When People Die, Their Strengths Live On But Their Weaknesses Die With Them
November 06, 2016Categories: Uncomfortable Ideas,
The Dr. Bo Show with Bo Bennett, PhD
The Dr. Bo Show is a critical thinking-, reason-, and science-based approach to issues that matter. It is the podcast of social psychologist Bo Bennett. As of 2020, this podcast is a collection of topics related to all of his books.
I was listening to an interview where a gentleman was talking about how he lost his father when he was two years old. He continued to talk about what an amazing man his father was, and he knew this because the people who knew his father frequently say great things about him. One needs to be a real cold-hearted ass to say bad things about a dead man to the child of the deceased. It's not that people lie; it's the use of selective memory combined with social intelligence that leads people to say only good things about the dead—especially when speaking directly to someone who suffered from the loss.
Uncomfortable Idea: When people are telling you all about your loved one who has passed away, you are almost certainly hearing a highly fictionalized or at least heavily biased version of reality.
There are several cognitive errors here, but choosing to only say nice things about the dead to those who were close to the dead, is not one of the errors. Remembering grandad as a wonderful man full of ideals and integrity might make you feel comfortable, and that's great. But if truth and reality are important to you, you might want to acknowledge these biases and know grandad for the person he actually was, faults and all.