there totally seem to be people who don’t ever notice it in themselves
Count me in that group (“hardly ever”, maybe).
I’m pretty sure that I do rationalize, but I can’t recall any explicit occasions of catching myself in the act.
I’m pretty sure that I have abandoned beliefs in the past that I clung to for longer than I should have, but it’s hard for me to come up with an example right now.
Perhaps we differ in the explicitness of the meta-cognition we engage in. When confronted with incontrovertible evidence of my errors, I tend to facepalm, think something like “stupid me”, update and move on. I don’t generally attempt to classify the mistake into a particular fallacy.
Can you share some of the examples you’ve been using to illustrate rationalization? I’ll tell you if I get the same “can’t relate to this”, or if I can relate but failed to label the equivalent examples in my own past as rationalizations.
On February 3, 2007, shortly before lunch, I discovered that
I was a chronic liar. I was at home, writing a review article
on moral psychology, when my wife, Jayne, walked by my
desk. In passing, she asked me not to leave dirty dishes on
the counter where she prepared our baby’s food. Her
request was polite but its tone added a postscript: “As I
have asked you a hundred times before.”
My mouth started moving before hers had stopped.
Words came out. Those words linked themselves up to say
something about the baby having woken up at the same
time that our elderly dog barked to ask for a walk and I’m
sorry but I just put my breakfast dishes down wherever I
could. In my family, caring for a hungry baby and an
incontinent dog is a surefire excuse, so I was acquitted. [...]
So there I was at my desk, writing about how people
automatically fabricate justifications of their gut feelings,
when suddenly I realized that I had just done the same thing
with my wife. I disliked being criticized, and I had felt a flash
of negativity by the time Jayne had gotten to her third word
(“Can you not …”). Even before I knew why she was
criticizing me, I knew I disagreed with her (because
intuitions come first). The instant I knew the content of the
criticism (“… leave dirty dishes on the …”), my inner lawyer
went to work searching for an excuse (strategic reasoning
second). It’s true that I had eaten breakfast, given Max his
first bottle, and let Andy out for his first walk, but these
events had all happened at separate times. Only when my
wife criticized me did I merge them into a composite image
of a harried father with too few hands, and I created this
fabrication by the time she had completed her onesentence
criticism (“… counter where I make baby food?”).
I then lied so quickly and convincingly that my wife and I
both believed me.
I don’t know whether Anna used this as an illustration, but one way by which I tend to notice myself rationalizing is when I’m debating something with somebody. If they successfully attack my position, I might suddenly realize that I’m starting to defend myself with arguments that even I consider bad or even outright fallacious, and that I’ve generally gone from trying to discover the truth to trying to defend my original position, no matter what its truth value.
Another example is that I might decide to do or believe something, feel reluctant to explain my reasons to others because they wouldn’t hold up to outside scrutiny, and then realize that wait, if my reasons wouldn’t hold up to outside scrutiny they shouldn’t hold up to inside scrutiny either.
Count me in that group (“hardly ever”, maybe).
I’m pretty sure that I do rationalize, but I can’t recall any explicit occasions of catching myself in the act.
I’m pretty sure that I have abandoned beliefs in the past that I clung to for longer than I should have, but it’s hard for me to come up with an example right now.
Perhaps we differ in the explicitness of the meta-cognition we engage in. When confronted with incontrovertible evidence of my errors, I tend to facepalm, think something like “stupid me”, update and move on. I don’t generally attempt to classify the mistake into a particular fallacy.
Can you share some of the examples you’ve been using to illustrate rationalization? I’ll tell you if I get the same “can’t relate to this”, or if I can relate but failed to label the equivalent examples in my own past as rationalizations.
Another example, from The Righteous Mind:
I don’t know whether Anna used this as an illustration, but one way by which I tend to notice myself rationalizing is when I’m debating something with somebody. If they successfully attack my position, I might suddenly realize that I’m starting to defend myself with arguments that even I consider bad or even outright fallacious, and that I’ve generally gone from trying to discover the truth to trying to defend my original position, no matter what its truth value.
Another example is that I might decide to do or believe something, feel reluctant to explain my reasons to others because they wouldn’t hold up to outside scrutiny, and then realize that wait, if my reasons wouldn’t hold up to outside scrutiny they shouldn’t hold up to inside scrutiny either.
Do you experience either of those?