3 ms·

AFAIK rationalization is basically the bridging of cognitive dissonance. From that perspective it doesn’t seem to be deliberate.

• maxbond 4y ago
  Maybe deliberate is too strong a word, or maybe I'm using a loose definition of rationalization. I've observed rationalizations that I think were a choice, but not necessarily a conscious or considered choice. When I find myself rationalizing I feel like it often bubbles up and then I choose to push it back down (at least, until I'm ready to admit to myself this is happening, and face the consequences). There's two people from my past who I think of. One was a conspiracy theorist who moved fluidly and rapidly from one idea to the next, and these ideas were often contradictory. It was a live, synthetic process; they were connecting the dots of different conspiracy theories on the fly. If you pointed out a contradiction to them, they'd spin a new yarn to resolve it on the spot. This is what confabulation reminds me of. There was no destination; it was a dance through fanciful ideas. That's what feels less deliberate to me, it wasn't so much providing a justification or bridging a cognitive dissonance as much as storytelling. (They once told me their epistemology was basically founded in the emotional impact of a story; they believed they had a sort of "truthiness sense" and that what moved them was what was true.) If it were a science fiction story it would have been riveting, but as an epistemology it really limited their ability to understand the world and have relationships. Another is a friend who I had some difficult conversations with about their behavior, and after some heated discussion I finally got through to them, at least in part. But then the very next day they told me a brand new reason for why they thought their behavior was okay (it wasn't). And that felt like a choice to me. They wanted to do something, and they found a frame of thinking where it was permissible. They definitely bridged a cognitive dissonance, and I don't think they set out to do what they did, but I feel at some level they made a choice. That being said, I think when I rationalize it's often something along the lines of, "what I'm doing is hurting me, but I can't stop because someone is counting on me to do it," and that's only a choice by the strictest definition. And I can see how my friend might've seen things that way too.