Never underestimate the power of self-deception.

Let me preface this post by saying that a number of years back I used to work part-time for a certain major Canadian coffee chain. I must have brewed hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of pots of coffee in the short time that I worked there. Occasionally, somebody would forget to take the coffee grounds out of a machine before brewing the next pot of coffee, causing the same grounds to be used twice. The result was a very light-colored, but very bitter tasting, coffee product. Naturally, we would just spill this pot out and brew a fresh one.

This morning, I was in the kitchen pouring some coffee, when my mom commented on how strong/bitter the coffee tasted this morning. I took a taste, and noticed that it did taste bitter – a lot like the coffee grounds had been run through the machine twice. Examining the color, I noticed that it was lighter than usual… also consistent with my hypothesis. I told my mom that the coffee grounds had probably been accidentally re-used and that we should spill the coffee out and make a new batch. It’s important to understand that my mom hates wasting food; I’ve seen her drink lumpy milk before in an attempt to forego spilling it out. So it didn’t surprise me that she was opposed to the idea of spilling out the coffee. What came next did surprise me, however. She took another taste of her coffee, and then told me that it tasted fine to her. Not more than 60 seconds after she had pointed out the bitter taste of the coffee, she was now telling me that it had a perfectly normal taste. She genuinely seemed to believe that the coffee now had a normal taste, even though nothing about it had changed.

So what’s the lesson of this story? Never underestimate the human mind’s ability to self-deceive. What something is often takes a back seat to what we want something to be.