Fooling Ourselves: The Power of Rationalization
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was challenged recently to explain his support for the firing of Jeff Sessions, given Graham's 2017 remark that there would be "holy hell to pay" if President Trump dumped his Attorney General. Lest liberals be too self-satisfied in highlighting Graham's mental gymnastics to justify his change from abhorrence to acquiescence, they should recall that Hillary Clinton, in her post-election memoir, What Happened, found all kinds of other people and institutions to blame for her defeat.
Benjamin Franklin, in his 1791 Autobiography, explained what we all do so well. "So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, he said, "since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do." Today we call this "rationalization."
Rationalization is often rather innocent. Just ask anyone who forgot to send a birthday card to a loved one and fumbled to justify it by saying "I was just so busy." But rationalization can lead to barbarism. Genocide is often justified through "reasoning" that those killed are somehow deserving of their fate.
There is nothing wrong with sticking with or changing one's mind and explaining why. This is, respectively, steadfastness and flexibility. What we must avoid is citing reasons that dupe us into thinking we are justified when we are not.
We seldom acknowledge that we rationalize (a rationalization in itself). But we can see it in others. As psychologists Richard West and Russell Meserve note, we are good at spotting the overt behavior of others and contrasting it with what they have said or done previously. But when we look inside ourselves, if we even try, we can't "see" our behavior and our biases. So we're convinced they're just not there.
Given their usefulness, the variety of rationalizations is legion, as a few examples illustrate.
"Everyone's doing it" is a classic - heard by every parent of a teenager (and used by many parents too). While often of minor concern, it can lead to such social contagions as bullying, sexting, and excessive, unaffordable materialism.
"It's for a good cause" is echoed by everyone with the certainty that their way, even if harmful to some, is necessary for the "greater good." Negative political campaigns, and the willful lying that accompanies them, are justified this way (as well as with "everybody's doing it" - we're also good at combining rationalizations).
"It wasn't illegal" is a common rationalization when we have acted unethically. Lying is justified this way. The Bush Administration justified torture with this rationalization, after crafting memos to explain how the behavior was "legal."
"I'm a good person, after all" - is a favorite when we have done something wrong. Psychologists label this as giving ourselves "moral license." We think of all the good things we've done as "money in the bank" to allow a bad behavior withdrawal. People who've dieted for days and then reward themselves with that big piece of cake know the value of moral license, as do environmentalists who litter their rallies with plastic throw-aways.
Rationalization, by definition, is self-deluding. It closes us off to our mistakes and contrary opinion. It can also close our hearts through ethical numbing, the inability to see our own bad behavior because we have justified it once too often.
Yet, we have to admit, rationalization is comforting. It's easier to live with a version of ourselves that we admire. Rationalization helps us deal with what social psychologist Leon Festinger labeled "cognitive dissonance," the discomfort between what we say or do and how we think of ourselves.
In the end, however, rationalization is not even rational. It's the triumph of emotion over reason. Neuroscientists have found that "thinking" is often just finding reasons for our feelings. The eighteenth century British philosopher David Hume, understood: "Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."
There is no cure for rationalization. We're going to rationalize because we're human. The motivation can be overpowering, as seen in this exchange between Michael and Sam in the film, The Big Chill:
Michael: "I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy
rationalizations. They're more important than sex."
Sam: "Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex."
Michael: "Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?"
Awareness is perhaps a key step to avoiding rationalization's worst dangers, as is allowing others to point out our self-justifying gyrations. Rationalization is a mental disease for which a strong dose of humility is good medicine.
Photo Credit: DWRose
