everybody's doing it," and, "If I hadn't done this first, somebody else would have done this waste crime or this other kind of crime." So there's this rationalization . There's this normalization. There's this diminishing of your own role and agency, and that still tells us a lot about the psychology of people who commit crimes,because most of us are very bad at saying sorry and saying, "I messed this up, and I shouldn't have done that." And instead, what our brains do is they try to make us feel better, and they
He described defense mechanisms as a way of which we somehow cope with our conflicts and emotional, distressing feelings-- rationalization , sublimation, denial, projection. So he was a genius, but he restricted any type of experimentation, any tampering with the method, and it became a faith, a dogma, that really constrained
this this money is not coming from from uh other than the the the people of the country in other words it's the a rationalization or fall into some sort of thinking trap that later you might regret so one of the core messages in
to try to handle them responsibly and that's why it's important for us to keep doing what we're doing and I increasingly came to think that these were rationalizations to justify what they were rather than sort of like deeply guiding their actual behavior and that when push comes to shove they'll follow their incentives rather than do what's actually good.
unconstitutional, and inconsistent with a democratic society, we've adopted the rationalization to justify the fact that we haven't done anything about it. And we call that rationalization . It's something, a term that I'm sure you're all familiar with.
This has nothing to do with work and family. It's not a rationalization of time spent parenting is going to be good for your career. It was talking about what investing in others teaches you.
developed and so as you go along if the ethical habits you're developing are full of rationalizations and excuses then when you run then you run into the big ones now you're not prepared and so part of the point behind this book is to help people become sensitive to the
Maybe I have to impose extra information. But all the different bits of rationalization don't fit together.
And so what this does is it ties up your mind. It prevents your mind from engaging in rationalization . So when we did this experiment again, and we have 90% of people who did cheat even though they said they wouldn't, what you find is on the white bars
But what happens is you don't want to think of yourself as untrustworthy. And so your mind engages in this rationalization . The good you tamps away, tamps down the guilt so that it can create a view of you.
Now, I mentioned that these spent hens are useless to the meat industry, or are of very low value to the meat industry. So we then start coming up with rationalizations and justifications for why we have to do this.
They don't give themselves leniency. And so what was leading to this was rationalization . Everybody has this immediate pang of guilt.
we we don't want people turning away bored so we talk about all the things that can get a reaction from you and that's that's where is in a rationalization that abundance and people draw the conclusion that we can figure out whether somebody is going to make a great president by whether or not
and we just keep repeating them. And it all comes back to a series of policy rationalizations for all kinds of policies that redistribute income from workers to
The reason we know is, when we ran the experiment a third time we put people under what's called a cognitive load, which is a way to occupy their ability to engage in reason and rationalization . Basically we're distracting them with a secondary task while they're deciding what they're doing.
And I fully understand that. But it's interesting to me personally that it's like we have these rationalization that we believe so deeply in, that sometimes we do hurt someone, thinking that we're trying to protect them.
either-- Stachelski-- he had a picture of him on his desk for his rest of the time at the Patriots because this is Or conversely, we use it as a rationalization for why we're not pursuing something.
The largest fishes, like tuna, salmon, many of the other ones, are teetering on the brink of collapse. There aren't many fish left. I have a whole chapter in The World Peace Diet of dealing with all the rationalizations and objections that naturally come up when people hear these ideas.
Back when fraternity hazings were a kind of sort of acceptable thing, the rationalization was, well, I went through it.
Maybe I have to impose extra information. You're rationalizing. We're all aware that we do a bit of rationalization .
is basically this, denial, rationalization , and trying to just distance ourselves from the fact.
So in psychology we had this method which is called cognitive load. And it's a way to kind of tie up people's mental resources so they can engage in rationalization . And the way it works is we give them random digit strings of numbers, say like seven digits.
even the narrative that they are controlling, that they're being very careful with, still tells us a lot about them. So, I think, certainly in my research on environmental crime as well, what we see is that people use a lot of rationalization . They say things like, "Well, everybody's doing it," and, "If I hadn't done this first, somebody else would have done this waste crime or this other kind of crime." So there's this
because we think that that's justice, which is, sure, that's one version where it's, you know, an eye for an eye kind of. You know, life for life. There's obviously the more extreme version of that, which is the death penalty, which I don't adhere to, but I could see the rationalization of, well, you stole somebody else's life, so you don't deserve to have one. But there's also the other side, which is, if we're looking at prevention, murder is really... Like, they're not going to...
Now, when we're talking about workaholism, that's a tricky one, because then people-- there's this rationalization that, wow, well, this is work.
Maybe I have to impose extra information. It's just like all the other explanations they give, but it can't be anything other than a rationalization .
So in order to rationalize, justify to ourselves the fact that despite the fact that we understand that racial segregation is wrong, harmful, unconstitutional, and inconsistent with a democratic society, we've adopted the rationalization to justify the fact that we haven't done anything about it. And we call that rationalization .
In some cases, actually, I've worked out for myself what my rationalization is for some of the sort of magic tech.
As such, it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization , no fake status as minority martyrdom, no sophistry about simple
Now, I mentioned that these spent hens are useless to the meat industry, or are of very low value to the meat industry. And I don't need to go into all the types of bad things us humans have done over the years, but in most cases, there's usually a rationalization of why we had to do it.
That's one of the things in the book, also, which is that knowing yourself should never be used as a rationalization . It should never, "Of course I'm having a hard time collaborating
What's the reality, I'm sorry, what's the rationalization that most of us use? Well, the rationalization most of us use for not sleeping that much is number one: I don't
Yeah. Yeah. In fact, Matt, you kind of, just to jump in there, a lot of medicine's done with post hoc rationalizations