Whiting uses some empirical psychological reasons to demonstrate Aristotle’s point of treating friend in a way of “how we in fact are” instead of “how we ought to be.” One is the idea of the “ethical selection”, in which people maintain their positive self-image by doing things that are morally true but not how valuable they are. Whiting mentions when people face a dissonance in their cognition, like when their belief is not consistent with their behavior, they would either change their behavior or opinion to avoid this dissonance. Therefore, there may be inevitable factors which play a role on how we treat our friend and how we think we should treat them, leading to a somewhat self-deception in a way of deceiving ourselves and our friends