First Draft - Do people try to justify their behaviors and beliefs?

     Humans reason everyday, every time in their lives. Then, do they reason in objective ways or subjective ways in the case of judging themselves? People often support the idea of first one, because in rapidly changing society of techniques, people should reason in sophisticated and accurate way, no matter the judgement of themselves like a mirror. On the other hand, others argue that people are subjective in seeing themselves because they look themselves as the first person. I wondered whether people judge their behaviors or beliefs objectively or subjectively. People like to take some fun psychological tests for enjoying. However, that does not mean that they are fully interested in learning how their minds are doing and what are the results of their working. I wanted to wake them up from ignorance of their minds, and make them understand their inner operation affecting their behaviors and beliefs. So, I made one question, 'Do people try to justify their behaviors and beliefs?' Justifying one's behavior and beliefs means that one person judges him or herself in subjective way when one made some fault which includes minor things to cruel things. And I stated my opinion to agree with the topic. I believe that people try to justify their behaviors and beliefs when they did something not acceptable or wrong. Before I give you more specific reasons to support my argument, I'll introduce more backgrounds about my topic to let you know what I'm going to persuade you.

Since Socrates stated his opinion about humans, saying that "Humans are reasonable, objective, and rational.", people had begun to study about human minds to prove the rationality of humans. And as time goes, the studies of humans mind in rationalism was developed by lots of philosophers. This was done especially by Descartes who said that "I think, so I exist." which means that we think and behave according to our intuitive logical truth. And one century later, Kant also studied about human minds, concluding that "People are rational enough to enact their kindhearted behaviors, and they always do so." These three philosophers other than ancient, medieval, and current philosophers were also providing the evidences to let people know that they are reasonable in thinking and behaving. Despite their efforts to define humans as rational beings, lots of psychologists nowadays insist that humans are not rational, rather they try to justify their behaviors and beliefs in the cases of making mistakes. And objectiveness of humans are working everytime in lives. For example, employers choose appliers about who would be their new employees in every normal companies, and judges make their mind how long criminals would be in jail. Also, doctors talk to patients in objective views with coldness about how long they are able to live their lives, and experts prove mathematical proportions. However, people make mistakes in those accurate and objective works. And their minds begin to work as they didn't anything wrong, which means that people justified themselves. This fact proves that people are no more rational in the views of themselves. And people are also barely aware of their inner working of justification in their behaviors and beliefs.

For example, one person broke the window with his baseball, when he was playing in front of neighbor's yard. Right after the accident, he might never judge the broken window with his rational thought, like 'I should go into the house and say sorry to the host, paying the whole cost of the window.' We often think that 'It was just a mistake. The host will generously forgive my fault. Wait! Wasn't it you who didn't catch my ball? Yeah, you should pay for the cost of the broken window! It's your fault.' or 'It was just a mistake. The host will understand this as a cute act of children. Then, let's run away!'

Therefore, as we live in reality, we need to and should think and know our real shape of minds. And in reality, we, human beings are not rational and even justify our behaviors and beliefs for ourselves. So, I'm on an affirmative side of the topic that people try to justify their behaviors and beliefs. I'm going to provide two reasons to support my opinion. First, human minds control human bodies in thinking and behaving. Second, humans are selfish and are not perfect beings in thinking and behaving.

Not to misunderstand our mind workings and not to treat our inner world with ignorance, we should know and learn about our self-justification working proved in psychological field according to several results of experiments and studies.

Perhaps one of the challenges is to understand human minds, working in actual world. Let's first look at the human mind that controls human bodies(including behaviors). Because human minds are not rational rather those are subjective which means that they are vulnerable to justify human behaviors and beliefs. According to the Placebo effect, the experiment showed that patients were able to recover their sicknesses though when they ate counterfeited medicines from doctors. This proves that human are relying on personal thoughts and beliefs beneficial for themselves, because if they are accurate and rational, they would actually not get better from the sicknesses, rather they would maintain their sicknesses samely as before the medicine taking as after the medicine taking. Also, there is a theory of cognitive dissonance. When conflicting ideas are existing in one human brain, one person would delete one idea to support what he wants to think. For example, when a person smokes, he already knows about the badness of cigarettes. The idea that 'Smoking in not good for my health' and another idea that 'Smoking makes me get out of so many stress' are conflicting. However, if he determined to smoke, he would ignore the first idea to justify his behaviors of smoking. In addition, according to Barnum, he made a theory of the Forer effect. The experiments to show this effect was set in psychological tests of personal characters, and respondents took psychological tests of their own. They were all got results from the psychology experts, and they recorded that their results are almost same with what really they are. However, unfortunately, all respondents got same result papers. This shows that people tend to misjudge the situation occurred right to themselves, especially about their own psychological results or something like that. Furthermore, in the Stanford Prison experiment, SPE, done by Philip George Zimbardo, experimenters set applied attendants into prisoners and polices randomly. And both groups were promised to get money in the case of fulfilling certain days inside the prison. However prisoners began to be more frightful, and polices started to suppress prisoners cruelly and strangely. Those who played police role justified their bad behaviors toward other group of people because they thought that they are really polices. This shows that people are consciously or unconsciously subjectively fitting their positions to what they believe to be or should be which is corresponsive to the word 'justifying'.

Second, humans are selfish and are not perfect beings in thinking and behaving. Because they are selfish in thinking and behaving especially when the situation is occurred to them, people would really justify their faults. According to Steven Pinker who wrote the Harvard Sampler's psychology part, he said that humans are actually selfish though they behave with reciprocity in the case of threat from others. For example of 'Ultimatum game', humans divide money almost equally because they fear of bad reputation if they divide money unequally. However, in 'Dictator game', humans who play a role to divide money get lion's share to have the biggest benefits, which means that humans are selfish. So, when we use this example to the case of people who made some faults, they would certainly try to cover up the incidents(equal to justifying). In addition, according to self-serving bias, any cognitive or perceptual process will be distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem. And by the working of this effect, people operate strong will to protect the ego from threat and injury even when they made some faults. This proves that humans try to justify their behaviors and beliefs in the cases of making mistakes or faults. Have you ever heard of Narcissism? This is the story of Narcissus who went into the river and died because he love himself so much. People are thinking in self-egoistic ways like this kind of tale. So humans will do whatever to protect their beliefs toward themselves, even if it is justifying their behaviors or beliefs.

Obviously, my opinion is not the recognized study, despite being correct one. There are some people who will dispute my position with examples of normative models, computation ability in cognitive biological approach, and philosophers like Kant and Descartes. Of course, these arguments are all shortsighted and simply incorrect. First of all, normative models-have two types, deductive and inductive reasoning which recognize that humans have rationality-are not enacted by people in reality. While psychologists have studied that people ought to reason in a way of normative models, they also figured that people in real occasion behave depart from the normative models, rather they behave in a way of descriptive models which show how people react in actual situations. And this showed that people reason in self-egoistic way. Because we live in reality, not in idealistic world, we should focus on the second one which is descriptive model saying what people gonna do when the actual occasion occurs to them. Next, computation ability recognized in cognitive biological approach-means that humans' brains work like computer in computation, so it supposes that people will apply the same rule in judging themselves, objective and accurate-can be falsified by one of evidences which I offered to support my opinion. The problem of opposition is that it's too idealistic to be accepted, because all people are not a saint and might have experienced self-justification at least one time in their lives. For example, the placebo effect that patients get better with having counterfeited medicines is refuting the idea of human computational ability. So, the truth is that humans are subjective in looking themselves especially when they made some faults. Lastly, philosophers like Kant or Descartes-stated their opinions about humans defining that they are rational beings in reasoning and behaving, so that they always do pure and right things or so that they always think in the way of scientific styles which include deductive reasoning-are just two of so many philosophers who ever had existed studying humans minds and philosophy. There were also those who supported human empiricism which means that people are subjective in reasoning and judging something else. People might sometimes reason in objective way as opponents argue, but people not when the cases are applied to themselves. People are definitely subjective and generous to themselves, so that they try to justify their behaviors and beliefs in the cased of wrongdoing.

It is hard to acknowledge that human minds become selfish when they commit the wrong things or faults. We are the owners of our lives. So, we should stop hiding behind our mind workings, and should directly see our psychological facts that we all try to justify our behaviors and beliefs. People use their ability of displaying rationality. People engages in the field of law such as judge and lawyer, and they are required to be objective in determining and judging others. Also, people have jobs of teachers and doctors, who should be rational and accurate. However, most of them do not use their rationality to themselves. I'm emphasizing you the truth in our real world. It's time to 'face to the present situation.' Human rationality is too idealistic to accept nowadays, and increasing theories and proved evidences from lots of experiments are too reliable to refuse just because of weak refutation from the opponents. Reminding our personal experiences, we are able to recognize ourselves justifying our faults just for ourselves in unconsciousness or in consciousness. Even though Kant insisted human pure rationality saying 'Humans have innate pure rationality so that they would behave according to pure beliefs.', people are consistently making faults. They make them and justify them, make them and justify them, make them and justify them, and on and on and on. As we are not perfect existences, and as we reason in the first person, we make faults and we have scopes to allow ourselves to justify our behaviors and beliefs. It's how we, human beings keep our images to be protected in the long run. And, it's how we, human beings maintain our lives. Therefore, for these reasons, my argument that people try to justify their behaviors and beliefs is acceptable and should be acceptable. So, from now on, admitting human subjectivity and abilities of self-justification is essential for us.


Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias

The Harvard Sampler (book) - Psychology part by Steven Pinker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

Opening Skinner's Box(스키너의 심리상자 열기) - Lauren Slater

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/descartes/themes.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

http://psychology.about.com/od/pindex/f/placebo-effect.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-justification

http://breakingmuscle.com/sports-psychology/escalation-commitment-how-we-justify-bad-behavior