Customer Reviews

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

5 star:		(87)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Or so say Tavis and Aronson on how we lose our ethical grip---we make a small slip, say to ourselves it is not that bad, and our minds rationalize the next slip. From lunch with a lobbyist to a golf outing in Europe is not---when the mind puts its mind to it---that big a leap. Their discussion of confirmation bias, one of the worst breeders of bad decisions is outstanding and undertandable. And the chapter on how the police get the innocent to confess is chilling. There are all sorts of useful tips.Want to co-op an enemy? Get her to do a favor for you; her mind will say, "I do not do favors for jerks,and because I do not, he must not be that big a jerk." The mind can not hold two thoughts at once, so it bridges the dissonance. At 236 pages, the book is long enough to be worthwhile, but short enough to read on a vacation. Anyone interested in persuasion and how our minds work will find the read a useful one.

Why do people refuse to admit mistakes - so deeply that they transform their own brains? They're not kidding themselves: they really believe what they have to believe to justify their original thought.

There are some pretty scary examples in this book. Psychologists who refuse to admit they'd bought into the false memory theories, causing enormous pain. Politicians. Authors. Doctors. Therapists. Alien abduction victims.

Most terrifying: The justice system operates this way. Once someone is accused of a crime - even under the most bizarre circumstances - the police believe he's guilty of something. Even when the DNA shows someone is innocent, or new evidence reveals the true perpetrator, they hesitate to let the accused person go free.

This book provides an enjoyable, accurate guide through contemporary social psychology. So many "obvious" myths are debunked as we learn the way memory really works and why revenge doesn't end long-term conflict.

Readers should pay special attention to the authors' discussion of the role of science in psychology, as compared to psychiatry, which is a branch of medicine. I must admit I was shocked to realize how few psychiatrists understand the concept of control groups and disconfirmation. Psychoanalysis in particular is not scientific. The authors stop short of comparing it to astrology or new age.

This book should be required reading for everyone, especially anyone who's in a position to make policy or influence the lives of others. But after reading Mistakes were Made, I suspect it won't do any good. Once we hold a position, say the authors, it's almost impossible to make a change.

This page-turning read takes you through the myriad ways in which a human urge toward self-justification warps personal lives and contaminates public discourse. The authors ask: "Why do people dodge responsibility when things fall apart?" They explain, with abundant examples. Even more important, they draw readers painlessly through the evidence about self-justification, much of it based on research into the contours of memory distortion.

No one escapes the authors' withering gaze: political leaders who lie to cover up, bosses who kick downward and kiss upward, marriage partners who whine.

A book about the defenses that people erect for bad decisions and hurtful acts might easily turn into an exercise in "bubba psychology", or giving folk wisdom the patina of scholarship. But Tavris and Aronson are much better than that. They are serious, renowned psychologists with a knack for telling arresting stories. They have an eye for counter-intuitive and revealing details. Each chapter tells you things you didn't know, or illuminates experiences you thought you understood, but come to see in a fresh light.

In short, you'll see a bit of yourself as well as others in Mistakes Were Made. You'll be thankful for its insights.

Ready for a whirlwind tour through time and space, from the Crusades and the Holocaust to the war in Iraq, from recovered memories and the fallacies of clinical judgment to false confessions, wrongful convictions, and failed marriages? Then this is the book for you.

What ties these disparate topics together, according to tour guides Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, is the notion of "cognitive dissonance," which has been creeping into popular awareness in recent years. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling created when you experience a conflict between your behavior and your beliefs, most specifically about who you are as a person. ("I'm a good person, I couldn't do this bad thing.") To reduce dissonance, people engage in a variety of cognitive maneuvers, including self-serving justifications and confirmation bias (paying attention to information that confirms our beliefs while discounting contrary data).

Tavris and Aronson, both top social psychologists and excellent writers to boot, make their point through the repeated use of a pyramid image. Two people can be standing at the top an imaginary pyramid and can undergo the same dissonance-inducing experience. Person A processes the experience accurately, which leads him down one side of the pyramid. Person B engages in a series of defensive maneuvers to reduce cognitive dissonance that eventually lands him at the opposite side of the pyramid. Once at these opposite poles, the two can no longer recognize their initial similarities, and see each other as unfathomable and even dangerous. A particularly compelling, real-life example is two men who experienced a terrifying episode of sleep paralysis in which they saw demons attacking them. One recognized it for what it was; the other became convinced that he had been abducted by aliens and had even fathered a set of twins with an alien partner.

The book could have been called, "Cognitive Dissonance: What It Is and How to Combat It," but then it wouldn't be selling like hotcakes. It provides a thorough overview of the social psychology research on this topic, much of it quite interesting and all of it engagingly presented.

The authors conclude by offering suggestions for reducing the impact of cognitive dissonance on individuals and cultures. One remedy is greater oversight, such as mandatory videotaping of all police interviews of suspects, independent commissions to investigate prosecutorial misconduct, and greater transparency in the academic review process. Another is attention to Americans' cultural fear of making mistakes. Intelligence is acquired, not innate, the authors argue, and mistakes are a necessary part of learning. I particularly enjoyed their examples of prominent individuals who forthrightly owned up to mistakes, including a therapist who had engaged in recovered memory treatment, a prosecutor who had obtained the conviction of an innocent man, and - last but not least - Oprah Winfrey.

As a self-defense trainer, I'm puzzled by an apparent contradiction. I give a "pop quiz" at the beginning of every class I teach. The question correctly answered most often by most students is whether women are more often assaulted by strangers or acquaintances. Most (correctly) answer acquaintances. Yet, when asked who they see as THEIR possible assailant, almost ALL students describe a stranger blitz attack. And it was this discrepancy between what people told me they knew about assault and who they felt was likely to attack THEM that puzzled me.

Tavris and Aronson's book is all about "cognitive dissonance," a state of mental tension that arises when a person simultaneously holds two ideas, beliefs or opinions that are contradictory. Because holding two contradictory views is a mentally uncomfortable state, cognitive dissonance describes the process by which they become reconciled in the head of the beholder. Everyone over the age of 14 can recall a time when they made a decision, stubbornly stuck by it despite its obvious poor results, and only after enough time went by could acknowledge it as a mistake.

Tavris and Aronson have collected a wide range of examples. While their examples did not directly address my question, I'll infer their answer (here's the short, simplistic version). Acquaintance assault casts doubt on your ability to judge character. That is a weakness. Weakness is bad, and admitting to weakness is also bad. These are uncomfortable feelings. Therefore, even though you INTELLECTUALLY know better, you FEEL more threatened by those dark alleys you'd never walk down anyways.

While I do not consider this the entire explanation for students' contradiction, I believe it is part of a complex convergence of social and psychological factors. How does this information help my students learn better risk assessment?

One of the authors' points is that cognitive dissonance is everywhere because it is a normal activity of the human mind. However, the authors also point out that we can minimize it (and its harmful effects) with awareness and a measure of self-reflection mixed with honesty. Acknowledging mistakes is the first step in learning from them. Acknowledging your real risks is the first step in planning to reduce them.

I must humbly state that this is the most exciting and captivating book that I have read in many years. A clear 5-STAR book! It graphically and creatively illustrates the core principle of cognitive dissonance, which explains why good people justify bad behavior and why we increasingly deny responsibility for our actions. It then goes on to empower us with a roadmap showing how we can reverse this trend.

Everyone, from the lay public to the helping professionals and academics, should read this book. Most importantly, this book should be read by officials of our present government, since their patterns of self-justification have centrally led to war, death and disgrace of America's image in the world.

Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, both luminaries in the field of social psychology, have really struck a chord with this book. It is destined to be the classic manual for understanding the nature of resistance and conflict within ourselves and in our relationships. While it is written in a casual story-telling style, distilled wisdom from years of social psychology research on self-justification is subtly and gently blended in.

The innovative thinking and clarity of presentation in this book are awesome. Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me will change the way you view yourself, your thoughts, your family, your friends, your partners, and your government---Indeed, a book for all reasons.
In sum, "Don't believe everything you think," but DO buy this book.

This book is amazing because as you read it you go through three distinct stages of understanding.

Stage 1 (50 pages in)
You say to yourself: "Wow, I know quite a few people who are making the mistakes described in this book."

Stage 2 (halfway through)
You say to yourself: "Wow, EVERY single person I know is making the mistakes described in this book."

Stage 3 (by the time you finish the book)
You say to yourself: "Wow, I myself have been making the mistakes described in this book, and I didn't even realize it.

This is a well written, snappy book that addresses an important issue, best described by the book's title and subtitle: "Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts."

The two authors, both well reputed psychologists, use the theory of cognitive dissonance as their starting point. Leon Festinger was one of the major theorists of this approach. The authors of this book simply define the perspective thus (page 13): "Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as 'Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me' and 'I smoke two packs a day.'" How does one deal with this? By adopting one of the positions and then downgrading or rejecting the other. The end result is self-justification, self-deception, seeking out evidence to support the choice that we have made while rejecting evidence that does not fit with our choice.

The brain itself shows evidence of the operation of cognitive dissonance. The example on page 19 of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and processing information about presidential candidates is telling. The end result is "blind spots," in which people (page 42) "fail to notice vital events and information that might make them question their behavior or their convictions." As such, the authors note that cognitive dissonance makes mincemeat of such theoretical views as rational actor theory and psychoanalytic theory. One result of cognitive dissonance is what is called "confirmation bias," the attending to evidence that supports our views and the rejection/suppression of evidence that does not support our views.

Many examples are advanced to illustrate the case that the authors make. Issues include: moral lapses (e.g., Watergate participants), "made up" memories (raising serious questions about the whole idea of repressed memories), criminal justice system decisions on guilt or innocence, and so on. Much is at stake with cognitive dissonance as it operates.

In the closing chapter, the authors try to indicate how understanding cognitive dissonance might help us to limit the damage that may occur as a result of its operation. Convincing? I'm not so sure, but this discussion does get one thinking about how we might address the harmful side effects of cognitive dissonance.

A readable book that raises important issues. I think that more use of neuroscientific research could have strengthened this book that much more. Also, the work by cognitive psychologists like Kahneman and Tversky could have spoken to key points as well. This book might also profitably be read in tandem with another recent book on a similar subject, Cordelia Fine, "A Mind of Its Own." In addition, Linden's "accidental Mind" provides a perspective on related issues from a neuroscience viewpoint.

This interesting book follows in the line of Cordelia Fine's "A Mind of it's Own: How your Brain Distorts and Deceives", and Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". It is an example of the utility of occasions when academic authors who usually write for a closed circle of fellow academics spin a product out for the general public - it is a means for the rest of us to learn a little bit of useful knowledge with only the few hours of investment to read an entertaining book.

In the modern society where `success' seems to be not only a virtue, but the means and the ends by itself of the good life, it is perhaps cathartic to think a little bit about failure and mistakes. I happened to acquire this book by chance - my wife happened to read a blurb about the book in the new revamped Scientific American, which included a quotation from the famous Israeli leader (and currently President of Israel) - "When a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake." She liked this line so much, that she wanted to get the book, and the wry title certainly helped. The book strikes a good balance between things that one finds in one's own personal life, and issues of the larger common interest, such as the possible faults of the justice system and the complexity of international relations. Authors such as Cordelia Fine, Daniel Gilbert and V.S. Ramachandran ( Phantoms in the Brain) have written informatively about he many pitfalls of perception and memory and cognition in general. "Mistakes were made" peeks in at one the outcomes of the working of our mind - the self-justifying behaviour that arises from a cognitive bias towards what we already believe to be true. The book alerts the reader to the presence of a blind spot in the working of our mind. Reading this book may help you be aware of the blind spot, much as you learn about the blind spot when you first learn to drive. Readers acquainted with the literature on chaos and complexity would see this book to be another example of the overwhelming importance of feedback in our lives - it is replete with examples of events that might have taken a different turn due to some missed turn in the feedback loop - and the effects are non-linear or completely disproportionate to a small initial difference.

While some of the examples mentioned in the book are funny and others seem quite reasonable, the authors could have done well to provide more attention to the possibility that there may be reasons other than denial and confirmation bias that prevent people from acknowledging their mistakes. A lot of human behavior is strategic, and is driven by incentives - people estimate the probable reactions of others and act accordingly. There are also norms and expectations about those norms that drive people's behavior. Thus a leader might refuse to publicly acknowledge a mistake because he might need to maintain a certain aura of infallibility to remain effective as a leader - which might be beneficial for the followers he leads. Or a corporate executive may have made a wrong business decision which she does not want to admit because she may want to avoid `losing face' in a competitive field. These kind of situations lead one to think about ethics and character, and quickly on towards philosophy - given the uncertainty about the future, we are bound to make errors in our guesses about the future, but these mistakes are different from ones we might make because we might have been careless with our duties and responsibilities. Or maybe this is just another foolish belief that I carry around in my head.

This book was enlightening and disturbing on several points. The most frightening chapter for me discussed police interrogations. For those of you who have been around to remember the stories of the McMartin preschool, you will be especially horrified to learn of the tactics interrogaters use to get you to confess to a crime you never committed.

You would also be amazed about the author's revelations about the theory of repression. It was most disturbing to me that trained "professional" psychiatrists still attempt to explain a patient's underlying problems through some repression of a traumatic experience. As stated in this book, the problem for most people who have suffered traumatic experiences is not that they forget them but that they cannot forget them: The experiences keep intruding. But, the result of some patients to be encouraged to "remember" their past traumas has led to the destruction of family relationships. For clinicians to admit they were incorrect in bring forth the "repressed event" they would have to also admit that their faulty theory resulted in the distruction of the patient's relationships.

Apparently only about 27% of Americans now support our president (or perhaps the person who is really running things... the vice president.) That seems an amazing statistic to me. I mean, how on earth could 27% of the people still think that George W. Bush is doing a worthy job?

Two words: Cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term which describes the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs. If you voted for Bush in 2000, and maybe even again in 2004, you would have to admit that you made a mistake in electing a man that has been possibly this nation's worst president.

When I read this book, it all became very clear to me. We all do what we can to appear to be doing the right thing. We all want to look wise and knowledgeable. And when we make a mistake, we attempt to justify what we have done. No one wants to appear clueless; not even the Bush administration. That's why we have several different justifications for why we are in Iraq. They keep changing the reasons, because to admit a mistake would be to look unwise and foolish to the American people.

I told everyone I know that they absolutely need to read this book. But, they'll have to get their own copy because I want to reread mine.