Book Titles

When people do a good deed, particularly when they do it on a whim or by chance, they will come to see the beneficiary of their generosity in a warmer light.

Dominance is bothersome under any circumstances, but it is most painful to people when an important element of their self-concept is threatened…

…if you violate your own values, you’ll feel much greater dissonance because, at the end of the day, you have to go on living with yourself.

…hundreds of studies have shown that, compared to predictions based on actuarial data, predictions based on an expert’s years of training and experience are rarely better than chance.

Our convictions about who we are carry us through the day, and we are constantly interpreting the things that happen to us through the filter of those core beliefs.

Self-justification… will protect high self-esteem to avoid dissonance, but it will also protect low self-esteem if that is a default self-perception.

Often, when standing at the top of the pyramid, we are faced not with a black-or-white, go-or-no-go decision but with gray choices whose consequences are shrouded.

The first steps along the path are morally ambiguous, and the right decision is not always clear. We make an early, apparently inconsequential decision, and then we justify it to reduce the ambiguity of the choice.

How do you get an honest man to lose his ethical compass? You get him to take one step at a time, and self-justification will do the rest.

A richer understanding of how and why our minds work as they do is the first step toward breaking the self-justification habit.