As it turns out,
the brain is a decent scientist but an absolutely outstanding lawyer. The
result is that in the struggle to fashion a coherent, convincing view of
ourselves and the rest of the world, it is the impassioned advocate that
usually wins over the truth seeker. We’ve seen in earlier chapters how the
unconscious mind is a master at using limited data to construct a version of
the world that appears realistic and complete to its partner, the conscious
mind. Visual perception, memory, and even emotion are all constructs, made of a
mix of raw, incomplete, and sometimes conflicting data. We use the same kind of
creative process to generate our self-image. When we paint our picture of self,
our attorney-like unconscious blends fact and illusion, exaggerating our
strengths, minimizing our weaknesses, creating a virtually Picassoesque series
of distortions in which some parts have been blown up to enormous size (the
parts we like) and others shrunk to near invisibility. The rational scientists
of our conscious minds then innocently admire the self-portrait, believing it
to be a work of photographic accuracy.
Psychologists
call the approach taken by our inner advocate “motivated reasoning.” Motivated
reasoning helps us to believe in our own goodness and competence, to feel in
control, and to generally see ourselves in an overly positive light. It also
shapes the way we understand and interpret our environment, especially our
social environment, and it helps us justify our preferred beliefs. Still, it
isn’t possible for 40 percent to squeeze into the top 5 percent, for 60 percent
to squeeze into the top decile, or for 94 percent to be in the top half, so
convincing ourselves of our great worth is not always an easy task.
Fortunately, in accomplishing it, our minds have a great ally, an aspect of
life whose importance we’ve encountered before: ambiguity. Ambiguity creates
wiggle room in what may otherwise be inarguable truth, and our unconscious
minds employ that wiggle room to build a narrative of ourselves, of others, and
of our environment that makes the best of our fate, that fuels us in the good
times, and gives us comfort in the bad.
