The Tolstoy effect

A person with a strong self-serving bias may have little capacity to assess a situation objectively.

In his speech, The psychology of human misjudgment, Charlie Munger considers the tendencies of serious criminals in Tolstoy's novels.

The criminals defend themselves in one of two ways:

• They are either in denial of committing the crime.
• They think that the crime is justifiable in light of their hardships.