Finding reasons for our actions
is one very interesting and important psychological phenomenon.
Self-justification is part of what is called cognitive dissonance which in a
nut shell means that we change our beliefs to become congruent with our actions.
For example if you would be forced to do something that you don’t agree with
such as campaigning for the communist party (assuming that you dislike this
party), later on you will start liking the communist party more than before.
This is because you have done something that is against your own beliefs and
now you have to make sense of your own actions. Because you need to have
congruency between your actions and your beliefs and because your actions can’t
be changed, you will alter your beliefs about the communist party.
This, however, is not what I am
intrigued by. After all cognitive dissonance is a well-known effect and in the
last decade it has been challenged and criticized. My interest is more on the
side of how we find perfectly reasonable motives for our actions. An example is
how we support with solid arguments our purchases. This is very different from
cognitive dissonance because in the case of cognitive dissonance there are two
major particularities. First a person is somehow forced to do something that is
in disagreement with his own beliefs. Second, the person changes his attitudes
or his beliefs after the behavior took place.
Imagine the following scenario.
You go to a shop with the aim of buying some drapes. The same shop sells
cooking-ware and you are magnetically attracted to a nice frying pan. In the
spree of the moment you buy it. This was a totally unplanned purchase and not a
very necessary one since you have five frying pans. On your way home you are
thinking how you are going to explain your purchase to your significant other. While
finding arguments for buying the sixth frying pan to provide your better half
with, you think that one of the old pans was already too used, that the new one
is ceramic coated and you heard on TV that the food cooked in such a frying pan
is healthier and so on. Before arriving home, you have already good reasons to
support your purchase in front of your better half.
Two very interesting things are
that, first, when you made the purchase none of these arguments ever played a
role. Cooking-ware manufacturers know that non-professional cooks buy cute
stuff and subsequently design the products to be simply irresistibly cute. Your
decision to buy the pan was made when you found it to be very nice and think
that it would look good in your kitchen. The arguments about needing to replace
the old one and the new one being ceramic coated that makes healthier food came
only after you made the purchase, on the way back home.
The second interesting thing
concerns you coming up with arguments to defend your purchase in front of your
life partner who might be a bit critical with buying stuff that is not necessary.
However, your better half is not the one who needs convincing the most. The
person who needs the solid rational arguments is in fact you! You need to
explain your actions to yourself and only after doing this you need to explain them
to others. It is not unlikely that your life partner would be satisfied with a
simple and more honest answer such as “I bought it because I liked it”. But you
need to explain the action to yourself and very likely “because I liked it” is
not satisfying enough. It might be an issue of ego, or simply a natural need of
knowing that what you do is your choice.
The above mentioned example is
quite trivial because it concerns impulsively buying a frying pan. At the same
time, the need for justification is present in many areas of our lives. Quite
often our actions are not result of our own reasoning and choice, but rather
the outcome of a mixture of internal states, emotions and external factors such
as the social and physical environments. However, we have the need to believe
that there are good reasons for why we do what we do.
Justifying impulse purchases is
only one illustration and as mentioned before not a very important one. Let’s
think a bit about tax evasion and discrimination. Do we need to justify these
behaviors? Of course we do, and I don’t mean in a court of law, but rather in
our regular lives.
In my recent trip in my home
country, I have encountered several juicy examples of the need for
justification. For example, an entrepreneur who has a small business and
somehow avoids paying in-full the taxes, explained me that he does so because
public services are unsatisfying and the transport infrastructure is poorly
developed. These sound like very solid arguments and the sad reality is that
they are true. However, small scale tax evasion has nothing to do with bad
roads and increased bureaucracy. It is simply something that is done by almost
all small businesses to make an extra income. Most small firms do it because
other small businesses do it; because it is possible to do it and because there
are countless notorious examples of “stealing from the state and getting away
with it.” However, going with the herd and following the example of corrupt
politicians, business people and public servants are reasons that would make
the small scale entrepreneur not very proud. At the same time justifying the
small scale tax evasion with real problems such as bureaucracy and bad
infrastructure is a lot more comfortable for the entrepreneur.
It goes similarly for
discrimination. I have heard a lengthy and elaborate pleading against the Rroma
(Gypsy) community and why this minority is the biggest problem of the country.
Most of the arguments that supported this thesis were not very solid, but the
person providing them was convinced of them. In the end of the so-called
explanation, the old gentleman said that when he was a child he had a very
negative experience with some members of the Rroma community. In 1934 he was
kidnaped by a group of nomad gypsies and rescued by his parents a couple of
months later.
The gentleman’s negative feelings
towards his experience can’t be challenged, but finding so-called solid
arguments to support the idea that an ethnic minority that represents less than
5% of the population is the main problem of the country is a bit far-fetched. However,
this person needed to justify his negative feelings and supported them with
reasons that in fact have nothing to do with the source of the feelings.
Quite often we justify to
ourselves our actions and feelings (attitudes). The dilemma is whether we think
before we do something or we think after we have done something and find
reasons for our already done actions.
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