Hum 115 – Barriers
BarriersRobert SmithHUM/115October 3rd, 2016Mrs. Teri DuffyBarriersRationalizing simply is distorted thinking that attempts to justify behavior motivated by self-interest or unacceptable desires (Kirby & Goodpaster). With rationalizing an individual justifies their opinion or excuse their behavior even when they know the outcome will be wrong and damaging. For example, when someone cheats on their husband or wife, they think it is okay because everyone’s doing it, or they believe that it is benefiting their marriage.  When in reality it’s wrong. Psychologist refers inconsistencies between behavior and thinking as dissonance and theorizes that people are motivated to reduce conflict with others by modifying how they evaluate such behavior. Individuals want to maintain favorable self-perception so bad that their thinking becomes distorted and short-sighted. We can overcome rationalizing by adopting the perspective of other people when deciding what opinions to embrace and what behaviors too express. Bottom line stop making excuses to justify your poor behavior.
Self-serving biases is the tendency to take credit for our success, but are quick to blame our failures on external factors (Kirby & Goodpaster). For example, when a student fails an exam they might attribute their failure to an unfair test or an incompetent professor rather than their poor study habits. Self-serving biased individuals can have a tendency to make opposite attributions when judging the behavior of others that can threaten their own self-esteem. This tendency should decrease as an individual’s psychological health increases. An individual can overcome this when they can truly accept themselves flaws and all.