Are We Too Good To Be True?

Too Good To Be True?

“There is a great deal of wishful thinking in such cases;

It is the easiest thing of all to deceive one’s self.”

-Demosthenes (The Quotations…)

We go on a day to day basis trying to make sound choices, but we all intentionally fool ourselves from time to time by engaging in wishful thinking. Despite how illogical this pattern of reasoning is, our human nature leads us to it and repeats this action even though we usually see its failure time after time. Although most wishful thinking is something we should attempt to avoid, there are also some types of wishful thinking that we can benefit from. According to Howard Kahane and Nancy Cavender, authors of Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, wishful thinking is neither cogent nor

Self-deception is a form of wishful thinking in which we are fully aware of how invalid our thought process is, but continue with this reasoning (Kahane 134). Three forms of self-deception that are common are denial, rationalization, and procrastination. People in denial willingly refuse to admit the truth to themselves by altering their “interpretation of the situation to perceive it as less threatening” even though they have knowledge that contradicts what they would like to be real. Rationalization involves the avoidance of “unpleasant evidence” by validating our actions to evade feel guilty for our choices (Kahane 141, 137). Both denial and rationalization can be harmful to us since they cause us to create our own version of reality. Procrastination also falls into the category of self-deception due to the fact that it calls for us to postpone a task we know we can get done until we have little or no time to accomplish it (Kahane

This occurs because most of us look for instant gratification and we prefer not to think of the consequences of procrastination. Eric Jaffe, who frequently writes for the Association for Psychological Science, cited a 1997 study by Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister that evaluated procrastinating and non-procrastinating students at Case Western Reserve University. They assessed the student’s “academic performance, stress, and general health throughout the semester” and at first believed that procrastination had some benefits for students. Those who procrastinated experience less stress than the other students towards the beginning of the experiment. Nonetheless, by the end of the study “procrastinators earned lower grades than other students and reported higher cumulative amounts of stress and illness.” Students have attempted to rationalize procrastinating by stating that they function better under pressure. The American Psychological Association reports that 80 to 95 percent of college students procrastinate (Hubbard). It has also been reported that about “20 percent of people may be chronic procrastinators.” I believe that many students suffer from this pattern of thinking because some of us want to attempt getting a passing grade in a class while doing the minimal amount of work. I do procrastinate sometimes, but I