Dirty Dishes, Clean Excuses

Someone criticized you today. Before they finished the sentence, you had a rebuttal.

Not because you weighed their argument. Because you didn't want to be wrong.

The rebuttal sounded rational. It had logic, structure, even a reasonable tone.

You believed it yourself.

Here's the question: who wrote that rebuttal?

Jonathan Haidt wrote The Righteous Mind, the definitive text on why humans decide first and rationalize second.

Then his wife asked him to do the dishes.

By the third word of her sentence, he had already decided she was wrong. His conscious mind scrambled for a justification. Found one. Delivered it with conviction.

It was only later, reviewing his own reaction, that he caught it. The justification had nothing to do with her argument.

It was a clean excuse for a dirty refusal.

The man who mapped the mechanism got caught by the mechanism. At his own kitchen sink.

You had a rebuttal before the sentence ended. The rebuttal was fluent, logical, and had nothing to do with what was actually said.

He mapped the mechanism. The mechanism didn't care.

Somewhere between the criticism and your response, something wrote a story. It wasn't you.

Go deeper: The Shadow Strategy