angel's advocate

Someone pointed out at work last week that I like to take a contrarian position a lot, but it is often to make excuses for other people. If someone complains about someone else, I am likely to point out some possibility that could excuse the problem behavior. For example, if someone complains that someone else from a different time zone scheduled a meeting during lunch I will note that maybe this is the only time they have available. Because of this tendency, I was informed that I should be called an angel's advocate rather than a devil's advocate.

At first, this sounds great. It sounds like I am an open-minded person who wants to give people a fair shake. After I started thinking about it, though, this is probably not as true as I would like. I make flash judgments and gripe about other people doing inconsiderate things as much as anyone else. This makes me doubt that my angel's advocate tendencies are completely noble.

I have a few theories about why I like to make excuses for other people. The truth is probably some combination of my theories.

• I might be psychologically trying to atone for the times that I prejudge others' motives. If I can convince myself that I go out of my way to verify motives before making a judgment, then I can forgive myself easier in those times when I quickly judge someone as a jerk.
• I may be trying to encourage other people to not judge me too quickly.
• It might be that I am an objective person if I am not the person who feels like he is getting screwed.
• I might have some serious psychological issue whereby I feel I have to disagree with people.
• I may be trying to prove to other people that I can consider all possible scenarios in a confusing situation. In other words, I might be trying to prove that I am intelligent person who doesn't succumb to knee-jerk responses.
• I might just have an inability to avoid saying whatever random things enter my head around certain people.

At the very least, this has allowed me an opportunity to grow. If I am not playing the angel's advocate for the right reasons, I might ought to stop playing that role so often.