Chagnon uses this term to refer to the lies he told the yanomamo about his food:

The answer is "adaptive defense mechanisms".

For a significant number of us, any circumstance that brings vulnerability triggers an oblivious defensive measure that enables us to adapt to unsavory feelings. What's more, for the time being, numerous mechanisms can be adaptive. We don't stay. We don't state or accomplish something with conceivably harming implications. We keep ourselves in a superior state.