{
  "id": "rationalization.backfill",
  "term": "rationalization",
  "sense": "backfill",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 15,
  "domain": "psychology",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "a cause made after the act so that the act reads as inside the self-model's window, a story that edits the event rather than the model.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "self.personal",
      "model.representation",
      "cause.reason",
      "make.verb",
      "act.deed",
      "read.information",
      "inside.spatial",
      "window.range",
      "story.narrative",
      "edit.process",
      "event.occurrence",
      "rather.comparative",
      "time.dimension"
    ],
    "interaction": "After the act has happened, a cause is constructed that places it inside the self-model's window, so the event is rewritten to fit the model instead of the model updating to fit the event.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "after-the-fact causation",
      "event edited to fit",
      "update-proof self-model"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Split-brain patients whose right hemisphere triggered an action immediately produce a fluent verbal reason invented by the left.",
      "domain": "neuroscience"
    },
    {
      "text": "After buying the more expensive option, shoppers rate the rejected alternative lower than they rated it before choosing.",
      "domain": "psychology"
    },
    {
      "text": "A postmortem written to protect the roadmap concludes that the outage validated the team's architecture decisions.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "hindsight-is-twenty-twenty.retrospection",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "rationalization edits the past event to fit the model; hindsight lets the past event finally correct the model - the same look back, opposite direction of edit"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "rationalization",
    "rationalizations",
    "rationalize",
    "rationalized",
    "rationalizes",
    "rationalizing"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5:curated-selfmodel",
    "date": "2026-08-22",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "curated self-model expansion"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-rationalization.backfill"
}