Post Rationalisation

Post rationalisation is the act of applying logic to a choice or action that wasn’t rational to begin with. It’s where we try to make ourselves believe that an act was well thought out and based on intellect, when in truth the action was purely emotional and instinctual. What often happens is that we get more information and time to think, after the fact, but then slot that in before the choice we made. We do this rather more frequently than we realise.

The reason we don’t realise is because our memories are so untrustworthy. The fact is that every time you remember something you bring it out from your memory, flip it around in your mind, analyse it, possibly change it, and then put it back. The next time you bring back up that same memory you actually bring back up this new memory, with all the alterations and modifications that you made last time. Basically, you remember remembering, rather than the original memory.

So every time you sit there and think about what happened, you’re actually – in all likelihood – changing the memory ever so slightly; which is in many ways exactly what post rationalisation is.

In the BBC show ‘Child of Our Times’ there is an extreme example of this: Some parents are seated and shown pictures. All except one are directly taken form their past, the last one is a doctored picture, showing them as children standing by a hot air balloon. They are all asked to tell what they remember when they see each picture. The first time they see this picture, they are all dumbfounded, as they have no memory of a hot air balloon. When they are asked to repeat the experiment a few weeks later, however, suddenly many of them have memories of their air balloon adventures and not just any memory, but very specific memories. One remembers the sound of the burner, another remembers looking through the cracks, and so forth. They’ve created new memories.

So what does this mean?

Well, basically it means that we’re not half as clever as we give ourselves credit for. We believe we’re logical, reasonable and rational, while in truth we are emotional, instinctual and unreasonable. The reason we can fool ourselves so well is because we sit around and change our memories afterwards.

What’s more, our memories often can’t really be trusted. We’ve often enough remembered with friends, only to find that we all remember it completely differently. At the time, you were certain you were right, as were they. Chances are that all of you were wrong and the original incident has been lost to history. That certainly gives a new definition to changing your mind, doesn’t it?

I’m not saying all this to make you despair, however. Most of your memories will probably still be pretty close to the original incident. You should just always be aware that they might not be and act accordingly. Be careful, after all, only an absolute fool is absolutely confident.