Why does someone else’s shortcut feel like the easy way out, while yours feels justified?

You make a presentation by doing hours of research. You took inputs from your teammates, made changes carefully where the client asked you to do and then you find out your subordinate used AI tools and made the presentation in minutes. You are furious with what just happened. You feel, how can a good professional take such a shortcut? You worked so hard, stayed up all night and all he did was give some prompts to the AI tools and his presentation is much better than yours.

You feel he must have violated some policies but then you know that, with growing technology, companies have been encouraging the use of Artificial Intelligence tools. So his product complies with all the rules and looks better than your own final presentation.

“They took the easy way out,” you think.


Next week, you discover a different AI tool that saves you hours and suddenly your reaction changes about the shortcut. You start using the tool, and it feels happy and efficient.

So why does this change in behavior happen?

Why can the same advantage look sensible in your hands and you feel wrong when someone else uses it? There are several possible explanations for this. One of the factors could be that you feel better once it fulfills your personal interests.

Why do we defend our own shortcuts?

Motivated reasoning can provide one explanation for why we feel shortcuts are good when it is for personal gains and feel wrong when someone else uses it. This was explored by Psychologist Ziva Kunda in a major 1990 review.

She studied how people start to believe in things once it helps them reach the goal they want to. People still need explanations that can be justified. But if they prefer a conclusion, they can consider other factors that support what they want.

Consider the PowerPoint example.

When you use the AI tool, you have a deadline in mind, and you like how it makes everything easier. So when you do it you feel it is the practical thing to do but when your colleague does it, you focus on how you worked really hard and they took a shortcut.

This explains how motivated reasoning comes into play.

Your reasons may be valid. The question is whether you would accept equally good reasons from someone else.

Have studies found double standards in fairness judgments?

Yes, there have been studies describing how people change their reaction once they are getting something out of it. Psychologists Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSteno examined moral hypocrisy in a 2007 experiment. It involved 76 participants.

One of the conditions of the experiment was that participants had the freedom to allocate short and easier task to themselves and a longer or more difficult task to others. They could also do a random allocation or choose directly what they wanted to do.

Many participants allocated the easier task to themselves and called this less unfair than others who felt it was more unfair to them. The experiment showed that choosing the easier task for themselves gave a disadvantage to other participants. Since it was a free choice to make, the shortcut was legitimate but they did not consider it immoral.

The significance of this experiment was how quickly people change their judgement when an action becomes acceptable to them.

Why does someone else’s easier route feel less deserving?

We sometimes assume something is better if it took more effort to make. Psychologist Justin Kruger and his colleagues studied this idea in 2004. They tested whether knowing how much effort went into creative work changed how people rated it. They called this the “effort heuristic.

Participants gave a better reaction to the work which they felt required more effort compared to the ones which could be done quickly.

Applied cautiously, the idea helps explain the PowerPoint reaction. You invest hours to complete the work and you feel that it is evidence of how much work you have put in. So you deserve better recognition.

At this point, your colleague's method is faster, so it feels less worthy. This is despite how good the finished product is.

Yet effort is an imperfect guide. A difficult method does not automatically produce a better result.

Another research reported different findings. So the effort heuristic is a possible influence, but it does not mean you can judge every work based on this theory.

Why is our own double standard difficult to notice?

We accept shortcuts when it makes our lives convenient but not when others do it, so it is a double standard behavior. But we hardly notice what wrong we are doing and when others do the same thing we blame them.

So we have a blind spot when it comes to our actions. Psychologists Emily Pronin, Daniel Y. Lin and Lee Ross investigated the bias blind spot in 2002.

In their research, they found that people can recognise bias when it comes to others but forget about it when it comes to themselves.

In one study, participants considered others’ self-serving reasons as biased but treated their own similar explanations as unbiased.

If you take the same PowerPoint example, you believe your colleague did the wrong thing and is getting an undeserved advantage but your shortcut is justified since you have genuine reasons to do it.