Self Justification Essay

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Self-justification is analyzed through observation and experience rather than through theory or pure logic, it is supported by rationalization of escalation of commitment. Grounded on motivating reasoning conjecture, it is reasoned that the need for self-justification influence escalation of commitment secondarily through other cognitive developments. The furtherance of a failing strategy characterizes a compelling incentive for self-justification. This phenomenon, is acknowledged as the escalation of commitment and is described as a propensity to become locked into a trajectory of action. Alternatively, instead of immobilizing the projects, decision makers intensify their dedication by perpetually continuing to authorize resources and persist …show more content…

Significantly, the structure of self-justification was first examined by Staw in 1976 in which the perspective of escalation was substantiated in the hypothesis of cognitive discord. Moreover, this theory insinuates that people have a convincing necessity to compress finds of cognitive discrepancies and seek to justify the judgment of past decisions to themselves and to others. The theory was prompted by the U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. Conversely, it is pertinent to many circumstances in which people have put money and effort into a failing progression of strategies as Staw persuasively recapitulates. Knowingly, like the Vietnam War effort, people invest in bonds, professions, and even marriages, and when these investments did not pay off, they did not necessarily disavow from the circumstances. Notably, instead, they actually invest further so as to turn the circumstance around to prove that their previous decision was the appropriate one. Moreover, the theory of self-justification hypothesizes that decision makers may encounter psychological embarrassment from cognitive discord as a direct consequence of negative criticism on prior investment evaluations. To vindicate their past assessments and paraphrase the precision of their original investments, decision makers will continue to assign resources to a failing progression of action and evade the psychological costs of failure. This stream of study is illustrated by Zhang and Baumeister where undergraduate students took part in a game in which they had a possibility to attain a jackpot. To persist in playing, students had to sporadically spend money. The study analyzed two conditions the ego-threat and the controlled. Additionally, in the ego-threat condition, participants' deprivation for self-justification was boosted by saying, "If you're the type of person who suffocates under strain or if

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