I feel endlessly wafted about, thinking our species genius, idiotic, and everything in-between. This week I’m reading Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Tavris and Aronson, and I am beached on the idiocy shore.

First example: Brad cheated on an exam in a weak moment, so over time he will justify that behavior with various rationalizations: Cheating is not that uncommon; Failing the test would have derailed my career. Jack resisted cheating, so he will think, Cheating is wrong; No one should have a credential not honestly achieved. Best friends who agreed cheating was undesirable but minor the day before the test, they will now forever view each other as sanctimonious/unethical.

Such minor decisions can send us on vectors that harden as we age.

Why can’t the aftermath be, I cheated, but I’m not proud of it, and don’t plan to do it again? Or, I didn’t cheat, but I felt the temptation, and I won’t condemn someone for a moment of weakness? Sometimes it is. My faith in humankind was buoyed by a recent conversation with a friend during which she took the self-corrective high road twice without my having mentioned this book.

Our brains evolved this way for several reasons, but the end result is that we like to think that we are good, and we reinforce that thought regardless of evidence, and often by deciding the “other” is bad.

Knowing this can be useful. If someone doesn’t like you, for example, the key is to get that person to do a favor for you. Ask the person to loan you his umbrella so you can go to the car to get yours, or to give you a lift home after the PTA meeting since he drives by your house anyway. Later the person will think, I did something nice for that jerk, and I’m not an idiot, so he must not really be a jerk.

Ben Franklin tried this. By borrowing a book, he turned a colleague who refused to speak to him into a lifelong friend.

Just as we like people we are nice to, we dislike people we are mean to. Join in a bullying session, even reluctantly, and you may end up blaming the victim. Why did she put herself into that situation? Why didn’t she fight back more? She deserves what happened. I’m not a mean person. Forgiveness by the victim not only won’t reverse the loathing, it will reinforce it.

This explains so many evil characters in literature and television.

A similar phenomenon involves escalating bad behavior. Most of you have heard about the experiment in which subjects administered electric shocks to strangers, starting with mild shocks but continuing even when the shocks were apparently excruciating. Mindless obedience is part of it, but so is our locked-in brain state. Cheating can lead to embezzlement, flirting can lead to adultery, and, yes, marijuana can lead to heroin. Once you think of yourself as a short-cutter, free-lover, or drug-user, you can reinforce that.

This explains why people with everything to lose do dumb things that we find out about only when they reach the arrest/accidental death/scandal sheet headline level, and lose everything.

None of us has to be subject to our self-aggrandizing internal dialogs. We just have to recognize the resultant deteriorating behavior. We have to be able to say, What am I doing? This makes no sense! I should stop.

I personally feel my outlook and mannerisms have changed a lot since I was in my twenties. I hope it is due to observation of my effect on others, rather than ratcheting rationalization. Anyone who has known me the entire time, feel free to weigh in.