I have a long commute to work, and recently, to fill the time, I’ve been listening to an audio book called Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. The book is about cognitive dissonance theory, and it is fascinating.

As I’m learning about cognitive dissonance, I’m beginning to understand why people sometimes act in ways that seem so totally baffling. Cognitive dissonance occurs when our vision of who we are—our sense of identity—is called into question by something that happens or something that we do. For example, if I see myself as a nice and reasonable person, but one day I snap and do something mean and unreasonable—say, flip somebody off for accidentally cutting me off in traffic—that action creates a feeling of cognitive dissonance in me. I’m a good person, why would I do something so not good? To get rid of that uncomfortable feeling of dissonance, I make up some reason to justify my action—well, it was that other jerk’s fault. He cut me off! And really, I’m helping him to learn from his mistake—so now I feel better about my action, and my sense of identity is once again intact.

See how that works?

Well, among many other mind blowing realizations (forgive the hyperbole, but this book is truly awesome), the book has helped me to understand a couple of common things that I often see writers do. The first is a bad thing, the second, just sort of an interesting thing.

First off, the bad news. Follow along with my scenario for a second: You see yourself as a very nice, caring person, right? You’re not the jealous type. You’re a good friend, and you want good things to happen to your friends. But then one day, your friend Writer McWritey-Well calls you up, ecstatic to share the news that he just got a publication acceptance, or won a contest, or was picked for inclusion in one of the Best American anthologies, or . . . Your first reaction? Jealousy. Bitterness. Maybe even the feeling that you’ve somehow been wronged. Why don’t good things ever happen to me?

This is not the way you would have expected yourself to react. He’s a good writer, and he works hard. You should be happy for him. You know you should. And yet you aren’t. But why? You’re not that kind of person, not at all. This feeling goes against your image of yourself. So you justify it. You tell yourself, the reason I’m upset is not because I’m jealous. I’m upset because ol’ Writer McWritey-Well is bragging. He’s so full of himself. What a jerk.

Voila. Your image of yourself as a nice, caring, good person is unharmed. The problem is, your friend McWritey is left wondering why you’re acting like he’s a jerk for wanting to share his good news. He didn’t do anything wrong. You’re his friend. He just assumed you would want to know. He assumed you would be happy for him.

And sharing good news with your friends is not bragging.

I think cognitive dissonance is just a part of the human experience. It’s probably not something we can just turn off. The same is true of jealousy, I would guess. But maybe being more aware of what’s going on in our brains can help us to be a bit more rational about things. I don’t think it makes you a bad person if your first reaction to someone else’s good fortune is jealousy. Those feelings just happen. What matters is what we do with them.

Well, let’s not end on that sour note, so here’s a benign thing that I think can also be traced to cognitive dissonance: have you ever noticed that many writers claim that they’ve always wanted to be a writer? That they were born to write, that they’ve always felt called to this profession? Here’s what I think is happening: being a writer is such a part of so many of our identities that it’s difficult to accept that there are any number of other paths we might have taken and that it’s partially luck, partially just small steps we’ve made in this direction along the way that have turned us into writers. When we’re faced with that reality, the result is cognitive dissonance.

So when we tell ourselves (and other people), “Even when I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a writer,” I think what’s happening is we’re closing that dissonant gap by ignoring the fact that we also wanted to be a movie star when were little, and we wanted to be the president, and an astronaut, and a fireman, and . . . When I was a teenager, I kind of wanted to be a fashion designer. And a filmmaker. But sometimes I tell myself, “Nah, I always wanted to write,” because I wanted to do that, too. I wanted to do many things.

I bet you did too.