—labeling it as dishonest or avoidant.

🧠 2. Biased Heuristics and Meta-Cognitive Shortcuts

Humans rely on heuristics—mental shortcuts—to process complex social information quickly. This includes:

The Consistency Heuristic: We assume that people should behave the same across all contexts.

The Fundamental Attribution Error: We over-attribute others’ behavior to character, rather than context.

Truth Bias vs. Lie Bias: We flip between assuming people are either being fully honest or deliberately deceitful, with little tolerance for nuance.

These heuristics are designed to ease emotional recalcitrance—the discomfort of sitting with ambiguity or contradiction. Instead of asking why someone may have adjusted their self-presentation, we jump to moral judgments.

⚠️ 3. Avoidant and Deflective Coping—By the Observer

Ironically, our judgment of others' adaptive behavior is itself a form of avoidant coping. When we label someone as “fake” or “inauthentic,” we’re often deflecting:

Our own discomfort with social vulnerability

Our fear of being misjudged

Our internalized shame about our own contextual shifts

This is a projection of internal dissonance onto external behavior.

🧬 4. Evolutionary Adaptation Misread as Inconsistency

From an evolutionary standpoint, the ability to flex behavior across environments is an essential survival trait. Performative behavior is:

• Socially cohesive
• Emotionally protective
• Neurologically embedded (via the medial prefrontal cortex, TPJ, and salience network)

Yet, our discomfort with ambiguity and our culturally reinforced notions of authenticity cause us to misread these adaptive signals as threats—to integrity, truth, or group norms.

💡 Conclusion:

We stigmatize performative behavior not because it’s inherently wrong—but because it triggers our own cognitive discomfort and challenges our preferred shortcuts for interpreting others. In doing so, we may fail to see the adaptive intelligence behind what looks like contradiction.

This situation offers a compelling case study in how cognitive dissonance, faulty affective forecasting, and implicit neural programming converge to drive emotional suppression, confabulation, and conflation—not as deliberate deception, but as unconscious self-protective mechanisms. Let’s break down the empirical and psychological mechanisms at play.

We run from, or deflect from these ‘truths’ because addressing or confronting them feels emotionally, mentally, physically, and psychologically discomforting—so we suppress this data, rather than process it.

🔍 1. Cognitive Dissonance as a Triggering Mechanism

Cognitive dissonance arises when individuals experience a conflict between their internal beliefs and external behavior, especially under ingroup vs. outgroup social pressure.

In this case:

The participants initially told the truth in a private, low-stakes context (form).

When faced with a public setting (group discussion), their perceived identity was challenged.

To reduce the psychological discomfort of dissonance (“I did this, but it’s frowned upon”), participants distorted or revised their narrative to align with a socially desirable self-image.

Role:

This is not conscious lying—it’s an automatic recalibration of internal narratives to reduce emotional discomfort, often without self-awareness.

🧠 2. Faulty Affective Forecasting

Affective forecasting refers to one’s prediction of future emotional states—often inaccurately.

In this context:

Participants likely underestimated how they’d feel when exposed to judgment in a group.

They misjudged the emotional salience of the public setting, defaulting to behavior that avoids future shame or embarrassment.

Their emotional forecast failed, so in-the-moment they emotionally recalibrated via self-editing (confabulation and conflation).

💡 3. Confabulation, Conflation, and Emotional Suppression

• Notice when and where you tend to ‘fill in the gaps’ with distorted, shortsighted, or default explanations—rather than acknowledging contextual complexity and nuances.

Rather than deception, these responses stem from:

Confabulation: Fabricating or misremembering events to fill emotional or cognitive gaps.

Conflation: Merging or confusing separate details to construct a socially acceptable self-image.

Emotional suppression: Avoiding vulnerable truth by muting or revising emotional expression.

These are defensive cognitive maneuvers—participants often aren't aware they’re doing it.

🔄 4. Salience Network & Implicit Memory

The salience network (primarily the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex) detects socially relevant threats and shifts cognitive resources accordingly.

In this case:

The group context activated the salience network, increasing sensitivity to social evaluation.

This triggered emotional avoidance mechanisms: suppression and false reconstruction of memory (confabulation).

Implicit memory systems encoded prior social experiences (e.g., “don’t be shamed”), which reactivated under pressure.

🧠 5. Autodeductive & Habitual Responses

These “confabulations” often occur due to habitual, self-protective neural patterning:

The brain prioritizes social cohesion and self-preservation, even over objective truth.

These are autodeductive responses: automatic conclusions formed without deliberate reasoning, often shaped by past emotional traumas or social conditioning. Again, it’s essential to reinforce that that may not constitute an intentional, orchestrated effort to deceive or mislead—analyzing it as such might be our own reactive and filtered distortions at play. (more on that at a later date.)

🧬 6. Unconscious Neural Imprinting & Programming

Participants’ behavior reflects default unconscious neural programming:

Learned early from social feedback (reward/punishment cycles).

This imprinting often drives how we present ourselves in groups, especially where identity threat is perceived.

Over time, it becomes embodied cognition—a felt sense that guides behavior without conscious thought.

Implications for Coaching or Therapeutic Practice:

• Naming the Behavior without Consciously Shame allows space for introspection.
• Highlighting the function over the moral judgment (“This helped you feel safe”) disarms defensiveness.
• Introducing meta-cognition helps clients notice and reframe these unconscious defaults.
• Psychoeducation about these mechanisms can be a gateway to healing chronic shame or fear of social exclusion.

Reflective Coaching Prompt:

When you notice yourself labeling someone as inconsistent, ask:

“What discomfort in me is seeking certainty, instead of understanding their context?”

These shifts help bridge empathy gaps and foster social cohesion. Neuroscience affirms this fluidity: the medial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction support our ability to mentally represent both ourselves and others, enabling us to navigate relational dynamics with agility. This context-sensitive selfhood is key to what we call dialectical humility—the ability to flex our perspectives without losing core identity.

Find out more about leveraging these adaptive human traits for growth by tuning in to our recent podcast episode:

“Performing the Self: The Role of Sub-personalities in Shaping Social Identity”

In this insightful solo episode of The Light Inside , we explore the psychological, social, and neurological dimensions of identity through the lens of sub-personalities and adaptive behavior.

For therapists, coaches, and mental health professionals, this episode offers a nuanced view of how our ‘inner cast of characters’ shapes what we call “the self,” and how these performative roles can either self-handicap or liberate us, depending on how we relate to them.

Whether you support clients on their path to self-integration or are exploring your own evolving sense of identity, this episode delivers practical insights rooted in neuroscience, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and somatic psychology.