More on sense of security: Status

Status is such a fundamental part of our psyche - Not only are the rules for who is high status and who is not very elaborate, but everybody knows them and everybody follows them. You can not not follow the rules for status - Either you have status or you don't.

Yes, you can try to act above your status, which will succeed or fail. But if you are succesful, then you have in effect not just acted high status, but actually risen in status. You have it.

Status is confidence. Confidence is to feel secure in oneself. To feel secure in oneself is to have a trust in oneself. Just as mastery of a task can be understood as a sense of security in what you can do, status can be understood as what you may do to others.

A person of high status can expect (trust, even) others to pay attention and respect to hir, and a person of low status is expected not to act outside hir station.

It's like...

- Our confidence is a meter that shows how important we are to our society or the group we belong to. (1)
- When we sense we are important, our confidence goes up, when we sense we could easily be replaced at any time, it goes down. (2)
- This confidence, in turn, is signalled outward with status behaviour, such as body language. (3)

An intricate system which I suppose every flock animal shares. It makes evolutionary sense - The best and most useful of us are brought to the front, so that their qualities may express themselves in the group at large. It is much more desirable to have the smart and succesful lead us, than the stupid and clutzy.

But, as usual with evolutionary psychology, this is not necessarily the most favourable way for modern humans. Many people have an insecurity or aren't that good with people, thus losing status and confidence in themselves, even in the abilities they are actually quite good at, and which would benefit the group as whole. Also, today we subscribe to the belief that all humans are equal - But still, we follow the old status rules to a letter, rules that say that some people just aren't worth our time. That is how strong they are.

In my post on trust, I made the simile that trust is the basic currency, the basic worth of life, and that this can be invested or betted. This is very much the case with status - Can you imagine anything more despicable to people in general than a low-status person who tries to act high status but fails? That is, being cocky, mean and proud but coming off as small-minded, stupid and insecure. That can be understood as betting your status on a high status move, but losing.

Myself

Status is one of my issues, something I've been occupied with figuring out and worrying about.

I've never had problems with finding friends and gaining the respect of those I care for, but I've always felt a bit outside in school classes. Sometimes in class discussions or at parties, I've felt like some weird prophet - They would listen intently to me, but I wasn't a part of the conversation. I've found myself finishing a thought, and see everyone look at me for a second, waiting for me to go on or something like that, rather than picking up on what I said - And, you know, discuss.
Probably related to another issue of mine - I need confirmation that what I do, what I say, what I give, is something valuable and meaningful. I've needed that affirmation.

During my university years, I identified myself as low status, but I'm starting to realize that I'm actually a high status individual.

Weird, scary and interesting.

More on sense of security: Mastering a task

Task mastery

One of my textbooks cites a study on hysicians and their initial assessment of their patients - The young and unexperienced physicians did it "by the book", using their textbook theories. The more experienced physicians started out by just getting a feel for the patient, working by intuition, then switching to theoretical knowledge and deduction, and back to intuition and so forth. When asked to describe what they're actually doing, experienced practicers of all kinds have trouble putting words to it - It's like second nature to them now.

When you know something so well it's automatic, so well you don't have to think about it, that's when you perform best. Actually, asking an expert to describe what hir is doing while hir is doing it, will reduce hir performance significantly. It's a flow state.

So, paradoxal in a way, those who have mastered the conventions, the theory and the structure of how to perform a task, are those who have the easiest time deviating from convention and structure - To improvise and be creative. When your skills are so ingrained you don't have to spend cognitive resources on them, the task in itself is routine, you can use your resources to experiment and improv.

But there is also a sense of security in this: When you know you can do this task, when you feel you have it under control, that's when you dare leave your foundation. You stop using your resources to protect against failure, and start using them to reach beyond, reach something higher and novel.

Imagine an acrobat balancing on a chair. He has practiced falling in the right way, so doesn't have to fear hurting himself. He's practiced balancing on a chair until he's mastered it, so he doesn't even have to concentrate to do it. Now, he can get creative, juggling and balancing the chair at the same time, making little jumps with the chair, balancing another chair on the tip of his nose...

Sense of security

What is interesting is that developing a skill follows the same path as finding a sense of security in a life issue. Let's compare the model for mental health...

(Maybe "Borders" and "Process depth" should be replaced with "External" and "Internal")

With a model for mastering a task:

Panic: Confronted with a task where you don't even know in or out, you probably feel lost and anxious, panicked and out of control. You are occupied with defending against catastrophy.

Control: A task where you know the basics, there is a sense of control. You know what to expect and what to do. You are occupied with working with the tools you've been given.

Creativity: When working a task which you know by heart, you transcend the simple know-how. You do not need to fix your attention and problem-solving to handling the tools at hand, you fix your attention to a vision of creativity, and use these tools to reach it. You are occupied with creating beyond the borders.

So, just as a Bowlby described how a child needs a foundation of security to be brave, to build a secure base with hir parents before sie dares to explore around said base...

Just as Maslow describes how you need to find a basic sense of security in the domains of life to start realizing your higher creative potential...

So too need you build your  foundation of theory and knowledge before you can leave it, venturing into creativity. Hell, I've read huge improv books on how to be more spontaneous!

Does mastery underlie mental health?

Let's go back to the model of mental health. What makes me excited here, is that we may take what we know about skill and mastery, and view life's issues as nothing more than tasks to be mastered and worked out correctly. 

- The one who haven't been given the tools and the confidence to handle a life issue doesn't even feel in control of the situation. Sie is occupied with defending oneself against the threat of catastrophy (real or imagined), and these defenses take the shape of symptoms of mental illness. (Abnormal)

- The one who knows how sie should act in response to a given situation can handle hirself well, feels safe and in control. Sie knows socially accepted ways of resolving these life issues. (Normality)

- The one who feels mastery of the life issue, who feels secure in it, can go beyond it, explore it, handle these life issues in any way sie wishes, choosing the most optimal answers for hirself. (Health)

Hmm, I should really check out the Control-Mastery theory.

Trust is the basic currency of life

Today, I wish to tell you that:
- Trust is the basic currency of life.
- As such, it can be invested, or bet if you will.
- A balance between trust and distrust must be managed
- In finding this balance, we construct working models of how to live our lives
- But perhaps evolution has put a greater emphasis on distrust than is optimal for the modern human

So yeah, I believe that having a sense of security, or trust towards oneself, is the one basic measurement of both our mental health and our ability.

Which is, you know, kind of a given, since a sense of security is just that: It’s an emotional assessment of the given situation, a belief that things are under control and won’t end in disaster. (See my post Man will survive)

But it runs both ways: We can have a sense of security in ourselves because we are well equipped to deal with the current situation, but we can also become better equipped to deal with the current situation by finding a sense of security in ourselves.

I would say that this sense of security, is the one single biggest psychological issue for the modern human. Trust in that I am capable of handling myself, trust that I am a valuable person, trust that I am accepted and loved by my peers. This is sort of an expanding on the concepts I introduced in A model of mental health.

We are today living in an individualistic society without authorities and traditions which can tell us what profession to pursue, what life to live, how to judge our worth as a humans, which was the case in the old collectivistic societies of tradition, family and religion. Suddenly, we need to make these calls ourselves.

There is plethora of psychological and layman-psychological terms for these issues: Self-efficacy, self-worth, self-esteem, locus of control, self-image, attachment style, insecurity-security.

In fact, everything that is good in humanity requires trust.

• Generosity towards others requires a trust in that these people will not exploit us.
• To dream and to work towards that dream requires that we trust in our visions, that we do not fear failure and disappointment.
• When we create and express ourselves, we show others our innermost being, and we need to believe that this is something valuable that other people will respect.
• Listening to and caring for other people requires a belief that their inner darkness won't hurt us.
• Love, to open up to another person, requires trust.

By the same token, many things in humanity which are not so great, are a form of distrust or defense, a way to close yourself up and keep others away.

To be mean-spirited, aggressive, distant, anxious, afraid, delusional, psychotic or borderline are different ways to be defensive, to keep people or thoughts away which could otherwise hurt our selves.


Domains of security
From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that this balance of trust-distrust and security-insecurity is so central. For an organism to maximize it's chance of forwarding it's genes to offspring, it should be ambitious in order to gain advantages when the situation allows it, and cautious in order to survive when the situation requires it.

Attachment theory is a great example of this evolutionary readiness for adaptation. Bowlby proposed that we have in our brains basically three pre-wired models of approaching other people; Secure, clingy or avoidant. (Generalizing, of course.) Which model we choose depend on how we are treated by our parents, and this is to adaption to the environment we grow up in. For instance, if we are born in a place where food and protection is scarce, and our parents doesn't always have time available to tend to our needs, it makes sense to be clingy to maximize one's chance of survival. If a child is given a sense of security or trust, sie instead learns that the world is not such a bad place, and that sie should be ambitious, open and trusting, because that will be the adaptive stance to maximize one's chances for survival, development and procreation.

As I touched in my post A model of mental health, one can see Abraham Maslow's model of needs in much the same way.

Attachment theory only accounts for the intimacy need, how secure we feel in that other people care for us and love us. In the same way, Maslow proposes that you can have a sense of security or insecurity in any need.

If, for instance, my need for esteem isn’t satisfied properly by those around me, I understand that I need to work hard to feel esteem, and that it cannot be taken for granted. This becomes an internal working model for how I view and handle the world, what strategies I use to maximize security, love and satisfaction.

With a sense of insecurity in esteem, I become worried and preoccupied with securing esteem, even when I’ve found friends who accept me and who I am - Our internal working models doesn’t change easily.

I believe that confidence and status is a sort of security (or trust in oneself) as well, but I'll save that for another post.

Trust, or don’t?
Everyone must walk a balance between trust and distrust, between openness and defense.

When we use trust, we are capable of the greatest feats, but we are also at our most vulnerability - Vulnerability towards disappointment and deceit.

If trust and sense of security is the basic currency of life, you can certainly invest it. You can invest trust in other people, and you can invest energy and belief in your dreams. If you have invested wisely, then the results are glorious. You realize your dreams, or grow close to someone you've opened up to. If you invest in something that fails, it’s our most terrible moments of disapointment or betrayal.

So we certainly need a certain amount of distrust and skepticism, but I also believe that since no-one has to fend for their survival in our modern and peaceful nations, we are pre-wired for more distrust than we need to be. Prisoners dilemma. It pays to be distrusting because other people are distrusting/cold/protective of their own interests. At the same time, by tradition, we put way too much trust in an unsustainable lifestyle, the one big threat against humanity today.

(4/4) Roleplaying tradition

This is the fourth part in a series of four. The previous posts have been on accepting tradition in cognition, identity, and ethics.

Traditionally, designing roleplaying games have been based on writing simulations of a fantasy world. The setting is written in an effort to construct a complete and cohesive fantasy world, and the rules are written to arbitrate what the most probable (and thus realistic) course of events would be in a given case. For instance, the rules tell me whether my character succeeds or fails any given endeavour. They tell me if my character hurts hirself, and if so, how badly. (And that's basically it, really)

Just as there is a tendency to accept the norms of society, the norms of roleplaying design have for long gone unquestioned. This is enhanced by the striving towards realism in roleplaying games: Since the rules are based on reality, the design and focus of these rules can very easily be considered given by nature and thus right.

The last five or so years, this has changed. There are indie games with setting based on storytelling rather than world simulation, with rules to guide said story telling rather than provide realism. The design traditions of roleplaying games as a whole is changing, accomodating new perspectives.

Just as we need to scrutinize the traditions of our society and ask us what the effects of these traditions are, what it means to use these rules, even if they are justified by realism.

These are some of the traditions I'm thinking of:
- Failing a roll blocks your creative input.
- The game master and players' nfluence on the story is discussed from the perspective of authority and force, and not from the perspective of trust. This teaches the game master and players techniques that run counter to creativity.
- The game master is expected to pre-plan the scenario and lead the players through it, putting all the work on the GM and none of the creativity on the players. Players building little dice towers out of boredom, and forced combat encounters where not uncommon in my youth, simply because the story didn't feel relevant to the players and their characters.
- Communication between players and GMs are not adressed, players are supposed to accept what happens in the fiction, even if it isn't enjoyable fiction for them. Either that, or force the story their way through their characters.
- In short, there is no way of synchronizing the expectations of players.

Many of these, I've adressed in my posts an interplay model of roleplaying and creative roleplaying.

These problems do not need simple fixes, they are the symptoms of something fundamental missing in roleplaying design. What they need us as game designers to finally and fully do is to adress roleplaying as a creative interplay process, not only as a simulation.

Players has learnt to cope with these problems by their own intuition, but they need to be brought into design, tested and analyzed methodically. Tradition is not enough.

(3/4) Follow the rules or follow your conscience?

Third part in a series. First part here, second part here.

Alright, for this post I'd like to switch gears a little, go into a mode of contemplation.

I've written one post on why we do not wish to challenge our basic assumptions, and one on how norms and identity foreclosure can be harmful to your personal development. Now, I'd like to share some thoughts on the morality and ethics of deviation or rejection of authority.

I'd like to point out that this series of posts aren't leading to some specific conclusion, I would rather say I'm examining the bricks and laying a foundation to use the building analogy.


When to follow the rules, and when to follow your conscience?
First, an anecdote. During secondary school/high school, our class did a discussion exercise, which started with us being told the following story:

A duke was leaving his castle for a trip. Since he suspected his wife to be unfaithful, he ordered his guard to kill her if she tried to get into or out of the castle while he was gone, and he let her know this. He then left.
The duchess did indeed sneak out to meet her lover, paying a ferryman to whisk her across the moat. She spent the night at her best friend's place and then went to meet her lover. After the encounter, she would leave to sneak back into to the castle, but had no more money to pay the ferryman. The lover and her best friend refused to help her, and the ferryman refused to ship her over without payment. She pleaded with the guard to let her in, but he refused, and warned her he would have to kill her if she attempted to enter the castle. Out of desperation, she tried to enter the castle anyway, and was killed.
Who's fault is it that the duchess died? The duke's, the guard's, her friend's, her lover's, the ferryman or herself's?

My opinion was that it was the guard's fault, which was met with protests from my classmates, and the rationale "He was just doing his job!"

After a few years of reflection, and encountering the Milgram experiment (Which I have linked to before), it is my belief that "Just following orders" is not a moral argument.*

Terrible actions are made possible by people just following orders. Rather than a moral actions (By moral action, I do not mean an action for good, but rather an action that is evaluated morally, that can be moral or immoral) blind obedience is the rejection of morality. It is a rejection of yourself as an agent, as a human with the capacity for reflection and morality. Blind obedience makes you simply an extension of the morality and reasoning of the person making the decisions, an idea the wikipedia article on the Milgram experiment labels "agentic state theory".

I see humans in an existential light. It is our capacity to make meaningful choices that make us human, and even surrendering this power, or not doing anything at all, is a choice. Doing your job, following normality or following orders is not an excuse to act against your ethics... But, as the Milgram experiment clearly shows, we want someone to tell us what to do. We do not wish to take the full responsibility, or challenge the stability and security of societies structures. (Man, I guess really should read Sartre.)

But to what extent can you stay true to your own morality in society? I've just finished the course on ethics and law in psychology, which raised this question especially.


Psychologist ethics
As a psychologist, you are in a position of power in your relation to your clients. You must handle your relationship and your intimate knowledge of your client in an ethic way. You must treat your client, and the system sie is a part of (such as hir family), with respect. As a psychologist you generally work alone, and you alone must weigh together all these considerations, somehow integrating your morality, the law, the professional ethic of psychologists, and of course pragmatic reality.

What if it is against my morality not to treat this client, but we just do not have enough resources to treat everyone we would like at this clinic? In this case, it is impossible for me to do the fully moral thing, and I must somehow accept this. I must somehow become neither despaired or jaded when I'm forced to go against my empathic impulses.

Likewise, ability takes a part in ethic conduct, to treat someone with respect is a question of ability just as much as morality. In an interpersonal profession such as mine, doing the right thing requires reasoning, as well as emotion and empathy, as well as ability. A psychologist needs to have wisdom, and not only to be a moral psychologist, but to be a succesful psychologist at all.


Laws
I would even question if i obeying the law is inherently moral. The law tells us what we must and must not do, but it doesn't tell us what we should do. As a psychologist, there are many things I can do in my work which are not illegal, but definitely not ethical either.

I sometimes feel people are justifying their actions with solely the fact that they had the right to take them, not at all adressing that they were, in facts, assholes just now.
Just as a person can hide their moral responsibility behind an authority, they can hide their own tendencies to greed and small-mindedness behind the fact that they have the right to do so.
But of course, there is a big difference between having a right, and doing right. The laws are only concerned with the former, and that's a good thing too. The state has no business in determining who is and who has the right to be an asshole.

Furthermore, there are even moments when I can feel the law is inhumane, and to follow my ethics would require me to go against the law, for instance when the law declare immigrants illegal.
This is a difficult situation. If I do not wish to go against my belief of what is good and right, I should break the law. At the same time, I wouldn't wish other professionals to break the law when treating or handling me - The laws protect me when I'm in a vulnerable position and at the mercy of policemen, social workers, doctors and psychologists.

So what do I do? Follow my consciousness? Obey the law? Or I could follow my conscience and break the law, but also follow the law and accept my punishment, as the law must be upheld for society to function.


Reality
So let's be pragmatic. Some things can only be achieved with orders and hierarchy. Without routines and standard procedures, lives would be lost everyday. Perhaps the act of submission to authority can be a moral action? I'd like to point to the movie Hero, in which the protaganist sacrifices himself to the authority in the end, because he reaches the conclusion that in this case, the authority is the good cause.

And if I enter a group, such as a community, a workplace or an organisation, have I not implicitly accepted the rules of this group? If I start work at a hospital only to work according to my personal conviction rather than standard routines, I sabotage everyone's work, doing more harm than good.

Finally, I believe that some aspects of society wouldn't function without the possiblity to "escape responsibility". The decision makers does not have to carry out their own decisions, and the executors does not have to make a decision. It is possible for both parties to scoot over the responsibility to the other.
Again, the example of illigal emmigrants: The police escorting them from their homes are just "doing their job", they do not have to justify their actions to their conscience or to the family being sent away. The decision makers do not have to confront those they send away, or their own feelings empathy for these people. And The Job gets Done.

When it comes to illegal immigrants, I do not believe in sending people back to something they've run away from, whether they are officially refugees or not, but we still need a cold, objective and just standard of procedures for many of society's functions. Individuals can be prejudiced against other people, or swayed into making exceptions for charismatic people. The official standard can not.

But we must remember that laws, rules, standard procedures and authority are in the end the formalized reasoning of ordinary hum,ans. They are not given by God or nature. They can be changed. They should be subject to critical scrutiny and revision.

I suppose my conclusion would have to be that, as usual, there are no simple answers. Just as you can not completely surrender yourself to laws, you cannot completely entrust yourself in a simple moral principle. Doing the right thing requires ever vigilance, care and thoughtfulness.


----
* We can consider my process of finding arguments for my cause in the light of my first post in this series. Here I examined the idea that humans often make emotional decision and then intellectually justify them rather than vice versa.

As a high schooler, had I already then grasped the problem that blind obedience meant, and later Milgram and the third reich simply provided me with the articulation of this into concrete examples?
Or where thes examples rather a way for me to intellectually justifiy a gut feeling against blind obedience?

(2/4) Norms and identity

Second part in a series. First part here: Accepting and justifying traditions.

So humans have a tendency not to question established norms and tradition, not to become overloaded through them. In this post I will discuss when this becomes a problem. Accepting normativity can lead to opression or foreclosed identity. First, let's look at opression.

Norms and opression

First of all, structures can confer power to some people, and we then might consider this power natural and not something to question. Patriarchalism and gender roles for instance; There are heavy expectations on gender roles, especially the female role. These gender roles disempower women, but we consider this role something naturally feminine, and thus it needs not change.

Secondly, people may be refused their way of life if it deviates from the norm. People become very, very provoced when other people prove to them that another way of doing things is possible, and thus cognitive dissonance prompts them to stop the deviants. Same sex marriage and adoption for instance - What if you don't need a man and a woman to make a family? Then what is our traditions and norms good for? What if they are pointless?

Humans must have clear borders to live within, our the anxiety over what to do will become too much. Some people will fear these borders and measures of how to live will shake and crumble when we challenge them. Even the opressed people may promote these norms to avoid the cognitive dissonance of realizing they're accepting abuse from other people.

Identity and mental health
Finding your own answers and forming your own identity is preferable to accepting normativity.

Again, let's go back to my model of mental health. In this model, I have put health above normality. (As did Lucien A. Buck) I stated that it is better to find your own answers to who you are, what is moral and how to do things than to uncritically accept these from society, parents or other authorities. The process of "finding oneself" is described by James Marcia (epigon of Erik H. Erikson), who outlines four states of identity. Once again, I'm quoting Wikipedia.

A) Identity Diffusion, is the status of individuals who have not yet experienced a crisis or made any commitments. Not only are they undecided about occupational and ideological choices, they are also likely to show little interest in such matters.

B) Identity Foreclosure, is the status of individuals who have made a commitment but not experienced a crisis. This occurs most often when parents hand down commitments to their adolescents, usually in an authoritarian way, before adolescents have had a chance to explore different approaches, ideologies, and vocations on their own.

C) Identity Moratorium, is the status of individuals who are in the midst of a crisis but whose commitments are either absent or are only vaguely defined.

D) Identity Achievement, is the status of individuals who have undergone a crisis and made a commitment.

So, what is the problem with foreclosure? Well, the first is that by not challenging and scrutinizing societies' norms and answers, you might allow yourself or others to be oppressed, as outlined above. Secondly, withouth properly thinking through who you are and how you wish to live, experimenting and searching during a moratorium, your sense of self won't be as stable. I'll elaborate:

When searching yourself for answers, you get to know yourself. You feel more at ease with yourself. By working your answers through, you reach a deeper understanding of them than the hollow granted-at-surface of foreclosure - You can present rationals for the choices you've made, rather than justifications.

Furthermore, as you walk the metaphorical landscape of your inner world to find your place, you learn your way around these landscape. You know them, and thus you can change your position if need be. You can adapt. These are the reasons I've put Health at a greater sense of security than Normality.

In contrast, if you have just decided on a position and stuck with it, rather than exploring it, your understanding of it is more shallow. You cannot backtrack and adapt so to speak, so instead you must defend this position. 

A note on normality

Normality and normativity is something powerful. We fear and condemn the abnormal. To be called unnormal is to be denied you humanity and fellowship with other humans, and it stirs up powerful emotions. The "abnormal" and isolated people, such as schizophreniacs and autists who are unable or unwilling to participate in human society, reject their labels and diagnosises. But do they reject them to maintain their sense of belonging with other people, or do they (in the case of severe symtoms) reject them simply because they've do not care what other people think of them, and thus the concept of insanity holds no meaning to them?

Next part here: Follow the rules or follow your conscience?

(1/4) Accepting and justifying traditions

Hello internets! My full-time practical training is over and vacation is here. Let's write!

I've got a series of posts lined up for you about norms, authority and traditions.

In this first post I'll discuss why we are unwilling to challenge the traditions we follow, and in the following posts I'll go into when this becomes a problem with norms, ethics and even game design.

People have a tendency to accept the norms, traditions and power structures around us as natural. Rather than asking ourselves "Why do we do it this way?" or "What does these traditions we follow lead to in practice?" we instead say "It's always been this way" or "It's just the natural way to it" to find justification for our way of life.

There is nothing strange about this. As you might remember from my model of mental health, we need some parts of our lives to be automatized, we need some rules that doesn't change. We just don't have the cognitive capacity to consider every action and decision in full. As a matter of fact, we want to avoid scrutinizing our assumptions and traditions... Because, what if we discover that we've been wrong all the time?

Cognitive dissonance

The sense that what we are doing is counter to our ideals, or that we act on different principles in different situations is nigh on unbearable to us, and we go to some lenghts to reduce this feeling. In social psychology, this feeling is called cognitive dissonance. Wikipedia has an excellent article on it, check it out! I quote Wikipedia:

The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing them.

So let's say I beat up my kids every day to foster them into obeying my moral rules.

- One day a person comes along and tells me that moral humans are raised with a sense of trust, not with punishment.

- Holy shit! So I've been hurting my children with no good reason all this time? But I love my children! And loving and hurting someone does not match up!

- To avoid this sense of cognitive dissonance, I animatedly describe what an idiot this person is and how totally wrong sie is. By rejecting this idea and declaring it false, I can maintain my moral consistensy.

In fact, people spend a lot of time justifying their own behaviour. We like to believe that we always make decisions based on reason and ideals, and then execute these in action. In actuality, more often than you'd think we act first and afterwards justify what we just did with explanations, rationalizing our actions or feelings.

Instinct first, then reasoning

I bet all of you have been in a discussion when someone brings forward an argument for a cause, and when proven that this person is wrong in hir argument, sie changes the argument. Take a look at this, for instance:

Person A: "We need a death penalty as a deterrant for crimes like homicide"

Person B: "Actually, countries with a death penalty has a higher frequency of homicide than states without."

Person A: "Well, it's insane to spend money to bunch murderers up together in prison, they'll be out again soon, and worse than they were before!"

See what happened there? If person B is right, and person A truely believe that we should lower the amount of homicides, sie should rationally change hir position on death penalty, not change hir argument.

Rather than reaching his position through rational consideration of for and against arguments, Person A first of all feel strongly that murderers should be put to death, and then justifies hir feelings with intellectual arguments.

This is not necessarily wrong, we need our feelings to guide us and inform us of a situation. The most skilled practicioners leave room for intuition and gut feeling in a decision making process.

Generalizing and building ideologies

Also, by turning what we experience personally into something general, or law of nature, we can justify our feelings. "You ALWAYS leave your dirty socks on the floor! Can't you pick them up after yourself like a normal person?" justifies my frustration more than "I don't like it when you leave your dirty socks out". Feelings turn into arguments.

And this goes for ideologies as well! Let's compare conservatives and liberals:

On a neural level, conservatives react stronger and faster to scary stimulus. The ideology of conservatism is basically a body of intellectual arguments justifying why we should remove these scary stimulus. In the same way, the ideology of liberalism can be understood as a way to justify curiosity, sensation-seeking and egocentrism. Personally, I experienced a sense of not always being taken seriously as a child, and my own ideology can be understood as a justification of my longing for acceptance and approval.

This can be disheartening, but I feel there is something beautiful in how humans can create meaning. In the end, we live in a cold and objective world of chemistry and physics, but we have the ability to turn a meaningless nature into meaningful ideology, art and society, to build a rich world of the mind atop the world of materia.

Brain damage

People who have lost the part connecting the two brain hemispheres together, have in effect two brains working independently. During these conditions, the process of justification becomes extremely clear.

Show the message "Take out your red coat" to the persons left eye, and the right brain hemisphere will register and process this message, and have the persons left arm reach for the coat.

Then, ask the person why sie reached for the coat. Language is located in the left hemisphere, but the left hemisphere doesn't know about the written message, and the person will reply "Oh, I felt like taking a walk" or something to that extent, that is make up a reason on the fly for the action just taken!

First part in series. Next part: Accepting normativity.