Mark Wahlberg, awash in delusions of competence

Actor Mark Wahlberg has already apologized, but it’s too late: he has ascended into the Valhalla of Ethics Alarms icons, and henceforth those who repeat his offense will be referred to here, and undoubtedly elsewhere, as having “done a Wahlberg” or perhaps, for simplicity’s sake, “wahlberged.”

The act of proclaiming, after a disaster or misfortune, how an individual involved could have prevented the situation has always been infuriating. My father’s favorite term for the practice was “Monday morning quarterbacking,” and he despised it. Psychologists identify the roots of the phenomenon as hindsight bias, but it’s more pernicious than that. What Mark Wahlberg did, however, is worse still: not only second-guessing those involved, but announcing that he personally would have saved the day if he had been there. Mix Monday morning quarterbacking and hindsight bias, blend in a distorted belief in one’s own ability to handle difficult situations that caused others to fail, add the eagerness to blame someone and make them feel as guilty and incompetent as possible, and add dashes of arrogance, lack of empathy and unfairness, and you have it: a perfect Wahlberg soufflé! Continue reading →