People often refuse to identify themselves (and sometimes others) with behaviors only done a small minority of the time. But a typical jerk is someone who is a jerk 10% or less of the time, and mostly only when there's some sort of reason not totally at random. Having some reason, even a bad one, gives them an excuse that helps them not view themselves as a jerk in their own mind.
People who are interested in philosophy commonly try to identify their philosophical skill level with their best and most focused activities. When they make dumb errors, they blame being tired or distracted or whatever (which is how they spend most of their lives) instead of blaming inadequate skill and practice.
These two things are sort of the same but sort of reversed.
Here's how they're different: With bad things, people commonly look at what's typical in order to avoid seeing themselves as bad. Their bad traits don't count because they do them the minority of the time. But with good things, they look at their best results, not their typical results, in order to see themselves as especially good. This is biased.
Here's how they're the same: In both cases, people identify with their better results not their worse results. This is biased.
This way of evaluating isn't applied universally to everyone. People may evaluate friends and family like this. But if they don't like someone and he's a jerk to them sometimes, they will consider him a jerk, not evaluate him by the times he wasn't a jerk.
This comes up with specific issues, not just broad evaluations. If someone quotes correctly 95% of the time, they'll likely consider themselves good at quoting. But if they misquote 5% of the time, I'll think of them as a bad quoter. Who's right? Well, if a book contains 100 quotes, and 5 of them as misquotes, is that good? I don't think that book did a good job. I think being a misquoter is like being a jerk: don't do it at all. And it'd actually be unusual to misquote 95% of the time. Misquoting occasionally is what typical misquoters are like, just like being a jerk occasionally is what typical jerks are like.
Not Who I Am
There are celebrities who misbehave badly then issue an apology in which they say "that's not who I am". But it is. They did it. I think they mean in most hours of their life, they didn't do it, so they identify as the kind of person who doesn't do it. But that's not how that works. You only have to rape one person, once, to be a rapist. You only have to yell at your secretary once a month to be a bad boss.
Criticizing "that's not who I am" is not original. Here are two articles about it: SorryWatch's “THIS IS NOT WHO I AM” and Nola's 'That's not who I am' is wrong. And it's the wrong thing to say | Opinion.
In general, these apologies involve one of two scenarios. Either they did something really bad (like murder) which you are supposed to never, ever do, so just doing it once stands out and makes you a bad person. Or they did something that's less bad but they did it repeatedly, so it was a pattern of behavior, not a one time exception. In both of those scenarios, it is who they are. They really are a person who is willing to commit one million-dollar embezzlement, or they really are a person who is mean to a subordinate every month.
For some of these apologies, they admit to and apologize for some facts about their behavior, but they deny being that kind of person. But the facts and the denial contradict each other. The apology is self-contradictory, yet that's what they say in public using a script that was written or at least reviewed by a public relations expert.
I think this works some because a lot of people are dishonest with themselves. They categorize some of their bad behavior as special exceptions that don't really count. They don't keep any data on how often these exceptions occur. And so we live in a world where a waitress can be on the receiving end of rude behavior almost every shift, but most of the people doing it think that was just a rare, special exception and they aren't a rude person (if they even recognize that what they did was rude). When lots of people make these exceptions, it adds up to being common behavior in our society.
Since lots of people are dishonest about who they are, it makes sense that they would accept an apology with the same dishonesty. And their habit is to deny being a bad person unless the evidence is overwhelming, so if a celebrity made honest admissions they would think he was being forced into it by overwhelming evidence against him. So honesty can be interpreted as confessing to being really bad (much worse than the real facts of the matter), since many people wouldn't admit to anything unless they were really backed into a corner and had no other options, at which point they would admit to as little as possible.
Special Exceptions Add Up
Another example of exceptions is walking off the designated places for people at a tourist spot in nature. Many people think it's OK for them to ignore the sign and go past the fence because it's just a one-time special exception for them, and their footsteps won't do much harm. But many people do that and it adds up to the plants in that spot getting trampled and killed. That kind of problem is common in America but it may be less common in some other countries like Japan (going by vague reputation, not detailed knowledge). I think that kind of behavior may be one of the things that gives American tourists a partially bad reputation abroad (they also have a partially good reputation, e.g. for being willing to spend money in other countries).
Or imagine a society where every person gets angry and yells just once a month as a special exception. No one thinks of themselves as a yeller since they rarely yell. But yelling would be quite common in public. A crowd of 100 people would have 3-4 people who yell today. Walking for 30 minutes along a downtown sidewalk past busy shops and restaurants, you could easily pass over 1,000 people (including people who are indoors but close enough for you to hear them yell), so you'd likely hear some yelling. If you attend high school or college, you'd hear yelling most days. If you work at an office or warehouse with hundreds of people, you'd hear yelling most days. People often do a poor job of considering "If literally everyone made the exception I want to make, what would the cumulative effect be?" If the results of everyone doing it would be bad, and you do it, you're part of the problem even if you think to yourself "that's not who I am" since you rarely do it.
In our society, people who think or say they yell once a month often yell more, like 1-3 times per month, plus some extras in one particularly high stress month, so maybe 30 times per year not 12.
What if some people yell daily but you only yell once a month? Are you not really part of the problem, since you rarely yell while other people yell a lot? Should you blame the frequent yellers for why you often hear yelling in public? I don't think so. You yell enough that if everyone did what you do, there'd be tons of yelling. You're part of the problem, not part of the solution. For a quieter, calmer society, you'd need to yell less; just getting the daily yellers to be like you wouldn't solve the yelling problem.
Messages