The Tolstoy Effect

Charlie Munger’s named framing, drawn from Leo Tolstoy, for a destructive variant of Excessive Self-Regard Tendency. In Charlie Munger — The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Munger cites Tolstoy’s observation that “the worst criminals don’t appraise themselves as all that bad” — they come to believe either (1) that they didn’t commit their crimes, or (2) that, given the pressures and disadvantages of their lives, it’s understandable and forgivable that they behaved as they did. Munger calls the second half of this — the man who makes excuses for his fixable poor performance instead of providing the fix — “enormously important,” because “a majority of mankind will try to get along by making way too many unreasonable excuses for fixable poor performance.”

The value of the concept for Munger is in its antidotes. On the personal level, a man should face two facts: that “fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character and tends to create more of itself,” and that in demanding places (athletic teams, General Electric) the chronic excuse-giver is “almost sure to be discarded in due course.” The institutional antidotes are “a fair, meritocratic, demanding culture plus personnel handling methods that build up morale” and “severance of the worst offenders.” Munger’s memorable illustration is the father who, catching his son stealing candy with the excuse that he’d replace it later, says: “Son, it would be better for you to simply take all you want and call yourself a thief every time you do it.” Kyle’s reading layer files the passage under Spirit of Humility and Parenting.

Where this appears

• Charlie Munger — The Psychology of Human Misjudgment — Munger names the “Tolstoy effect” inside the Excessive Self-Regard Tendency passage; the excuse-making half plus its personal and institutional antidotes (meritocratic culture, severance, the candy-thief parable).