Rationalization - Making Excuses

Picture Courtesy: Rafaella Prado, Unsplash.com

Aesop’s The Fox and the Grapes fable is an apt example of Rationalization.

You don’t get a particular job; you say you never wanted it in the first place.

You get turned down for a date; you say you were not attracted to the person anyway.

You don’t perform well in the class test; you try to reason that you didn’t get enough time to study or the questions were out of syllabus.

Rationalizing is in no way related to being rational. Rationality is all about reasoning. Rationalizing has more to do with excuses.

People resort to rationalization either when they know that they have done something that they shouldn’t have done, when they can’t do something that they want to do, or when they want to convince themselves that things are not so bad after all. So they try to come up with lame reasons or excuses to justify themselves. It’s precisely for this reason that rationalization is also known as “making excuses.”

After several attempts, when the fox is unable to reach the grapes, he walks away telling himself that the grapes were probably sour. The truth is that he hides his shortcoming of not being agile enough to jump and reach the grapes, which he tries to conceal by coming up with the excuse that the grapes are sour. Even if he imagined that the grapes in the next orchard would be sweeter, it would be a case of sweet lemons. That too is Rationalization.

The term Rationalization was introduced to the field of psychoanalysis by British neurologist and psychoanalyst Ernest Jones in 1908. The word was then adopted by Sigmund Freud to describe the various excuses used by his patients to explain their neuroses. According to him, Rationalization is a defense mechanism, an unconscious attempt to avoid addressing the underlying reasons for a behavior.

In simple terms, when you do something that is in conflict with your own moral standards, and then you defend it by adding reasons that make the action or behavior acceptable to you. It gives you the ability to do something that is outside your values and get away with it, without feeling guilty.

It may help you maintain self-respect or avoid guilt over something you have done wrong. It is not harmful in many cases, but continuous self-deception, when a person consistently makes excuses for bad behavior, is dangerous. An abusive partner who justifies behavior based on the abused partner’s failure to meet demands or by claiming the partner was otherwise uncooperative is one such dangerous pattern.

There is a fine line between logically explaining one’s behavior and covering up underlying emotions and motives.

According to Freud, understanding the unconscious motivations for behavior is an important precursor to healing. For example, you may be consistently rationalizing your inability to organize your finances (paucity of time or your spouses spending habits) and might consider the real reasons for not actually wanting to organize them (guilty of over-spending or fear of having less than you need).

Another reason of Rationalization is related to our need to EXPLAIN what happens and to maintain CONSISTENCY between our actions and thoughts. Thus, we’ll believe that we did the right thing and give ourselves some solace, even when we have taken a shitty action and make ourselves feel good about it because we have made it seem right in our head.

Here are a few more examples taken from iameduard.com:

The guy at a party who doesn’t go talk to the cute girl in the corner because he is afraid, and then convinces himself that “the girl is probably a slut anyway.”

The disgruntle employee who works in a crappy job but doesn’t look for a new one because he dislikes the job-search process, and justifies it by believing that “you can only get a good job through nepotism.”

The guy who doesn’t wear a pink shirt because he fears standing out and potential ridicule, but he explains it by saying that “real men don’t wear pink.”

The person who never expresses a divergent opinion because they dread disapproval, and justifies it by thinking that “people are stubborn and they never change their mind anyway.”

The girl who stays in a loveless marriage that is beyond saving because she is afraid of being alone, but convinces herself that she is doing it for her children or that somehow miraculously her relationship will change.

These examples highlight how we give-in to our strong need for consistency by employing ineffective behaviors primarily due to negative emotions such as fear, anxiety or insecurity. In the short run, rationalization may provide some emotional comfort but it also makes you completely oblivious to the reality about yourself. This obliviousness, leads to more bad decisions and stick to them, lacking initiative and letting opportunities slip away, not growing and ending up selling oneself shorter than a garden gnome.

Meanwhile, people who don’t employ rationalization to cover-up their bad decisions do get some blows to their ego, but eventually experience a fuller, superior and happier life.

Eduard Ezeanu, a Confidence and Communication Coach, shares a simple way of detecting your own rationalization by observing your decision making process in action.

Do you find yourself making a snap decision and behaving in a certain way, and afterward thinking about it in more detail to explain to yourself why it’s the right behavior? Or do you analyze the data, make a decision and then behave accordingly?

Do you detect a pinch of fear or distress pushing your decisions and actions in the direction you are choosing? Or does the whole process of deciding and acting in a certain way feel relaxed, lucid and smooth?

In both conditions, the former alternative is an indicator that you are choosing and implementing actions based on negative emotions and then rationalizing them, while the latter alternatives indicate that you are choosing and acting based on true rational thinking.

Eduard goes on to add one more important factor and that is to accept the fact that, just like any other person, you have fears and insecurities, and they sometimes shape your behavior. If you are not prepared to accept this, you are not going to permit yourself to recognize when you are acting based on fear, so you will be inclined to rationalize your actions.

And since you can’t change what you don’t permit yourself to recognize, you will never overcome your fears either.

But if you are willing to admit your own fears and fear-driven actions, you can give yourself the chance to notice them and fix them.

The less insecurities you have, the less need there is for you to rationalize your behavior. Your behavior is driven by logic, not fear.

A common occurrence I see in my profession is people staying in an abusive relationship. The fear of loss of reputation or unsure about making it through on their own or loneliness makes them find excuses to stay in the relationship and somehow they make themselves feel good about their shitty decision. Sometimes, I am able to probe them and extract accurate information about their fears. Re-assure them that its OK to feel insecure and give them confidence to face their challenges. And sometimes the discomfort of getting probed is so unsettling that I never hear from them again.

So, watch for your own rationalizations. If you can be honest with yourself and with other people, you can gain consistency by employing real logic and not excuses.