ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we will introduce the topic of justification and discuss how justification processes may precede incidents of self-control failure – when our actions are inconsistent with our long-term (global) goals and values (Fujita, 2011) – or follow behaviors that signal self-control failure. Specifically, in the first half of this chapter, we will present research showing that justification processes can be a cause of self-control failure when people engage in self-licensing. That is, we will discuss evidence from the moral, consumer, and health domain showing that people may deliberately engage in behaviors that violate long-term goals when the context justifies doing so. At the end of this section, we will discuss the long-term effects of self-licensing and call for future research to explore whether self-licensing is ultimately harmful or adaptive. In the second half of this chapter, we will present evidence demonstrating that justification processes may also be a consequence of self-control failure. Specifically, we will argue that people have a tendency to justify their behavior by confabulating reasons for their behavior when it is perceived as self-control failure and the actual cause of the behavior is inaccessible. We will briefly discuss the background of the term confabulation (“to lie without the intent to deceive,” Hirstein, 2009) and discuss recent studies demonstrating how confabulation may be of relevance in the domain of social and health psychology. In addition, we will theorize how confabulation may affect future self-control attempts.
