216. Why Do We Make Excuses? AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast No Stupid Questions

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Episode: 216. Why Do We Make Excuses?

Author: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
Duration: 00:37:58

Episode Shownotes

Is it better to explain a mistake or just accept responsibility? What’s the difference between an excuse and a justification? And why is it important to remember that you’re not a pizzeria on the Jersey Shore? SOURCES:Robert Cialdini, professor of psychology at Arizona State University.Raymond Higgins, professor emeritus of psychology

at University of Kansas.Martin Seligman, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Rick Snyder, professor emeritus of psychology at University of Kansas. RESOURCES:"‘Explain, but Make No Excuses’: Service Recovery After Public Service Failures," by Matthias Döring (Public Management Review, 2022)."To Justify or Excuse?: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of Explanations," by John C. Shaw, Eric Wild, and Jason A. Colquitt (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2003)."Excuses: Their Effective Role in the Negotiation of Reality," by C. R. Snyder and Raymond L. Higgins (Psychological Bulletin, 1988)."The Attributional Style Questionnaire," by Christopher Peterson, Amy Semmel, Carl von Baeyer, Lyn Y. Abramson, Gerald I. Metalsky, and Martin E. P. Seligman (Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1982). EXTRAS:"How Can You Convince Someone They’re Wrong?" by No Stupid Questions (2021)."Under the Boardwalk," song by The Drifters (1964).

Summary

In this episode of 'No Stupid Questions,' Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan explore the nuances behind why people make excuses instead of accepting personal responsibility. They distinguish between excuses, which shift blame, and justifications, which accept responsibility but mitigate moral implications. The discussion highlights the psychological impacts of excuses, such as cognitive closure and how habitual excuse-making can affect one's reputation. They emphasize reframing choices and behaviors in context, maintaining self-esteem, and recognizing how well-framed excuses can facilitate personal accountability and agency.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (216. Why Do We Make Excuses?) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:03 Speaker_01
I'm having an allergic reaction to this right now.

00:00:06 Speaker_03
I'm Angela Duckworth.

00:00:07 Speaker_01
I'm Mike Mahn. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

00:00:12 Speaker_05
Today on the show, when should you make excuses? Like, I tried to start the car, but turns out that, like, you know, my sister-in-law had borrowed it, so it wasn't even there.

00:00:35 Speaker_05
Mike, we have a question from a Ken Reed from Texas, and it is about excuses. You ready?

00:00:42 Speaker_01
I'm not ready, but it's not my fault.

00:00:45 Speaker_05
Exactly. All right. Ken Reed says, Mom always said, don't make excuses. But I want to know, are excuses effective? For example, if you make a mistake at work, is your boss more likely to look down on you for giving an excuse slash explanation?

00:01:04 Speaker_05
Or is she more likely to be understanding and forgiving if you make an excuse? Are you better off if you suck it up and silently accept responsibility or if you explain the cause of slash reason for the mistake? Such an interesting question.

00:01:20 Speaker_05
Do you have answers for Ken?

00:01:23 Speaker_01
I have so many thoughts, but my first thought, Angela, is about a hilarious Reddit thread that I was reading recently about funny excuses that people have made.

00:01:35 Speaker_05
There's like a Reddit thread on like great excuses.

00:01:38 Speaker_01
Exactly. I mean, sometimes you go down the wormhole, you know, and you just start reading. Absolutely. OK, so one is about a substitute teacher for kindergarten who just didn't show up to teach a class.

00:01:49 Speaker_01
And so this person writes, the person actually never called. But when we finally got a hold of her, she said she didn't show up because she woke up early and decided to bake bread.

00:01:59 Speaker_01
So she couldn't come to work because she had to wait until the bread was finished. She said she could work in the afternoon instead because she really needed the money.

00:02:07 Speaker_01
And they said, yeah, that's not how it works when you're a substitute kindergarten teacher.

00:02:11 Speaker_05
I feel like those are the people who should be the most reliable.

00:02:15 Speaker_01
Right.

00:02:15 Speaker_05
You are there because the actual kindergarten teacher cannot come. And there will be five year olds and six year olds in a room by themselves if you don't show up.

00:02:25 Speaker_01
Pure pandemonium.

00:02:26 Speaker_05
Yes.

00:02:27 Speaker_01
This other one is actually is actually my favorite. So this person writes in, I used to work with this person who was notoriously ditzy and just a bit strange. Anyway, we started work at 9 a.m. and she never turned up. She finally rang at 11 a.m.

00:02:47 Speaker_01
to say she had just been daydreaming and was aimlessly following the car in front of her and had driven over 100 miles away.

00:02:55 Speaker_05
Wait, she was daydreaming, lost track of, I guess, like, where she was and just, like, kept going.

00:03:01 Speaker_01
Just on the way to work and just mindlessly followed this car in front of her for, like, two hours.

00:03:08 Speaker_05
I have to say the reason why there is a hole in this argument as a psychologist is that when people are daydreaming and they go on autopilot, they tend to do what is habitual and people do not tend to follow the car in front of them for two hours.

00:03:23 Speaker_05
I would believe like, oh, my gosh, I always turn left at this intersection because I always turn left there. And oh, my gosh, I just turned left automatically. And I just I didn't think. But yeah, I smell a rat.

00:03:34 Speaker_01
Well, because you know the old saying. I shouldn't say you know the old saying. You never know these old sayings.

00:03:38 Speaker_05
I never know the old or the new sayings.

00:03:41 Speaker_01
I'm going to use the more appropriate version. But they say excuses are like armpits. Everybody has them and they all stink.

00:03:48 Speaker_05
I have not heard that old chestnut, Mike. I like it.

00:03:52 Speaker_05
And I think this is revealing because I think the very mention of excuse, you know, when you talk about a kid making an excuse for not having their homework or like somebody not showing up for work, it's automatically negative.

00:04:06 Speaker_05
It's automatically this suggestion that the person's explanation is distancing themselves from responsibility and that that's not good.

00:04:17 Speaker_05
But when psychologists think about excuses, I don't think they think about it in quite those loaded terms, because the definition is more narrowly shifting the causal explanation

00:04:30 Speaker_05
for this negative outcome, you know, homework wasn't done, somebody didn't show up, away from something that the person could have done themselves.

00:04:39 Speaker_05
It's a little bit like, it wasn't my fault because of these other factors that were really beyond my control at that time. And if you just narrowly define things as That's what an excuse is.

00:04:55 Speaker_05
It's something that distances you from personal responsibility for some negative outcome. It's not by itself necessarily a bad thing. Right. Psychologists have also studied something which is not the same as an excuse, which is a justification.

00:05:13 Speaker_05
And I think these are two kinds of explanations. So something bad happened, like, wow, these five-year-olds were in this classroom by themselves, or this assignment didn't get done, or you were supposed to show up, and you didn't show up.

00:05:24 Speaker_05
I'm still mad at someone.

00:05:26 Speaker_01
What, for not showing up? This is in high school. I'm not really still mad at them, but I'm still confused. We planned to meet at this place, and I went and waited for hours for my friend. And in all the years since,

00:05:40 Speaker_01
We've even talked about how he didn't show up at all and how I waited for hours. I never got an excuse or an apology and I would have appreciated anything.

00:05:49 Speaker_05
Wait, you've stayed friends with this person and you've talked about it and you never got an explanation?

00:05:53 Speaker_01
No.

00:05:54 Speaker_05
Okay, so look, when you just don't understand something, oh my gosh, Mike, I can't sleep if there is a question that I don't have the answer to.

00:06:05 Speaker_05
So I think there is this kind of like open parentheses when we have a question like, why didn't he show up? I just don't get it. I don't understand. I think that's one reason why we do seek explanations. Like we're always looking for cognitive closure.

00:06:19 Speaker_05
Right. And let's just say that after a really unambiguously negative outcome, big or small, this kind of explanation that's an excuse can be differentiated from a justification.

00:06:29 Speaker_05
In the academic literature, the distinction is that an excuse is an explanation in which the person denies full responsibility. It's not my fault because of you know, mitigating circumstances that were really beyond my control.

00:06:51 Speaker_01
Right.

00:06:52 Speaker_05
The kind of canonical example that's often given is there is a soldier who admits to have killed other people, which is an immoral act. But the excuse is that the soldier was following orders. But a justification is different.

00:07:11 Speaker_05
There, the decision maker does accept responsibility, but you deny that this was, in fact, an immoral or inappropriate act because you point to some higher-level principle, sometimes called a superordinate goal.

00:07:25 Speaker_05
You're like, yeah, I know this was wrong, but the overall reason was right, and therefore it justifies this.

00:07:31 Speaker_05
So the example, going back to the soldier who admits to having killed other people, instead of saying like, look, what else could I do, my commanding officer, practically had a gun to my own head.

00:07:43 Speaker_05
Here, the soldier would say, yeah, but this is the cause of freedom, right? If I hadn't done what I had done, you know, we wouldn't have served this bigger and more important cause.

00:07:53 Speaker_05
I will say that I'm thinking about this meta-analysis where the scientists tried to kind of review all of the evidence up to 2003 on whether when a company, for example, you know, does a layoff.

00:08:05 Speaker_05
you know, there's a negative outcome, at least from the employee's perspective, and the explanation can be not offered at all, of course, or it could be offered in the form of an excuse, right?

00:08:16 Speaker_05
There are mitigating circumstances, the economy is contracting, we have no choice, to like justification, like this is actually for the best. The finding of this meta-analysis is, first of all, Any explanation is better than no explanation.

00:08:31 Speaker_05
So having nothing to say, like leaving people with that cognitive dissonance that you had, like, why didn't you show up? Like, what just happened? That's bad.

00:08:42 Speaker_01
At least tell me your car broke down or lie to me.

00:08:45 Speaker_05
Give me some closure. Either an excuse or justification is better, it seems, than like nothing.

00:08:50 Speaker_05
And then if you run a horse race between excuses and justifications, just in this management context, like we're talking about companies, for example, then explanations that are excuses turn out to be more beneficial than justifications.

00:09:05 Speaker_05
So when you offer an explanation where the oomph of the explanation is like, I really couldn't have done otherwise, there were factors that were beyond my control. Like, you know what? I was going to meet you, Mike. I was so going to meet you.

00:09:19 Speaker_05
Like, I tried to start the car, but it turns out that, like, you know, my sister-in-law had borrowed it, so it wasn't even there. So those excuses are different from, like, justifications.

00:09:28 Speaker_05
Like, I know I didn't meet you, and I could have met you, but I decided not to meet you because there was a superordinate goal. Like, there was another thing that I should have done even more than do this.

00:09:39 Speaker_01
So I can see why it's better for the excuse giver. It allows me as the excuse giver to say, not I am bad because I didn't show up, but the situation made it so.

00:09:50 Speaker_01
But I also guess I would rather hear that they couldn't make it because someone took the car than that they wanted to work out and had a superordinate goal of being healthy. And they preferred that to showing up to talk to me.

00:10:02 Speaker_01
So it's better for both parties.

00:10:04 Speaker_05
I mean, I don't know about better in an objective sense, but when you hear somebody make an excuse, and I guess there has to be some version of believing it. If it's not a credible excuse, then that's a whole other kettle of fish.

00:10:15 Speaker_05
But basically, yeah, I mean, I think the thing about an excuse that's plausible, mitigating circumstances beyond my control. I think in a one-time situation, like, yeah, I guess I would feel better as the listener.

00:10:27 Speaker_05
I think I would feel better about you as a person. But I think the justification thing is just like, oh, wait, now I have to really think.

00:10:35 Speaker_05
Like, do I agree that you made the right choice in choosing some higher-level goal that I may or may not think is a higher-level goal? So I think excuses continue.

00:10:47 Speaker_05
I mean, maybe that's why they're Reddit threads, because they do work, at least in certain contexts. I think the reason why we all scold ourselves and others about making excuses is that partly because they do work.

00:11:00 Speaker_05
So we know that there's like an easy way out. But I will certainly say that if somebody is constantly excuse making, like it's always something, you know, I will start to wonder

00:11:10 Speaker_01
Right. We want to be understanding, kind individuals who recognize that life happens and situations arise. But generally speaking, I don't think we want to work with people who are making habitual excuses.

00:11:22 Speaker_05
Right. And how do we live a life where we're not taking that easy way out? Because you can make up another excuse and make up another excuse. And and this does get to character. You know, I ran Character Lab for some time. Right.

00:11:35 Speaker_05
This nonprofit that was designed to use psychological science to help kids thrive. But, you know, the very idea of character, some would argue, is almost the 180-degree opposite of excuse-making.

00:11:48 Speaker_05
Whereas there may be some short-term upsides, when you think about what character is, like, you know, having integrity, having a sense of responsibility, that you can't live a life like that if you're constantly dwelling on the things that were not your fault.

00:12:08 Speaker_05
You know, there's so many things in life that are not a one-shot thing. Like, every time I go to the boardwalk, which I don't usually do. So, by the way, is this term a South Jersey thing?

00:12:17 Speaker_05
Like, is boardwalk a commonly accepted term, or is this only for people who grew up, you know, near the shore, as we say?

00:12:23 Speaker_01
I think it's near a shore.

00:12:26 Speaker_05
Oh, okay, so other places have boardwalks.

00:12:28 Speaker_01
Yes. Southern California. Love to go walk along the boardwalk.

00:12:31 Speaker_05
OK.

00:12:32 Speaker_01
You know, the old song down by the boardwalk. Yeah.

00:12:35 Speaker_05
But then I wondered whether that was just like Atlantic City in New Jersey or which it may have been only referring to Jersey. Yeah. Jersey. The shore, as we call it. Right.

00:12:45 Speaker_05
But when I do go to the boardwalk down the shore, almost to a one, the restaurants are terrible, like they're God awful. And it could be like people want to eat terrible, God awful food when they're at the beach or.

00:13:01 Speaker_01
Or you don't have to have good food because you have good atmosphere.

00:13:05 Speaker_05
Or it's because you have a one-time customer. You're not really going to come back, at least for another year, maybe ever. So the idea of character is not to be thinking about anything as a one-shot thing. It's trying to

00:13:20 Speaker_05
think of yourself as somebody who is showing up again and again in a similar situation. It's actually a trick that people use for self-control. So if you're going to order out, say you're going to DoorDash dinner,

00:13:36 Speaker_05
and you're like scrolling through and there are options that are like really unhealthy but delicious and options that are maybe a little less delicious but healthier, right?

00:13:46 Speaker_05
Like you're wondering whether you should get the chopped chicken salad or like a cheeseburger with fries, for example. The tip that some self-control scientists would say to use is that when you are on DoorDash,

00:14:00 Speaker_05
You shouldn't think of this as a one-time DoorDash delivery. If you think of it as just tonight, then you're like, oh, well, you know, cheeseburger and fries just tonight, whatever.

00:14:09 Speaker_01
Right. I can make an exception just this one time.

00:14:11 Speaker_05
And then tomorrow, that's when I'm going to eat healthier.

00:14:15 Speaker_05
So the pro tip, like the way of reframing this choice in a way that will get you to make the healthier option, is to imagine that this choice is the choice that you're going to make this night and every night for the rest of your life. Right.

00:14:30 Speaker_05
This is trying to choose a pattern of choices as opposed to a one-time choice.

00:14:36 Speaker_05
And I do think with excuse-making, there is a parallel here, which is that if you can imagine showing up again and again and again to meeting after meeting after meeting and always having a different excuse or always having an excuse, like, that's not the kind of person

00:14:52 Speaker_05
we want to work with, right? So when you balance these like short term gains with these long term consequences, you really want to focus on the long term, repeated nature of life. You are not a pizza shop on a boardwalk.

00:15:11 Speaker_01
Right. And I think what's really interesting in today's world is that I don't know how many one-time interactions we have. I remember I was working on this one negotiation and someone said to me, well, why are you spending so much time?

00:15:25 Speaker_01
Do you care so much? You're never going to negotiate with this individual again. And my response was the world is so small and digitally and in other ways so connected. I have a reputation and so many people will know how this goes.

00:15:40 Speaker_01
If you're continually the type of person making excuses, there's not going to be a meeting to go to anymore if you do that too many times.

00:15:47 Speaker_05
Mike, I think you and I would love to hear the thoughts of NSQ listeners about making excuses. We're asking you to record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and to email us at NSQ at Freakonomics.com.

00:16:03 Speaker_05
Maybe we'll play it on a future episode of the show. Also, if you like us and want to support us, there is just no excuse for not telling your friends about No Stupid Questions. You can also spread the word on social media,

00:16:17 Speaker_05
or leave a review in your favorite podcast app.

00:16:22 Speaker_03
Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Angela argues that some excuses can make the world a better place. We could use excuse-making to take more responsibility. Now, back to Mike and Angela's conversation about excuse-making.

00:16:50 Speaker_05
I knew right off the bat when we got this question that you would be in the no-excuses camp. Like, I knew Mike Monn would not be pro-excuse-making.

00:17:00 Speaker_05
And I think, indeed, we are not pro-excuse-making in general because, you know, because of reputation, because of character, because of, you know, everything that we've learned.

00:17:10 Speaker_05
But I do want to make an argument for the upside of excuses for a moment because I think it's revealing and actually maybe more useful than we think. So let me take you back a ways to the 1980s.

00:17:23 Speaker_05
There was this actually very influential paper written by two psychologists, Rick Snyder and Raymond Higgins. They were both at University of Kansas. And the title of the paper is provocative.

00:17:37 Speaker_05
It's excuses, colon, their effective role in the negotiation of reality. So what Snyder and Higgins want to argue is that when something bad happens, and now we have to make this like post hoc explanation.

00:17:53 Speaker_05
If you are in the no excuse sequence, what you do is you internalize the cause to yourself. That's what it means not to make excuses. You're like, what could I have done? How am I responsible?

00:18:07 Speaker_01
Right.

00:18:07 Speaker_05
That maximizes self-focus.

00:18:11 Speaker_05
And then what happens, they say, is that your self-esteem can go down, that you can feel negative emotions of various kinds, and that can actually lead to sort of an overall diminished image of yourself and even a lack of control.

00:18:28 Speaker_05
Like you feel less control maybe over the next thing that's going to happen. Now, I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but I want to contrast that with what they consider the excuse sequence.

00:18:39 Speaker_05
This is you going down the path where negative thing happens. You have to make an explanation for it. Here, you think of external things, you know, the road blockages, the computer rebooted, the I was sent the wrong document, the whatever it is.

00:18:57 Speaker_01
Right. I'm having an allergic reaction to this right now, but I'm still listening.

00:19:00 Speaker_05
I know I'm going to force you to be in the excuse sequence, or I know you want to be in the no excuses sequence. But what they would argue is that now you're not focusing on yourself. You're not thinking about Mike Mahn.

00:19:12 Speaker_05
You're focusing on these external factors, the task. That focus will preserve your self-esteem. You won't suffer these negative emotions like anxiety or guilt. Your performance may be better because you have maintained

00:19:31 Speaker_05
some kind of positive image or sense of control. That's the crux of their argument.

00:19:39 Speaker_05
And when they make this argument, I think they really are focusing on how, you know, at least in the short term and at least for the excuse giver, you end up being a more agentic person when you make excuses.

00:19:52 Speaker_05
I am sure this is going to work against every fiber in your being. So I have to ask you, Mike, if you're still breathing, What is your reaction to this very academic argument?

00:20:03 Speaker_01
I'm still breathing. My immediate reaction is yes and. Of course, you know, no one wants to send someone down this horrible spiral where it becomes a I am bad versus this thing happened. And I wonder if there is a world where

00:20:18 Speaker_01
my excuse, the circumstance, whatever is there was construction or I hit every single red light or, you know, there was X detour. And that's why I'm late. And I can say I ought to have planned better, understood the route and figured this out.

00:20:33 Speaker_05
You want to keep like at least two causes in mind at once, like you can think of multiple explanations for what happened.

00:20:40 Speaker_01
Right.

00:20:40 Speaker_05
And at least one of those things you might want to take responsibility for. And at least one of those things you might want to distance yourself from responsibility wise.

00:20:47 Speaker_01
Right. And maybe I'm just trying to have my cake and eat it, too. But I'm trying to think as a boss and as someone that's responsible to other people, I think it's important to recognize that life happens. I mean, things come up.

00:20:59 Speaker_01
I've been late to meetings literally because of traffic. It's, I think, for me, much more palatable. to hear and maybe I think much more palatable to express, hey, my fault. I should have left earlier or looked at what the traffic patterns were like.

00:21:14 Speaker_01
There was a huge accident. I'm really sorry that I'm late. I'll do better next time. Like that sequence makes sense to me and is something that feels palatable to me in terms of working with others or asking people to work with me.

00:21:27 Speaker_01
I accept responsibility and give context. Again, maybe I'm just trying to have it all and that's not how it works.

00:21:33 Speaker_05
OK, I'm going to give you a test now.

00:21:35 Speaker_01
OK. I love tests.

00:21:36 Speaker_05
I'm going to read you a statement and I need you without overthinking it and without being like, well, Angela, let's talk about it. I'll read you what it says. You're going to write down or tell me what you think.

00:21:48 Speaker_01
Quick response.

00:21:49 Speaker_05
Imagine that you're giving an important talk in front of a group of people and imagine that the audience reacts negatively. Tell me one major cause of what happened.

00:22:02 Speaker_01
My immediate reaction was that I told a story that people didn't resonate with or that they reacted negatively to.

00:22:09 Speaker_05
Okay. Now, I have three questions for you about this cause.

00:22:13 Speaker_01
Okay.

00:22:13 Speaker_05
You told a story, hit the wrong note entirely. The first question is, is the cause of the audience's negative reaction due to something about you or something about other people or circumstances?

00:22:27 Speaker_01
Me.

00:22:28 Speaker_05
In the future, this is your second question, in the future when you give talks, will this cause again be present?

00:22:35 Speaker_01
No.

00:22:35 Speaker_05
And then finally, is the cause something that just influences giving talks or does it also influence other areas of your life?

00:22:44 Speaker_01
It influences other areas of my life.

00:22:46 Speaker_05
OK, so you said that it was very personal, like it was due to you.

00:22:50 Speaker_01
Yes.

00:22:51 Speaker_05
That it was not permanent because it won't be present necessarily again in future talks.

00:22:56 Speaker_01
In the future. Correct.

00:22:57 Speaker_05
And then finally, you said it is pervasive, like it does influence all areas of your life.

00:23:03 Speaker_01
My thought was, if I told a story that didn't connect with the audience, then I had not carefully enough understood the audience to whom I was speaking, and I'm not going to make that mistake again.

00:23:16 Speaker_01
The reason I said other areas is maybe in other areas of my life, not just giving a talk, it's indicative of I need to understand who I'm with.

00:23:25 Speaker_01
and be more understanding of the perspectives of others in the way I was trying to communicate them, whether that's a meeting, a conversation with a friend, dinner with a family member. I always have to understand the perspective of others.

00:23:37 Speaker_05
Yeah. So if you gave a bad talk, you would probably be like, oh, what happened? And then you would want to really know whether this was diagnostic of something that wasn't just that one talk.

00:23:46 Speaker_05
It may not even be like giving talks, but just in general, my tone deaf.

00:23:51 Speaker_01
Yes.

00:23:51 Speaker_05
Okay. So I'm going to tell you what you just took. Okay. I didn't make up this measure, but I think it's ingenious. So my advisor, Marty Seligman, as you know, was maybe the most influential person in this science of helplessness.

00:24:06 Speaker_05
You know, a term that he coined was learned helplessness. He wanted to understand the roots of depression. And he came to the thesis that we can learn that we're helpless

00:24:18 Speaker_05
And what that means is that if you experience a lot of failure or a lot of adversity, a lot of things going wrong and then wrong again and then wrong again, you can come to the conclusion that there's nothing you can do to make tomorrow a better day.

00:24:35 Speaker_01
Right.

00:24:36 Speaker_05
And when he came up with this questionnaire, he called it the attributional style questionnaire or ASQ for short. It has a number of scenarios.

00:24:44 Speaker_05
And when you answer these questions, what he's trying to get at is your kind of reflexive, spontaneous attribution style. Like when you come up with explanations, where does your mind go? And then those three questions that I asked you,

00:24:58 Speaker_05
are his way of trying to understand the way you explain things, especially bad things. And the three dimensions are personal, permanent, and pervasive.

00:25:10 Speaker_05
So the personal one is, is this you, Mike, or is this about other people or circumstances outside of you? And you chose to say you. That's, I think, at the heart of excuse making, right? You did not make excuses. Right.

00:25:22 Speaker_05
But the other two dimensions were permanent and pervasive. And it was interesting to me to hear that you did not think it was permanent. You thought you could change in the future.

00:25:31 Speaker_01
Yes.

00:25:31 Speaker_05
But you did think it was pervasive. So you were like, this may not have just been one talk. I may be doing this. Everywhere. Yeah.

00:25:40 Speaker_01
I think you have to ask that question. Like, where else can I learn from this and apply the lesson so I can improve every aspect of my life?

00:25:48 Speaker_05
So you got like two Ps out of three. It is personal. It's not permanent. And it is pervasive.

00:25:54 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:25:55 Speaker_05
When Marty made up this questionnaire, I believe he found that it was characteristic of people with clinical depression to have all three Ps. You know, something goes wrong, like you give a talk and it goes horribly.

00:26:06 Speaker_05
And immediately, a depressed person is like, oh, God, it's all my fault. It's always going to be this way. And it's not just this talk. It's pretty much every human interaction I have.

00:26:17 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:26:18 Speaker_05
And he saw this pattern over and over again. This just puts you in a very dark place, and you feel completely helpless and, by the way, responsible.

00:26:27 Speaker_05
But what I loved about your answer is that, you know, as the decades have passed and Marty has continued to think about helplessness and its opposite, agency, I think he has, and certainly I have, come to believe that the recipe for living a good life is not

00:26:43 Speaker_05
rejecting all of these Ps. It's probably the most important thing to reject what you rejected, which is that it's permanent. You did the thing that we would really want everyone to do. Regardless of whether it's my fault or not my fault,

00:27:00 Speaker_05
And even regardless of whether this is pervasive or just local, the real key to agency is to believe in the possibility of change. So you rejected that this is permanent. You rejected the most important P of the three P's.

00:27:15 Speaker_05
And I think that's where I am now today. Like, I actually love people who take things and they say, what could I have done differently? Right. How am I responsible? Oh, but wait, I'm going to hold on to hope.

00:27:27 Speaker_05
Like I'm going to hold on to the possibility that this isn't permanent. So I love your profile. Like your responses are, in my view, in a way, like optimal.

00:27:37 Speaker_01
I do think it's interesting. You have been talking about the upside to excuses. I'm sure that there are some instances where it's just That comedian leaves, and you know the old phrase, tough crowd tonight. Maybe they had an off night.

00:27:50 Speaker_01
Maybe it was a tough crowd. But I also get, and I'm opening myself up to this idea, that even though you've just described my output there as optimal, potentially, that maybe it's OK to say, that it was a tough crowd.

00:28:06 Speaker_01
And the pervasive piece I think is interesting, too, because if we extrapolate too deeply, I can see how we cross the threshold into self-flagellation almost, where it's like, oh, everything I do is wrong.

00:28:18 Speaker_01
And I can see where that is potentially harmful versus recognizing that, episodically, things happen that are bad, and we don't have to take it so far. So, I'm willing to come closer to this idea that maybe there are times when excuses are OK.

00:28:34 Speaker_01
And weirdly, it's Marty's three Ps that helped me get there.

00:28:37 Speaker_05
Mike, as we close out this conversation on excuses, can we have given your question much consideration? I don't know that we've come up with a simple yes, no answer. We've talked about how in the long run, excuse making may not

00:28:54 Speaker_05
be so great for reputation or character, but maybe in the short run, there could be some psychological benefits.

00:29:04 Speaker_05
But as we close out, I want to tell you a story that is, I think, revealing about how we could use excuse-making to take more responsibility. And it goes back to mask-wearing in the pandemic.

00:29:21 Speaker_05
When the pandemic fell over the world, behavioral scientists like me were being called up by places like the CDC, and we were all being asked, what can we do to help people wear a mask, get vaccinated?

00:29:37 Speaker_05
These were fundamental questions of behavior change. So one of the scientists that pitched in was Bob Cialdini.

00:29:46 Speaker_05
And when he was asked, how do you get somebody not only to adopt a behavior, but to change a behavior where they have to change their personal position? You know, imagine vaccines. How do you take somebody who has said, no, I don't want to get it?

00:30:02 Speaker_05
No, I don't want to get it. No, I don't want to get it. What could make that person wake up one day and say, yeah, today I want to get it? It's really an interesting question. And the framing that Bob Cialdini suggested, which I think is just genius.

00:30:21 Speaker_05
was a kind of excuse making. He said, you know, you could send people more information about vaccines and their efficacy. You could also send people more information about how few side effects there are.

00:30:34 Speaker_05
You could highlight the public health consequences. You could talk about their neighbors and how important it is that you protect their health. But he said, the suggestion that I have is to use very specific language. I couldn't have known.

00:30:50 Speaker_05
He said, you have to like basically give people some language for changing their minds. I couldn't have known. Now I know, but I couldn't have known before.

00:31:01 Speaker_05
So you're giving them an excuse for not getting vaccinated and then not getting vaccinated and then not getting vaccinated. You have to frame this as that was legitimate. There was nothing you could have done. But now, things are different.

00:31:18 Speaker_05
And I think that was genius because there are occasions in which you make an excuse for yourself in a way that paradoxically liberates you to take responsibility for the next day.

00:31:34 Speaker_01
I think that's a fascinating way to look at it. And of course, it excuses almost our own bad behavior to allow us to change. And sometimes we need an excuse to change and become better.

00:31:48 Speaker_03
Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's episode and stories from our NSQ listeners. And now, here's a fact check of today's conversation. Angela says that her PhD advisor, Marty E.P. Seligman, coined the term learned helplessness.

00:32:12 Speaker_03
We should note that he did so in conjunction with his longtime collaborator, psychologist and neuroscientist, Stephen F. Meyer. Angela also describes the results of a 2003 meta-analysis that found that excuses work better than justifications.

00:32:28 Speaker_03
As she emphasized, the research focused on interactions between employees and employers. Researchers studying excuses in other domains have come to the opposite conclusion.

00:32:39 Speaker_03
For example, a 2022 paper found that people were mollified when public agencies offered justifications for service failures, whereas excuses often made the situation worse.

00:32:51 Speaker_03
Mike misquotes Kenny Young and Arthur Resnick's song about romance on the beach, as recorded in 1964 by the American vocal group The Drifters. The line is, under the boardwalk, down by the sea, not as Mike mistakenly sings, down by the boardwalk.

00:33:07 Speaker_03
The song has been covered by artists including Bette Midler, The Rolling Stones, Northern Irish punk band The Undertones, and the actor Bruce Willis.

00:33:17 Speaker_03
Also, while today the term boardwalk is used to describe a stretch of restaurants, recreational facilities, and seaside attractions near any beach, the term originated in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

00:33:29 Speaker_03
The first boardwalk was designed in 1870 by railroad conductor Alexander Boardman as a means of preventing tourists from tracking sand indoors.

00:33:39 Speaker_03
In 2011, National Geographic ranked the Atlantic City Boardwalk the best boardwalk in the nation, in spite of the lack of gourmet dining. That's it for the fact check.

00:33:50 Speaker_03
Before we wrap today's show, let's hear some thoughts about last week's episode on doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

00:33:57 Speaker_02
Hi, Angela and Mike.

00:33:58 Speaker_02
The dilemma discussed in NSQ 215, doing the right thing for the wrong reason, is a false one, a vestige of the contamination of contemporary ethics by first century religions, as in the, when you give alms, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, admonitions.

00:34:17 Speaker_02
I don't care if Andrew Carnegie's motivation for philanthropy was so that people would think better of him, or if he were trying to atone for being a robber baron. His ego, his problem. The public got libraries. That's a great thing.

00:34:32 Speaker_02
Let's say I volunteer to make sandwiches for a homeless encampment, and afterward I make certain that friends and family know the great thing I did. Now, did my less-than-selfless motivation make the sandwiches vaporize?

00:34:45 Speaker_02
Did my bragging about my good deed change the nutritional content of the sandwich? Of course not! No matter my motivation, the sandwiches are real, and some hungry people had a meal they might not have had before.

00:34:58 Speaker_00
Hi Mike and Angela, this is Ian in Portland, Oregon. I wanted to talk about the dangers of doing the right thing for the right reasons.

00:35:06 Speaker_00
I'm currently an emergency department nurse, and I've also been in the Marine Corps, I worked as an EMT, and I've done some teaching as well. And these are all professions where you're doing the right thing for the right reasons.

00:35:19 Speaker_00
And as a result, you're often taken advantage of. We saw this with the pandemic, where we can call nurses heroes, but doesn't necessarily translate into the wages or the equipment necessary for those professions.

00:35:32 Speaker_00
And same thing with teachers and for members of the armed forces as well.

00:35:35 Speaker_00
Oftentimes this is because, well, they're doing it for the passion, they love their patients, they love the students, and so we don't have to pay them as much or give them the resources that they need because they are so committed that they will go out and spend their own money.

00:35:50 Speaker_00
So I just want to throw that out there. Even doing the right thing for the right reasons has unexpected consequences.

00:35:56 Speaker_03
That was, respectively, Robin Parnell and Ian Irwin. Thanks to them and everyone who shared their stories with us. And remember, we'd love to hear your thoughts on excuse making.

00:36:07 Speaker_03
Send a voice memo to nsq at Freakonomics.com and you might hear your voice on the show. coming up next week on No Stupid Questions. What happens when you put on a disguise? That's coming up on No Stupid Questions.

00:36:34 Speaker_03
No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.

00:36:48 Speaker_03
The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Greg Griffin, with help from Jeremy Johnston. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rabson.

00:37:02 Speaker_03
Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter at nsq underscore show, and you can watch video clips of Mike and Angela at the Freakonomics Radio Network's YouTube Shorts channel. or on Freakonomics Radio's TikTok page.

00:37:17 Speaker_03
If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ at Freakonomics dot com. To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics dot com slash NSQ. Thanks for listening.

00:37:36 Speaker_01
Kettle of fish, huh? You put your fish in kettles?

00:37:39 Speaker_05
A kettle of fish. Look at that old chestnut.

00:37:46 Speaker_04
The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.