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

     Humans reason every day and every time in their lives. People, more than often, do are not aware of their thinking whether it is processing subjectively or objectively. People often support the idea of first one, because in rapidly changing society of techniques, people should reason in sophisticated and accurate way. 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 want to raise their awareness about their mind and let them truly feel how their inner mind are operated, 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 a subjective way when one made some fault that includes minor things to cruel things. I agree with this 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 "Humans are reasonable, objective, and rational."(Socrates, 2007), people had begun to study about human minds to prove the rationality of humans. And as time goes, the studies of human minds in rationalism was developed by lots of philosophers. The study of human minds was done especially by Descartes who said "I think, so I exist."(Rene Descartes, 1596-1650) which means that we think and behave according to logical truth. And one century later, Kant also studied about human minds, concluding "People are rational enough to enact their kindhearted behaviors, and they always do so." (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781). 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 is working every time in lives. For example, each of employers decides who will be new employees in their 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 can maintain 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 do anything wrong, which means that people justified themselves. This fact proves that people are no more rational, especially in the views of themselves. And people are also barely aware of their inner working of justification in their behaviors and beliefs. Let’s take a specific example in reality. One child broke the window with his baseball, while he was playing in front of neighbor's yard. Right after the accident, he didn’t judge his fault of breaking the window with his rational thought, not saying 'I should go into the house and say sorry to the host, paying the whole cost of the window.' He said '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 a young child. Then, let's run away!'(MW middle school, 2011) I used this example of the kid because this shows the situation that happens very often and common, especially in school or after school, and because I actually saw this kind of guy who was in the same middle school class with me.
     Therefore, as we live in reality, we should and need to think and know our real shape of minds. And 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, arguing 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 the psychological field according to several results of experiments and studies(David A. Schroeder, 1995) (John DeLamater, 2006) (Leigh L. Thompson, 2003) (Wang, John, 2012) (Gregg Henriques, 2011).
     Perhaps one of the challenges is to understand human minds, working in the 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(Anne Harrington, 1999). This effect proves that the human are relying on personal thoughts and beliefs beneficial for themselves. If they are accurate and rational, they would not get better from the sicknesses, and rather they would maintain their sicknesses same as before the medicine taking as after the medicine taking. Also, there is a theory of cognitive dissonance(The Harvard Sampler, 2012). When conflicting ideas exist in one human brain, one person will 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 stresses' 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(Socially psyched, 2014). 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 were almost same with what they are. However, unfortunately, all respondents got same result papers. This result shows that people tend to misjudge the situation occurred right to themselves, especially about their 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 police officers randomly(Knowing people, 2005). 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 police officers started to suppress prisoners cruelly and strangely. Those who played police role justified their bad behaviors toward another group of people because they thought that they were real police officers. This experiment shows that people are consciously or unconsciously subjectively fitting their positions to what they believe to be or should be which is corresponding 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 justify their faults. According to Steven Pinker, who wrote the Harvard Sampler's psychology part, he said that humans are selfish, though they behave with reciprocity in the case of threat from others(The Harvard sampler, 2012). For example of 'Ultimatum game', humans divide money almost equally because they fear of a bad reputation if they divide the money unequally. However, in the experiment of 'Dictator game', humans who play a role to divide the 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(감정독재(Korean book wrote by Jun-Man Kang), 2013). 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 experiment proves that humans try to justify their behaviors and beliefs in the cases of making mistakes or faults. And in the story of Narcissism, the main character of an ancient story of Narcissus fell into the river and died because he love himself so much(Narcissism, 1993). 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 proved in ‘cognitive biological approach’, and powerful philosophers like Kant or 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 an idealistic theory about how people do with certain things or situations(The Harvard Sampler, 2012). In other words, the study of normative models is the theory that proves how people ought to think and reason in idealistic ways, and how people should and must behave in a certain situation. While psychologists have studied that people ought to reason in a way of normative models, they figured that people behave far from the normative models. Instead, psychologists found that people behave in a way of descriptive models which show how people react in actual situations. Descriptive models are the theory that defines how people behave and deal with their situations in reality. And this showed that people sometimes reason in self-egoistic way. Because we live in reality, not in an idealistic world, we should focus on the second one which is the descriptive model saying what people are going to do when the actual occasion occurs to them. Next, computation ability recognized in cognitive biological approach means that human brains work like computer in computation(The Harvard Sampler, 2012). So, it supposes that people will apply the same rule in judging themselves, objective and accurate. However, the computational theory in the cognitive biological approach can be falsified by one of the evidences that 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(감정독재(Korean book wrote by Jun Man Kang), 2013). 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(The placebo effect, 1999). 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(Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781)(Principle of philosophy, 1984). These people who believed humans are rational beings are just two of so many philosophers who ever had existed, studying human minds and philosophy. There were also those who supported human empiricism that means that people are subjective in reasoning and judging something else. People might sometimes reason in an objective way as opponents argue, but people not when the cases are applied to themselves. People are certainly 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 engage 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 the increasing number of theories and proved evidences from lots of experiments are too reliable to refuse just because of the weak refutation from the opponents. Reminding our personal experiences, we can recognize ourselves justifying our faults just for ourselves in unconsciousness or consciousness. Even though Kant insisted human pure rationality saying 'Humans have innate pure rationality so that they would behave according to pure beliefs.'(Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781), people are consistently making faults. They make mistakes and justify them, make them and justify them, make them and justify them, etc. 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 accepted. So, from now on, admitting human subjectivity and abilities of self-justification is essential for us.