Are You Rationalizing Your Decisions?, by Vlad Dolezal / www.pickthebrain.com
Post-rationalization, as you would have smartly guessed it, is making up the reasons or narratives post-facto. Here’s an example of you post-rationalizing:
It’s exactly the list of excuses that you make when you forgot to do something important assigned to you by your spouse/partner. Instead of saying, “I forgot, I’m sorry!”, you say things like, “I don’t like doing it.”, “Even you don’t listen to things I ask you to do?”, “That’s just dumb, why can’t we do it this (some other) way?”, or, “My friends will laugh or make fun of me!” (and the list goes on…).
Or how about when your wife asks you about the new gadget you bought to impress your office buddies? The reason when you were swiping your card was, “this is gonna make those guys so jealous!”, but the reasons that come out at home are the features of the product, and the endless possibilities of using it on your next vacation.”
I read a pretty good article on the subject, where Vlad has elaborated on:
* Why we humans rationalize our decisions
* The difference between what we think influences our decisions, and what REALLY influences our decisions;
* How being aware of this can help you make better decisions;
* How it can help you influence others, by appealing to the right motives.
Here’s what he has to say on ‘why we rationalize’:
1. To protect our EGO
2. To maintain the self-image of logical, rational beings.
On the offset, both seem the same to me. For me, my Ego = my Self-Image (of whatever I want to be). However, most of his reasons are sound and hence it’s still worth a read.
Here’s one more extract that I have to quote:
If you weren’t aware of rationalizing, you would quite likely fall victim to cognitive dissonance. That’s where you can’t hold two conflicting beliefs in your mind at the same time. Namely:
a) I make rational decisions
b) This gadget I bought is useless
And if you didn’t want to give up the idea that you make fully rational decisions, you would have to rationalize buying the gadget. You would come up with a whole list of features it has to convince your conscious mind it was actually a good idea to buy it.
Interested? Go ahead and read Vlad’s article, by clicking the link box below:
Originally published on January 28th, 2013
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