This document discusses flawed decision making and how people use rationalization and denial to justify behaviors that contradict evidence or are known to be risky or unhealthy. It provides several examples, such as tailgating or smoking, and examines how people find ways to believe their behaviors are safe or justified despite risks. The document suggests people often prioritize feeling comfortable over acknowledging hard truths and urges using critical thinking to evaluate solutions rather than deny problems.

1. Flawed Decision Making:
Rationalization and Denial
By
Dean Berry, Ed. D.
www.commoncorecurriculum.info

2. Learning to use critical thinking to solve problems is the
key to becoming an effective worker, parent, or
significant other. People who are successful in various
roles in their lives know how to gather and use
information that results in solid solutions for real
problems.

3. Let’s use our critical thinking skills to investigate a
problem and identify potential solutions. Meet in
groups and identify 6-8 different ways that could be
used as transportation to get to school. Evaluate
the various ideas for school transportation and
select the three methods that your group believes
would be the safest and most reliable.

4. Share what your group decided about
the three safest and most reliable
modes of transportation for students.
Carefully evaluating solutions to
problems is critical if we are
serious about solving the
problems that confront
individuals, and in some cases,
our entire world.

5. Evaluating the best solution to our transportation
problem, time permitting, does require that we
continue with researching and testing our ideas
before settling on the best solutions.

6. The human mind uses mechanisms to block or
filter the information that we experience in our
daily lives. Sometimes we choose to hear mostly
what we want to believe. New information that
conflicts with our current beliefs and behaviors
makes us very uncomfortable. People around us
often engage in behaviors that are puzzling to us.

7. Puzzling Human Behaviors
• Have you ever been tailgated by a crazy driver?
• Have you seen someone have a few drinks and get into a
car and drive?
• Have you ever heard a student say, “I failed the test
because the teacher was a jerk”, and you know that the
student didn’t study at all for the test?
• Have you ever heard a smoker justify smoking by saying
that you should enjoy today since you could die
tomorrow on the freeway?

8. How do these people reach such decisions?
Are their behaviors logical?
•You are driving along on a curvy, two lane
road with five or six cars in front of you, but
a large Ford truck is tailgating your car very
closely at high speed.
•Would you feel threatened or unsafe?
•What would you do?

9. How do tailgators such as this justify their behavior?
Meet in groups and try to describe what might be going
through the head of the tailgator in the Ford pickup
truck.

10. What did your group discuss as the possible thoughts of
a tailgator? Did any of these thoughts come up?
• If I ride his bumper, he will drive faster.
• If he has to stop quickly, I will be able to stop without hitting
him.
• She is going the speed limit, but I need to go a lot faster. She
won’t speed up. She must be a jerk.
• If I tailgate people, I will get to my destination sooner.
• People need to get out of my way because I am more
important than they are.

11. Sometimes people see the world through
their own eyes only. Their perception of
reality is skewed to make sure that their bad
behavior is justifiable.
See what I mean?-Look how close that woman
driver is driving in front of me!!

12. Meet in small groups and discuss why
some people take more risks than
others. Are there situations where risky
behavior becomes irrational and
irresponsible? Identify some examples.

13. Some people, particularly teenagers, have less developed control centers in
the brain. With fewer brain messages telling us to be cautious and to
consider the facts before we act, we are more likely to engage in risky
behavior. In fact, some individuals need to participate in risky behaviors in
order to stimulate areas of the brain . A “rush” or intense feeling of joy and
excitement is created when they dodge disaster. The brain produces more
dopamine, a pleasure inducing substance, when they survive risky behavior.

14. Class Discussion
• Do you know any thrill seekers?
• What kind of risky behaviors do some people
engage in?
• Do you know anyone who suffered significant
injury or death from risky behavior?
• What happens to most adults if the control center
of their brains fails to develop properly and risky
behavior becomes a central part of their lives?

15. Quick Write
Write a paragraph with a minimum of five
sentences discussing why some people might
engage in risky behaviors. Provide several
examples and your personal opinion about such
behaviors.

16. The Eating Healthy Denial
Could this be you?
You feel great. You think to yourself, “I must be
in really good health”. There is no reason for me
to not eat snacks full of sugar and fat whenever
I feel like it! After all! You only live once.

17. Do you really care about health problems that are
possibly ten to twenty years down the road?

18. Some of our behavior patterns become extremely difficult
to change. In fact, research has clearly determined that
sugar is addictive. Which means that making healthy
decisions becomes even more difficult.

19. Recent research from UCLA indicates that 50% of
Californians are at high risk for getting diabetes.
And yet, most of us don’t want to hear information
that contradicts our habits and desires.

20. What? I can’t eat all of the fat
and sugar I want??

21. The Evidence Versus Emotion Battle
When we process new information, even when it contains
overwhelming evidence, the emotional center of the brain
engages the logical area of the brain in a struggle of
neurons. Guess who wins most of the time.

22. In order to protect ourselves from feeling very uncomfortable when
information contradicts our current beliefs or emotions, we learn to
separate or compartmentalize ideas so that they don’t interfere with each
other. By doing this, we restore harmony in our brain and return to a nice,
cozy feeling that everything is perfect. The facts won’t get in ourway.

23. One of the most flagrant examples of brain malfunction
occurs with people who insist on reading and sending
texts while driving. They know that texting and driving can
be very dangerous, but they think they can do it safely
because they are superman or wonder woman. They often
think to themselves, “I’ve never had an accident while
texting so I guess I’m much better at it than those freaks
who text and kill people”.

24. Finding reasons why your behavior is
justifiable is one way to protect yourself from
something that you know is wrong. This
process is called rationalization.

25. Rationalizing Our Behavior
Rationalization is often called the “sour grapes defense.”
This comes from one of Aesop’s fables. The fox wanted
some grapes, but couldn’t reach them. This caused him to
feel pain, as he could not have what he wanted. He
rationalized, “They were probably sour anyway”. He turned
them into something he didn’t really want, and thus couldn’t
really be upset about not getting. It is an intellectual way to
diminish pain. The old expression, “I didn’t really want
them. They’re probably no good anyway”. You make up a
“logical” argument to avoid guilt or disappointment.

26. Rationalizing Our Behavior
Rationalization is something that many human beings do
on a frequent basis. Rationalization is defined as “Creating
false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable
behavior.” An example of this would be a person stealing
money from a wealthy friend of his, telling himself, “Well
he’s rich, he can afford to lose it.” Stealing from Walmart
is justified in the same manner. Using this logic, the same
person might have trouble stealing from a poor person.

27. It’s Not a River in Egypt
Sometimes people seek to avoid behaviors or activities that
they deem unpleasant. Psychologists have identified defense
mechanisms that make it possible for people to create excuses
or blame others for their avoidance behaviors. Even the family
pet gets accused of acts of sabotage that provide convenient
reasons why we don’t get things done. This defense
mechanism is referred to as denial.

28. The Denial Mechanism
Denial is the simplest defense to understand. It is
simply the refusal to acknowledge what has, is, or
will happen. “I’m really good at tailgating. It’s
perfectly safe the way I do it”. A related defense is
Minimizing. When you minimize you technically
accept what happened, but only in a “watered
down” form. “Sure, I have been drinking a bit too
much lately, but it’s only due to stresses at work; I
don’t really have a drinking problem since I don’t
do it every day and I can control it when I need to”.

29. Meet in Groups
Create three different situations that
could result in denial or rationalization.
You might consider relationship issues, a
trip to the mall, bullying, banking on
future earnings as an athlete, or some
other situation that might be an
opportunity for someone to rationalize
their behavior.

30. Discuss
What are some of the examples of denial
that your group described?
Have you ever tried to convince someone
that they are in denial about their behavior?
How did it work out?

31. Let’s examine the following description of a
person who demonstrates high risk behaviors.
Rita lives for excitement. She dies of boredom
when life becomes too predictable. She has a wide
circle of friends but no tolerance for dull people.
She likes meeting exciting new people, even if she
knows that they are unreliable and short on values.
She smokes tobacco and marijuana and drinks
hard—and parties heavily on weekends with illegal
drugs. She has a sports car that she drives...fast.
She also likes to gamble at the casino—often
losing more than she can afford.

32. Rita's behavior encompasses many kinds of risk.
In the long term, the most dangerous of her
activities are probably smoking and drinking on a
regular basis. But Rita thinks only of today's
gratifications, not the dangers associated with her
high risk behaviors.
What does the author mean
by gratifications?

33. Rita is a fictional character, but she represents
a kind of general risk-taker, one whose behavior
encompasses many different activities. Such
broad-spectrum risk-takers not only exist, but
have a distinctive personality makeup that is
the product of both genes and experience. The
problem is that high risk behavior occurs when
people are unable to objectively process
information and use logical reasoning to make
good decisions.
What does author mean by the product of genes
and experience?

34. Denial can be used by organizations or
individuals to avoid accepting
responsibility for solving real problems.

35. Have you ever heard these
kind of denials in school?
• Asking for help is not what I do.
• I’m going to work for my dad when I leave school so I
really don’t need to do these assignments.
• I’m too far behind so what’s the point.
• It’s obvious that someday I’ll make a living as an athlete.
• Someday my band will be famous so school is not
necessary for me.

36. Some people even deny that they are
using denial to justify their behavior.

37. Mom just reminded me that I have
homework tonight. Unpleasant news is
easier to ignore than act on.

38. We can rationalize why we can’t do something
or we can choose to grind it out.

39. “I Can’t Help It. I’m Addicted”.
Denial and rationalization become even more
complicated when a person becomes chemically
or behaviorally addicted to an activity such as
smoking or using cell phones.

40. Do you think it’s possible that some people’s brains
have become addicted to cell phone use?
Discuss this issue in pairs or small
groups for the next 3 or 4 minutes.

41. Smoking often results in inner conflict when
information is presented about the disease and
deaths caused by cigarettes. In order to resolve
the conflict, smokers utilize denial as a way to get
their comfort level back.

42. Escaping behind denial enables
smokers to evade the evidence and
continue making poor decisions.

43. “You are going to die of something
anyway, so I’m not giving up my
smokes”. How often do you hear
such denials by cigarette smokers?

44. Millions of smokers continue to deny a
mountain of evidence that proves that they will
die much younger than nonsmokers. Denial and
rationalization have done their job nicely.

45. The one behavior that is associated with lower risk of
getting all lifestyle major diseases is regular exercise.
And yet, most people find reasons not to do it.

46. Many people even fail to provide
their pets with enough exercise.

47. It seems that even our pets
are getting fat and lazy.

48. One of the hardest things to do is to engage in
physical activity. Being a couch potato seems to be
the American dream these days.

49. Let’s Review Rationalization

50. Americans are flooded every day with
information that suggests that exercising
will provide many fantastic benefits. And
yet, most people do not exercise on a
regular basis.
Why do you think this is true?

51. Discussion
There is overwhelming evidence that exercising
would reduce all major diseases in America and
increase longevity by many years. Americans would
save billions of dollars and live much happier lives.
Can you describe some rationalizations
that people use to excuse themselves
from exercising the way they know they
should?
What do you think could be done to get
Americans to care enough about their
futures to increase their rate of exercising?