Post Decision Rationalization: How we are always justifying our decisions & how our hindsight fools us

I am pretty sure that once in everyone’s life there has come a time when you took a decision or made an action that was the incorrect thing to do. But somehow, almost mystically, your brain automatically comes up with an explanation or rationalization for the decision. Let me give you an example: suppose you have three ways you can subscribe to a magazine, a print subscription for 30€ or a digital subscription for 30€. Now I come up and say you could own both for 45 €. Which one would you choose? The last one I bet! And the reason would also be that the deal with digital and print subscription together sounds much more ‘rational’ than the other two. But wait, did you actually need both in the first place? AHA! The reason your mind gave you when you decided to go for the last option is called post decision rationalization! Do you want to know why exactly do we do this? How do we do it? Is it something inbuilt or we acquire it as a skill? Are more intelligent people or story tellers better at this? Let’s try and find out…

We Humans are extremely emotional creatures, emotions play an integral part in our everyday decision making (close to 1000 each day) most of them are taken by the automatic/emotional or fast thinking brain (mostly involving limbic system: the emotional center of the brain). It brings a feeling of fear when we see a snake, makes us cry, and brings the cute emotion when we see a toddler, Makes us like or hate someone etcetera. The blatant truth is that we are driven by emotions more than we know or more than we want to accept (that is again rationalization for not being rational! I call it the infinite loop something like M.C Escher’s remarkable drawings). Having emotions is not a bad thing at all (we all exhibit it: sobbing while watching an emotional movie or while empathizing with other's suffering) However, What counts is the awareness of the fact whenever we make decisions which are dominated by either emotions or reason! Being aware is probably the best thing one can do to avoid same errors arising from it in the future.
Then there is another more sort of slow region of the brain which is definitely not automatic and involves much more conscious engagement: The Pre Frontal cortex(PFC), this part is the rational center of the brain (processes logic and planning), it activates when we solve difficult math problems (24*7 is……? your prefrontal cortex just got Lit up!) or when we try to consider many options before making a decision to buy a property or when we say no for something really tempting (chocolate lava cake). It is hence responsible for all the executive functions. People who have a damaged prefrontal cortex show uncontrollable emotional drives (stock brokers and politicians), but they are also bad at lying (we will come back to this later below!). There is also a theory floating around that what makes the human is the prefrontal cortex, because that is the part of the brain which is bigger and more developed than any other closely related ape (this part controls the will power, abstractness and transcendence). Anyways, the point is that it is expensive (energetically) to use this region of the brain, you need to concentrate longer, and think deeper to activate it (doesn’t follow an involuntary mechanism). Therefore, it takes time to come up with the most optimal solution for a complex problem (slow thinking). And we humans it turn out don’t really like to engage it a lot!

A simplistic overview of the spatial organization of limbic system and prefrontal cortex in the brain.

So how can we understand decision making, and how it really works? What actually happens when we have made the decision, how and why do we stick to it? As mentioned before the decisions we make are mostly based on emotions so we make up stories that look ‘rational’ in supporting those decisions. We try and try to convince ourselves that we have made the right choice. We do rationalization in hindsight so as to reduce the discomfort arising from inconsistency in our thoughts.
The way it happens is the following: as every region in the brain has connections to every other part, so does the limbic system (emotional center) and PFC (rational center). Whenever we are overwhelmed with emotions the activity in limbic system is increased and that in turn overpowers the PFC. But when we consciously asses our options without letting the emotions dominate a decision, the PFC lights up and inhibits the limbic part of the brain. So you can imagine it like a tug of war between the two regions and it keeps on swaying one way or the other depending on which one is activated!

The tug of war between emotions and reason in brain! (signified by a heart instead of the limbic system here just to get an idea)

Now that the neurobiology of the inherent process is clear, one would want to know which domains is Post decision rationalization visible in. well not so surprisingly in almost every domain of human life. From realization of error by doctors post patient death: weather to tell it to family of patient or not because the patient is dead anyway so it would not make a difference now. Lawyers are another example for this!  Or how people who promote killing in the name of religion justify it by saying ‘we are employees of the almighty’.  Similarly whenever we burn fossil fuel we say to ourselves that only I boycotting fossil fuel use will not slow down the global warming. But probably the domain in which it is exhibited in highest amount is probably when we LIE or cheat. There is a whole ‘lie’ world in itself, after entering which one realizes how little we know ourselves. 

              Sometimes when I see the errors in action I think that there has to be a robot sitting in our heads manipulating our actions. Because it just blows my mind what a human can achieve without even realizing it themselves. There was an experiment done where people were shown the faces of three randomly selected men with different facial attributes and were asked to pick any one who looks suspicious and was lying about stealing money. The trick here however was that none of the three were actually guilty! But still each and every single individual rationalized their choice of the guilty guy. Some said he didn’t make eye contact, some said the guy didn’t smile, etc etc. the point is that we don’t like it when we don’t have answers or explanations for an event, so our brain tries to come up with ideas, stories to tell us we are right. Go ahead and ask yourself how many times you have lied in the last day or week! I am sure you will be surprised. The reason we lie could be many, we don’t want to hurt people (you were great in that play) or we want to save our face from something we did (I didn’t take a cookie from the cookie jar). The next question to ask is about the inception of this innate lying ability. Were we all born liars? or we learnt it just like we learn to bicycle, or drive? The surprising answer is yes, we are all born lairs, babies 9 months old for example have been known to cry whenever they wanted to be comforted even if they were not hungry! There was also a study done with 5 year olds who were left alone in a room with chocolate cake for 15 minutes and clear instructions of not to eat it. 75% of them did eat it and 80% of the 75% lied about it Hell one of the kids even said he doesn’t like chocolate (really?).  The Pre frontal cortex is known to be active when we lie (it is a pretty difficult thing to lie).
It’s not just humans but also squirrels do a fake bury of nuts for stealers. Our close cousins: monkeys make fake calls about predators so that they could steal some of the common food when everyone runs away to hide in the trees (the power of smart Apes).

            I hope most people here remember Lance Armstrong: the disgraced 7 time Tour De France winner who allegedly used performance enhancing drug in each and every one of the tournaments. Well, when the other cyclists were asked how they feel about it, they said ‘everybody is doing it’ and in saying that they make something illegal to something socially acceptable among the community. Just Like downloading stuff from internet. We all start as amateur experimentalist (oh this is just one time thing), and later get in to a sort of never ending cycle. Prof Dan Ariely of Duke University has done extensive research on this topic and he thinks that we all cheat, but a little bit, so that we feel good about ourselves at the end of the day by rationalizing it to ourselves. He argues that our system needs a change of how we treat dishonesty; we need to understand the basic motivations behind them and also the psychological insights into the mechanism or reason for the same. I personally couldn’t agree more!
So does lying making us a bad person? A criminal? Or is there something fundamentally wrong in the way our society is structured. I believe that people put in tough situations will probably be more likely to commit these mistakes. It’s not so much about the person itself but about the environment he/she is in. for example: we live in a society where we reward lying! Crazy right? Don’t believe me? Sure you have heard of games like poker (better the poker face more the chances of winning). Everyone also knows about fake smiles! And we do it all the time. We even have incentives for it (that guy is always smiling, he looks friendly!) And these things are based on the concept of lying. Now lying is okay but what we do to conceal it is even more interesting. We again rationalize to ourselves.
 

              The implications to this can range from big to F***ing big! As I said before, we do it without realizing it! My personal worries are: Where do we draw a line between what is illegal and what is socially acceptable? What can be rationalized and what cannot be? How do we even know there is a line there? We all like to think ourselves as good people, even if we might be driving cars that pollute the environment, eating meat that comes from animals slaughter houses that keep animals in the worst condition possible or by rationalizing capital punishment.
The question also comes of morality, if we keep doing hindsight rationalization for things that are supposed to be harmful to society (like destroying the environment) we might make it worse by ignoring it, considering our brains work according to an reward based learning process:  if we keep rationalizing to ourselves we do it once, twice and soon we get into a sort of habit. With novel explanations every time. For instance, how many reasons have you heard from smokers about quitting smoking? Every single time they have a new reason (societal implications here: overhead cost of cancer treatment, time lost on treating cancers that could be avoided, emotional and physical pain caused to individuals associated with smokers etc etc).some people cheat on the name of helping people which they are surrounded by, if people do money laundering to help their company or colleagues then they believe they are doing the right thing. Not paying for parking tickets because you already pay taxes is one more example of small scale cheating but done by many people. Not showing true income during filing tax returns is another. It’s this small scale cheating by the masses that has scathing effect on our society. Some would call it (rightly so) small petty issues related to one’s own life, not connected to the overall outcome in the way world will spin. But with every small step you embed the process that much deeper in our minds, like a needle piercing skin deeper with every single movement.
Alternatively, there are many concrete examples, where these mistakes done by few can have huge effects on groups of individuals or even whole nations. Once instance is legalizing firearm ownership on the name of democratic society and fundamental rights of freedom, or changing tax policy making it easier for the opulent class and burdening the middle class and what about lobbying? Even bailing out bank in the name of keeping the economy ‘stable’(but sir if evolution worked like that we would still be serving dinosaurs the food that was produced for us!) is nothing but PDR(post decision rationalization) which is corrosive on the whole to the society.  

A wise mind is an amalgamation: A bit of reason and a bit of emotion.

I believe intelligence does not just about know all the right answers; it’s about being aware of what one doesn’t know and trying to seek answers for the same. We don’t live in a rational world, we humans are fallible. Probably if we accept the fact and work accordingly, structure society accordingly the world could be a much better place.
Remember: realizing about the problem is job half done!

Before I end, Here is a pinch of humor for you: what did iota(i) say to pi(π)? Get rational!
And what did the pi reply? : Get real!

I would love to hear some of your experiences where you cheated a bit and rationalized it to yourself!   

Thanks for reading!
And like always: stay curious!!