[ExI] thinking and belief

[William Flynn Wallace]

In children (I am uncertain of the age range when this occurs) there is a
cognitive process in which reality is whatever you want it to be.  (sound
familiar?)

A child in using  crayon to write on the TV screen.  His mother catches him
at it.  She says "Did you do that?"  Why do mothers ask such questions?

The kid:  ("If I say Yes I will get a spanking.  If I say No, I won't."  He
thinks.)  So he says No even though he saw his mother looking at him while
he did it.  This is his reality - he didn't do it.  What is going on in his
mind I truly don't know.  At some level does he realize the lies he is
telling himself? "I didn't do it"  equals "I don't want to be spanked."

This is just the kind of thinking we see all over the web and other
places.  Could the self-serving lying be still there in adults and comes
out to justify believing in lies (does he even know he is lying?  Is this
like the child?)  Or is there some different process going on?  Clearly the
two, kid and adult, are obeying whatever pressure is there pushing them
towards skewing reality - self-serving.

You can see cognitive dissonance and dissonance reduction all over this.

Ideas welcome.    bill w
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