How prevalent a phenomenon are behavioral rationalizations, in other words cases in which past behaviors determine future explicit attitudes?

The available longitudinal evidence suggests that Time 1 explicit attitudes predict Time 2 behaviors far better than past behaviors predict future self-reported attitudes, calling into question the prevalence of post hoc rationalizations for past actions (Bentler & Speckart Reference Bentler and Speckart1981; Fredricks & Dossett Reference Fredricks and Dossett1983; Kahle & Berman Reference Kahle and Berman1979). Popular perspectives on attitude-behavioral relations may be “surprise-hacked” (Felin et al. Reference Felin, Felin, Krueger and Koenderink2019), overemphasizing instances in which behaviors cause explicit preferences (Bem Reference Bem1972; Festinger Reference Festinger1962), and automatic and unintentional processes determine human behavior outside of conscious awareness (Caruso et al. Reference Caruso, Shapira and Landy2017; Forscher et al. Reference Forscher, Lai, Axt, Ebersole, Herman, Devine and Nosek2019; Lodder et al. Reference Lodder, Ong, Grasman and Wicherts2019; McCarthy et al. Reference McCarthy, Skowronski, Verschuere, Meijer, Jim, Hoogesteyn, Orthey, Acar, Aczel, Bakos, F. Barbosa, Baskin, Bègue, Ben-Shakhar, Birt, Blatz, Charman, Claesen, Clay, Coary, Crusius, Evans, Feldman, Ferreira-Santos, Gamer, Gerlsma, Gomes, González-Iraizoz, Holzmeister, Huber, Huntjens, Isoni, Jessup, Kirchler, klein Selle, Koppel, Kovacs, Laine, Lentz, Loschelder, Ludvig, Lynn, Martin, McLatchie, Mechtel, Nahari, Özdoğru, Pasion, Pennington, Roets, Rozmann, Scopelliti, Spiegelman, Suchotzki, Sutan, Szecsi, Tinghög, Tisserand, Tran, Van Hiel, Vanpaemel, Västfjäll, Verliefde, Vezirian, Voracek, Warmelink, Wick, Wiggins, Wylie and Yildiz2018; Oswald et al. Reference Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Jaccard and Tetlock2015). Although further longitudinal and meta-analytic investigations are needed, the “boring” narrative that conscious preferences and intentions typically direct future actions may capture a far greater share of the variance (Armitage & Conner Reference Armitage and Conner2001; Ajzen Reference Ajzen, Kuhl and Beckman1985; Fishbein & Ajzen Reference Fishbein and Ajzen1975; Randall & Wolff Reference Randall and Wolff1994; Sheppard et al. Reference Sheppard, Hartwick and Warshaw1988; Webb & Sheeran Reference Webb and Sheeran2006), relegating the rationalizations-are-rational thesis to address only a small portion of the attitude-behavior relationship.

Once formed, are rationalizations carried over to future judgments?

In other words, do explicit preferences formed to justify past acts play a causal role in directing future actions, or are such conscious rationalizations brief coping mechanisms, or a mere residue of behaviors determined by implicit processes (Gazzaniga Reference Gazzaniga1985)? One relevant experiment on moral judgments manipulated victim race, finding that whether the individuals sacrificed are White Americans or Black Americans impacts if consequentialist versus deontological values are endorsed as general principles (Uhlmann et al. Reference Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum and Ditto2009). Further, once formed, such motivated moral principles impact downstream judgments. For example, if deontological morality is endorsed in a motivated fashion because the victims are Black Americans in the first moral dilemma, the same principle is then applied to a second moral dilemma in which victims are White Americans. Although further studies testing for such carryover effects are needed, this provides initial evidence that rationalizations can play a causal role in future judgments, a key aspect of Cushman's thesis.

At the same time, the Uhlmann et al. (Reference Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum and Ditto2009) results and related findings on intergroup attitudes (e.g., Brescoll et al. Reference Brescoll, Uhlmann and Newman2013; Hodson et al. Reference Hodson, Dovidio and Gaertner2002; Norton et al. Reference Norton, Vandello and Darley2004; Tannenbaum et al. Reference Tannenbaum, Valasek, Knowles and Ditto2013) seriously question whether rationalizations improve subsequent reasoning. For example, individuals who exhibit negative automatic associations with overweight people on indirect measures are also more likely to explicitly favor increased insurance premiums for overweight employees. Yet they justify such punitive policy preferences in terms of cost effectiveness, rather than personal beliefs about body weight (Tannenbaum et al. Reference Tannenbaum, Valasek, Knowles and Ditto2013). Given that target ethnicity and obesity are not defensible inputs into moral judgments in the first place, how does rationalizing group-based biases and then carrying forward such justifications improve subsequent reasoning in any way? Even assuming for a moment that implicit preferences are somehow “truer” or more authentic than explicit preferences (a highly debatable characterization), the rationalization process has obscured, rather than revealed, this deeper attitude. Applying the criterion of subjective rationality (Pizarro & Uhlmann Reference Pizarro and Uhlmann2005), it seems doubtful that decision makers themselves would, if made aware of it, welcome the influence of implicit overweight bias on their recommended company insurance policies. More likely, we think, they would seek to correct for and remove such unwanted prejudices (Fazio Reference Fazio and Zanna1990) and perceive them as in conflict with their ideal self (Monteith et al. Reference Monteith, Devine and Zuwerink1993). This leads us to the broader issue of whether post hoc justifications are “good” for the rationalizer in some measurable way.

Do rationalizations lead to positive objective or subjective outcomes for the agent?

If the “ultimate purpose of reasoning” is “fitness maximization,” and rationalizations improve reasoning (target article, sect. 2.1, para. 9), then individuals who engage in rationalizations should score higher on measures of adjustment, effectiveness, and performance. For instance, rationalizers may display higher levels of psychological well-being, enjoy better social reputations, have an easier time influencing their peers, and exhibit superior job performance. Conversely, rationalizers could tend to be unhappy, socially unpopular underperformers, rejected and ineffective due to their self-serving arguments and lack of insight into their own actions. This is analogous to the debate between Taylor and Brown (Reference Taylor and Brown1988) and Colvin et al. (Reference Colvin, Block and Funder1995) on the adaptiveness of positive illusions about the self, and it is an empirical question to be addressed in future studies. Some relevant evidence is provided by Uhlmann and Cohen (Reference Uhlmann and Cohen2005), who find that individuals who rationalize their hiring decisions engage in greater gender discrimination, and yet perceive themselves as more objective and unbiased. This suggests that rationalizations may be associated with favorable subjective self-assessments (see also Dunning et al. Reference Dunning, Leuenberger and Sherman1995), but with suboptimal objective outcomes (for evidence that gender inclusiveness improves group performance, see Hunt et al. Reference Hunt, Layton and Prince2015; Inglehart & Norris Reference Inglehart and Norris2003; Woolley et al. Reference Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi and Malone2010). That rationalizers are more likely to make sexist decisions and suffer from an illusion of objectivity would seemingly count as initial evidence against the putative rationality of rationalizations.

Ultimately, the rationalizations-are-rational thesis (per the target article) is important, insightful, and likely to prove generative of further empirical research on attitude-behavior relations, reasoning processes, and human adaptability and performance.