by Pastor Lem Niere
A man once believed that he was dead.
The psychiatrist had difficulty persuading him that he was not dead. No argument seemed to convince him. The doctor finally thought of an idea. He asked the man if he believed that dead men don’t bleed. “Yes,” replied the man, “dead men don’t bleed.”
Then the doctor took the man’s arm and injected him to draw blood. When the man saw blood spurting into the syringe, he gasped, “My, dead men do bleed!”
Our biases may not send us to the psychiatrist’s couch, but they elbow their way into relationships giving us the occasional ouch!
Experiments done in the field of social psychology disclose a self-serving bias in he way we perceive events and others as they relate to us. For example, “when compared with ourselves, most of us see our friends, neighbors, coworkers, and schoolmates in a sorry situation. They are weaker ethically, more intolerant, and less intelligent. We even think our peers are likely to die sooner than we are” (Pleasures of Psychology, Daniel Coleman and David Heller, eds.)
We take credit for any positive outcome, but blame failure on outside factors. When we win at a word game like Scrabble, for example, it is because of our verbal dexterity. When we lose, it is because “who could get anywhere with a q but no u?” In a tennis or pickleball match, winners usually take personal cred for the victory but blame their partners when they lose. When we get a low grade on an exam, we blame the test or the teacher.
Rationalisations and excuses are as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. From the highest office of the land to the lowliest abode, people take credit for any positive outcome, but blame failure on the weather, our partner, or the president of the country—following a tradition established by Adam and Eve when they first played the blame game (see Genesis 3:11-13).
Self-serving biases show up in our preferences, differences, prejudices, partiality, our leanings or choices. Truth is, the gamut of our perceptions and perspectives is contaminated by human pride. As William Saroyan put it: “Every man is a good man in a bad world—as he himself knows.” A person’s’ world crumbles and is in complete disarray, but still manages to keep his pride intact.
How then can one keep a balanced, objective mind? I realize that trying to keep a balanced perspective is like attempting to walk a tightrope for the first time. What we need is to be honest with ourselves and “to walk humbly before God” (Micah 6:8). C.S. Lewis said that to acquire humility, the first step is to realize that one is proud.
Here’s a practical advice from Lee Silber: “To keep a true perspective of yourself, you should have a dog that worships you and a cat that will ignore you!”