To lend, or not to lend?

A friend of mine recently asked me to lend him some money. This form of solicitation has been going on for close to a year, with me conforming to it everytime he asks, which is as frequent as every month or 2. Stupidity on my part? Maybe. Though I must say that he has been repaying his debts on time, perhaps that reinforces my trust in him to repeatedly agreeing to it.

However that trust is gradually fading. At the start of this year, he asked for a sum of money which I lent without much hestitations as usually. This time around, he broke his promise of returning it to be on the date he appointed. I waited a week before I sent a gentle reminder. No reply. Another week past and I sent another SMS. Still, no reply. This went on for another 2 weeks, which made up one whole month. Eventually, after over a month, he sent me an SMS informing me that he has transferred the money back to me.

I wasn't very pleased, of course. But what can I do? At least the money's back. But when he wanted to borrow some money again recently, I was caught in a dilemma. Below illustrates my plight.

Why should I lend it to him

• The fear of him playing me out is highly possible
• It's not a large sum, or at least if I were to compare with his other borrowings
• Once bitten, twice shy?
• He wouldn't want to jeopardize our friendship
• I don't want to jeopardize our friendship by refusing
• I'd rather he turn to me then to commit crimes

Why shouldn't I lend it to him

• The mistrust makes it harder to agree
• This financial dependence on me is not healthy
• I dread his SMS-es nowadays

My final decision? I said no. And as much as he was understanding, dissonace started to fill my mind. Gulit, disappoinment, regret. But guilt mostly. Though it's not a large sum that I could readily agree to, I just couldn't. A friend in need is a friend indeed. So am I not a friend by rejecting his cry for help this time?

I justify my dissonace by reinforcing the reasons for not lending the money to him. Hopefully with time, the gulit and regret I'm feeling will fade. But as of now, I feel like I've betrayed a friend.

This is the hardest post-decisional dissonace experience yet.

Same thing...Not!

In this cute Baby Blues comic strip, there is a clear difference between the mom and her son, Hammie, in interpretating drying of dishes.

To her, she dries the dishes by using a dish towel. To Hammie, a blow-dryer works the same way - it dries things!

Applying the 4 processes of 'Social Thinking', we can understand why Hammie would choose to use that industrial equipment on a simple household chore.

Pay Attention: Hammie is aware that the dishes are not dry and hence sought out something that he presumed would help dry them.
Interpret: Hammie must have seen someone using the blow-dryer to dry some other stuff, and hence he interpreted that information to be useful in this situation.
Make Judgment: Hammie generalized that interpretation to everything that can be dried by using that equipment.
Rely on Memory: As mentioned above, Hammie must have seen someone using the blow-dryer before elsewhere, otherwise it wouldn't occur to him that that equipment could be used for this purpose.

This process is a cycle that is inter-connected with one another. This example is a demostration of how it is linked. Based on Hammie's innocently-made mistake, he would learn that a dish towel is more appropriate to dry the dishes. This new information is stored in his memory. In future situations, he would know to use the dish towel (relying on memory) to dry the wet dishes, instead of that giantic machine he (i presume) has trouble balancing it to start with.

Disclaimer: As part of the module requirement, this blog is setup to apply our knowledge on what we learnt in Social Psychology taught on that certain week. As interesting as it sounds, I hope my entries are logical enough to help me score in this course.