own responsibility is completely denied and self-criticism aborted.
DENIAL IS SELF-REINFORCING
Denial is also self-reinforcing—once you make that first denial, you tend to commit to it: you will deny, deny the denial, deny that, and so on. In the voice-recognition experiments, not only do deniers deny their own voice, they also deny the denial. A person decides that an article on which he is a coauthor is not fraudulent. To do so, he must deny the first wave of incoming evidence, as he duly does. Then comes the second wave. Cave in? Admit fault and cut his losses? Not too likely. Not when he can deny once more and perhaps cite new evidence in support of denial—evidence to which he becomes attached in the next round. He is doubling down at each turn—double or nothing—and as nothing is what he would have gotten at the very beginning, with no cost, he is tempted to justify each prior mistake by doubling down again. Denial leads to denial, with potential costs mounting at each turn.
In trading stock, the three most important rules are “cut your losses, cut your losses, and cut your losses.” This is difficult to do because there is natural resistance. Benefits are nice; we like to enjoy them. But to do so, we must sell a stock after it has risen in value; then we can enjoy the profit. By the same token, we are risk averse. Loss feels bad and is to be avoided. One way to avoid a cost is to hold the stock after it has fallen—loss is only on paper and the stock may soon rebound. Of course, as it sinks lower, one may wish to hold it longer. This style of trading eventually puts one in a most unenviable position, holding a portfolio of losers. Indeed, this is exactly what happens. People trading on their own tend to sell good stocks, buy less good ones, and hold on to their bad ones. Instead, “cut your losses, cut your losses, cut your losses.”
YOUR AGGRESSION, MY SELF-DEFENSE
One of the most common cases of denial coupled with projection concerns aggression—who is responsible for the fight? By adding one earlier action by the other party, we can always push causality back one link, and memory is notoriously weak when it comes to chronological order.
An analogy can be found in animal species that have evolved to create the illusion that they are oriented 180 degrees in the opposite direction and are moving backward instead of forward. For example, a beetle has its very long antennae slung underneath its body so they protrude out the back end, creating the illusion of a head. When attacked, usually at the apparent “head” end (that is, the tail) it rushes straight forward—exactly the opposite of what is expected, helping it to escape. Likewise, there are fish with two large, false eyespots on the rear end of their body, creating the illusion that the head is located there. The fish feed at the bottom, moving slowly backward, but again, when attacked at the apparent “head” end, take off rapidly in the opposite direction. What is notable here is that the opposite of the truth (180 degrees) is more plausible than a smaller deviation from the truth (say, a 20-degree difference in angle of motion). And so also in human arguments. Is this an unprovoked attack or a defensive response to an unprovoked attack? Is causation going in this direction, or 180 degrees opposite? “Mommy, he started it.” “Mommy, she did.”
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SELF-JUSTIFICATION
Cognitive dissonance refers to an internal psychological contradiction that is experienced as a state of tension or discomfort ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish. Thus, people will often act to reduce cognitive dissonance. The individual is seen to hold two cognitions—ideas, attitudes, or beliefs—that are inconsistent: “Smoking will kill you, and I smoke two packs a day.” The contradiction could be resolved by stopping cigarettes or by rationalizing their use: “They relax me, and they prevent weight gain.” Most people jump to the latter task and start generating self-justification in the face of a much more difficult (if healthier) choice. But sometimes there is only one choice, because the cost has already been suffered: you can rationalize it or live with the truth.
Take a classic case. Subjects were split into two groups, one comprising people who would endure a painful or embarrassing test to join a group and the other people who would pay a modest fee. Then each was asked to evaluate