Suffering/Self Justification Construal: Real World Example

Compare to the case of the father's fraternity experience in Chapter 1.

I went ziplining with my dad on Catalina Island yesterday. There were 9 people in our group, scheduled to leave at 4:00 PM, and the directions said, arrive 15 minutes early. By 4:00, three members of the group were just arriving. They decided they had to leave and go to the bathroom. When they returned, our group, now even later (4 members had a ferry to catch after the excursion), they were very loud and obnoxious. I found myself getting very annoyed with them; my dad did too.

We got to the first zip, and everyone became very nervous; if you've never ziplined before (as none of our group had), it looks very daunting at first. I was the second person to go, and I really wanted the annoying group members to just shut it, so I could focus on having a good time. After my first zip, I felt much more relaxed. As I saw the annoying group members do their first zip, I realized that they weren't so bad. For the rest of the trip, they were just as annoying, but for me, it was adding to the experience. Afterwards I told my dad about it, and realized that the bonding experience had brought our group closer together. It didn't matter how annoying they were (or how annoying I may have been to them!), once we had all gone through that bonding experience of the first zip, we were all good friends! The bonding experience had clearly explained my changed construal of these people, and it made me want to interact with them more during the trip, despite the persistent annoyingness.

Conrad Bassett-Bouchard
A07522420
cwbasset@ucsd.edu