Maybe none of us are quite as we believe

 
I think nearly everyone believes that they know themselves and can evaluate their behavior accurately. We know — or think we know — what we have done, why we have done it, and how we will will react to future events.

But what if this isn’t quite true, especially in areas, like ethical behavior, where we have some belief about how people like us — “honest, good people” — ought to behave?

Here’s a short extract from a paper published by last September by Harvard Business School. The paper is called Why We Aren’t as Ethical as We Think We Are: A Temporal Explanation:

People predict that they will behave more ethically than they actually do, and when evaluating past (un)ethical behavior, they believe they behaved more ethically than they actually did.

The authors contend that the “should” self — the view of our behavior that is based on what we believe we ought to do — dominates our thinking when we either predict our future behavior or evaluate the behavior of the past. In contrast, the “want” self — the one that responds to inner desires — dominates our actions.

Put simply, we believe we will act more ethically than we do, and judge our past actions as more ethically-based and upright than they were.

Personal blinders

No one should be surprised at the idea that everyone gives themselves the full benefit (and more) of every scrap of doubt there may be; that we all view our own behavior in the best light possible. Nor that we often use far stricter measures of honesty, competence, or even good sense with others than we inflict on ourselves.

The trouble is that such blindness to our own failings and acts of ethical ambivalence mean that we go on behaving in ways that are at —or over — the edge of what is strictly permissible. We judge others harshly if they so much as approach the boundaries of acceptable behavior, while allowing ourselves a great deal of “wiggle room” on either side of the border.

We deceive ourselves into ignoring actions we would condemn in anyone else.

It’s not just ethics

Of course, such mental self-deception isn’t restricted to ethical actions and choices. We give ourselves a similar amount of freedom to “slip” in most other areas of our lives: in the accuracy of our speech, the thoroughness of our thinking, the authenticity of our relationships, and the trustworthiness of our actions.

Our minds are adept at finding justifications for just about any actions that deliver what we want, even as we condemn the same behavior in others.

Dealing in reality

Form time to time, I have written articles that suggest we would all be better off if we slowed down and took the time to understand reality, instead of rushing along in a haze of wishful thinking.

People shy away from this because they recognize that it demands facing up to the “bad” parts of ourselves and our actions, as well as the “good” ones; that dealing in reality might mean letting go of those [/tag]comforting misperceptions[tag] we have about ourselves. So long as we immerse ourselves in busyness, and avoid setting aside time to think clearly about our own motives, we can continue to bob along happily on the surface and avoid anything nasty in the depths beneath.

But many of the monsters in those depths are there because we put them there. The longer we deny their existence, the more easily we forget about them — until one suddenly rises to the surface and takes a bite out of our lives and happiness.

Guiltless acceptance

The key, I believe, is to face up to and accept both what we have done and will likely do again that isn’t a match with our beliefs; to do so honestly, but without any useless feelings of guilt.

By “accept,” I don’t mean justify or approve. I mean that we should acknowledge that it happened, why it happened, and precisely what part our true true motives played in our actions. We should try to understand the full truth, however embarrassing or even shameful.

If we have fallen below our own standards, let alone the ones we set for others, our task should be to recognize that honestly and consider what it implies for our future behavior. Guilt simply muddies the water with emotions and causes us to shy away from seeing what is truly there. What’s done is done. The best we can do is to learn from it and do better next time.

Being “slow” is allowing ourselves the time we need to enter fully into our lives —both the good and the bad — and see what we find. If we don’t like some of it, the implications are clear for the future.

Shutting our eyes to what we may not like, and continuing to look at ourselves through heavily rose-tinted spectacles, is to live in a fool’s paradise, where we can be caught any time by the effects of that same willful blindness. What you refuse to see, you cannot avoid.

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