Mistakes were made but not by me pdf

Mistakes Were Made

(but not by me) Why We justify Foolish Beliefs,

Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

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I Mistakes Were Made

I I I I I I

I

(but not by me)

Why We Justify

Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions,

and Hurtful Acts

o o o

CAROL TAVRIS alld ELLIOT ARONSON

11 HARCOURT, INC. Il � o"'�� :""'" N: YO" S==- TO',"" london , I

--11

Copyright Q 2007 by Carol Tavri$ and E1li(K Aronson

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Library of Congress Cataloging.in.Publiation Dara Tavris, Carol.

Mistakes were made (bUl nOI by me); why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acu/Carol Tavri5 & Elliot Aronson.-l 5t ed.

p. cm. Includes bibliogtaphial references and index.

I. Cognitive di5S0�ncc:. 2. Sdf--decc:pdon. I. Aronson, FJliol. II. Tide:. BF337.C63T38 2007

153--dc22 2006026953 ISBN 978-{}..15-101098-1

Text set in Adobe Gararnond

Printed in the United Statl'S of Aml'ria First roition

ACE GIKJHFD B

To Ronan, my WOl1derful 0'

-Carol Tavris

o o o

To Vera, of course

-Elliot Aronson

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue,

and then, when we are fmally proved wrong, impudently twisting

the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible

to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is

that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality , usu­

ally on a battlefield.

A great nation is like a great man:

When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.

Having realized it, he admits it.

Having admiued it, he correas it.

-George Orwell (1946)

He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent

reachers.

-Lao Tzu

CONTENTS

o o o

INTRODUCTION

Knaves, Foo/s, Villains, and Hypocrites:

How Do They Live with Themselves? . . . . . . . • . . . . • . . • . . . . . . . 1

CHAPTER I

Cognitive Dissonance: The Engine of Self-jusri/ication . . . . . . • . 11

CHAPTER 2

Pride and Prejudice ... ana Orher Blind Spars . . . . . • • • . . . . . . 40

CHAPTER 3

Memory, [he Self-juscifying HislOrian . . . . . . • . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . 68

CHAPTER 4

Good Intentions, Bad Science:

The Closed Loop of Clinical Judgment . . . . . • . . . • . . . • . . . . . . . 97

CHAPTER 5

Law and Disorder . . . . . • . . • • . . • • . . . • . . . • . . • • . . . • . . . . . . 127

CHAPTER 6

Loue's Assassin: Self-justification it! Marriage, . . . . . . . • . . . . . 158

x CONTENTS

CHAPTER 7

Wounds, Rifts, and Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

CHAPTER 8

Lelfing Go ana' Owning Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . • . . . • . . . . . . 213

AFTERWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • . . . . . . . . . . • • . . . . . . . . . . 237

ENDNOTES . . • • • . . . . . . . . . . 239

INDEX . . . . . . • . . . . . • • • . . • • . . . . . . . • • • . • . • . . • . . . . . . 277

Mistakes Were Made

(bur not by me)

INTRODUCTION

o o o

Knaves, Fools, Villains, and Hypocrites:

How Do They Live with Themselves?

Mistakes were quite possibly made by the administrations in which I

served.

-Henry Kissinger, responding to charges [hat he committed

war crimes in his role in the United Stares' actions in

Vietnam, Cambodia, and Sourh America in the 1970$

If, in hindsight, we also discover that mistakes may have been

made . . . I am deeply sorry.

-Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, referring to the bishops

who failed to deal with child molesrers among the Catholic clergy

Mistakes were made in communicating to the public and CUS[Qrners

about the ingredients in our French fries and hash browns.

-McDonald's, apologizing to Hindus and other vegetarians

for failing to inform them that the �natural flavoring�

in their potatoes contained beefbyproducrs

2 CAROL TAVRIS lind ElLIOT ARONSON

This week's question: How can YOLI rell when.a presidential scandal is serious?

A. The president's poll numbers drop. B. The press goes after him. C. The opposition calls for his impeachmem. D. His own parry members turn on him. E. Or the White House says, "mistakes were made."

-Bill Schneider on CNN's Inside Politics

AS FALLWLE HUMAN BEINGS. all of us share the impulse to justify ourselves and avoid taking responsibility for any actions that turn our to be harmful. immoral, or stupid. Most of us will never be in a position (0 make decisions affecting the lives and deaths of mil� lions of people, but whether the consequences of our mistakes are trivial or tragic, on a small scaJe or a national canvas, most of us find it difficult, if not impossible, to say, "I was wrong; I made a terrible mistake." The higher the stakes-emotional. financial, moral-the greater the difficulty.

It goes further man that: Most people. when direCtly confronted. by evidence that they are wrong. do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciowly. Even irre­ futable evidence is rarely enough to pierce the mental armor of self­ justification. When we began working on this book. the poster boy for "tenacious dinging to a discredited belief" was George W Bush. Bush was wrong in his claim mat Saddam Hussein had weapons of

mass destruction, he was wrong in daiming mat Saddam was linked wim AJ Qaeda. he was wrong in predicting that Iraqis would be dancing joyfully in the streets to receive the American soldiers, he was wrong in predicting that the conflict would be over quickly. he was wrong in his gross underestimate of the financial COSt of the war, and he was most famously wrong in his photo-op speech six weeks after the invasion began. when he announced {under a banner read-

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 3

ing MISSION ACCOMPUSHED) that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

At mat time, the [\'/0 of us warched wim fascination as commenfa­

tors from the right and left began fantasizing in prim about what it

would be like to have a presidem who admitted mistakes. The conser­ vative columnist George Will and the liberal columnist Paul Krugman both called for Bush to admit he had been wrong, bur the presidem remained intransigent. In 2006, with Iraq sliding into civil war and sixteen American intelligence agencies having issued a report that rhe

occuparion ofiraq had increased islamic radicalism and the risk of ter­ rorism, Bush said to a delegation of conservative columnists, "I've never been more convinced mar the decisions I made are the right decisions.'" Of course, Bush had to justify the war his administration pursued in Iraq; he had too much invested in that course of action to do otherwise-thousands of deaths and, according to a conserva­ tive estimate from me American Enterprise Instirute in 2006, at leasr a trillion dollars. Accordingly, when he was proved wrong in his orig­

inal reasons for the war, he found new ones: getting rid of a "very bad guy," fighting rerroris[S, promoting peace in the MiddJe East, bringing democracy to Iraq, increasing the security of the United Srates, and finishing "the task [our troops] gave their lives for." In ocher words, we must continue the war because we began the war.

Politicians are the most visible of self-justifiers, which is why they provide such juicy examples. They have refined the art of speaking in the passive voice; when their backs are to the wall they will reluc­ tandy acknowledge error, bur not responsibility. Oh all right, mis­ takes were made, but not by me; by someone else, who shall remain nameless.l When Henry Kissinger said that the "administration" may have made mistakes, he was sidestepping the facr that as national se­ curity adviser and secretary of state (simulraneously) he, in effect, was the adminisrtarion. This self-jusrification allowed him to accept the Nobel Peace Prize with a straight face and a dear conscience.

We look at the behavior of politicians with amusement or alarm

4 CAROL TAVRIS and elliOT ARONSON

or horror, bU[, psychologically, what they do is no different in kind,

though certainly in consequence, from what most of us have done at one time or another in our private lives. We stay in an unhappy rela� cionship or merely one that is going nowhere because, after all, we in� vested so much time in making it work. We sray in a deadening job way [00 long because we look for all the reasons [0 juS[ify staying and are unable to dearly assess the benefits of leaving. We buy a lemon of a car because it looks gorgeous, spend thousands of dollars to keep the damn thing funning, and then we spend even more to justify that in� vestment. We self· righteously create a rift with a friend or relative over some real or imagined slight, yet see ourselves as me pursuers of peace-if only the other side would apologize and make amends.

Self-justification is not the same thing as lying or making excuses. Obviously, people will lie or invent fanciful stories to duck the fury of a lover. pacem. or employer; to keep from being sued or sem to prison; to avoid losing face; to avoid losing a job; to stay in power. Bur mere is a big difference between what a guilty man says to the

public to convince chern of something he knows is untrue ("I did not have sex with mat woman"; "I am not a crook"). and the process of

persuading himself [har he did a good thing. In the former situation, he is lying and knows he is lying to save his own skin. In rhe larter, he is lying to himself. That is why self-jusrificarion is more powerful and more dangerous than the explicit lie. It allows people to con­ vince themselves that what they did was the best thing mey could have done. In fact. come to think of it. it was the right thing. "There was nothing else I could have done." "Actually. it was a brilliant so­ lution to the problem." "} was doing the best for the nation. n uThose bastards deserved what they gOt." ''I'm entitled."

Self-justification not only minimizes our mistakes and bad deci­ sions; it is also the reason that everyone can see a hypocrite in action

except me hypocrite. It allows us to create a distinction between our moral lapses and someone else's, and to blur me discrepancy between our actions and our moral convictions. Aldous Huxley was right when

MISTAKES WERE MADE (bue no! by me) 5

he said, "There is probably no such thing as a conscious hypocrite." Ie

seems unlikely that Newt Gingrich said {Q himself, "My, what a hyp� ocrite I am. There I was, all riled. up about Bill Clinton's sexual affair, while I was having an extramarital affair of my own right here in town." Similarly, the prominent evangelist Ted. Haggard seemed obliv� ious to the hypocrisy of publicly fulminating against homosexuaIiry

while enjoying his own sexual relationship with a male prostitute. In the same way, we each draw our own moral lines and justify

mem. For example, have you ever done a litcle finessing of expenses on income taxes? That probably compensates for the legitimate ex­

penses you forgot about, and besides, you'd be a fool not to, consid­ ering that everybody else does. Did you fail to report some extra cash income? You're entitled, given all the money mat me government wastes on pork-barrel projects and programs you detest. Have you been writing personal e-mails and surfing the Net at your office when you should have been tending to business? Those are perks of the job, and besides, it's your own prmcst against mose stupid company rules,

and besides, your boss doesn't appreciate all me extra work you do. Gordon Marino, a professor of philosophy and ethics, was staying

in a hotel when his pen slipped out of his jacket and left an ink spot

on me silk bedspread. He decided he would teli me manager, but he was tired and did nm want to pay for the damage. That evening he went out with some friends and asked meir advice. "One of them told me to stop with the moral fanaticism," Marino said. "He argued, The management expectS such accidentS and builds their COSt into

the price of the rooms.' It did not take long to persuade me that there was no need to trouble me manager. I reasoned that if I had spilled this ink in a family-owned bed-and-breakfast, then I would have im­

mediately reported the accident, but that (his was a chain hotel, and yadda yadda yadda went the hoodwinking process. I did leave a note at me front desk about the spot when I checked out."3

But, you say, all chose justifications are true! Hotel room charges do include the costs of repairs caused. by clumsy guests! The government

6 CAROL TAVRIS �"d ELLIOT ARONSON

does waste money! My company probably wouldn't mind if I spend a lin:le time on e-mail and I do get my work done (eventually)! Whether those daims are true or false is irrelevant. When we cross these lines, we are juscifying behavior that we know is wrong pre­ cisely so that we can continue (0 see ourselves as honest people and not criminals or thieves. Whether the behavior in question is a small thing like spilling ink on a hotel bedspread, or a big thing like em­ bezuemem, the mechanism of self-justification is the same.

Now, berween the conscious lie ro fool others and unconscious self­ justification to fool ourselves lies a fascinating gray area, patrolled by that unreliable, self-serving historian-memory. Memories are often pruned and shaped by an ego-enhancing bias that blurs the edges of past events, softens culpability. and distorts what really happened. When researchers ask husbands and wives what percentage of the housework they do. the wives say, "Are you kidding? I do almost every� thing, at least 90 percent." And the husbands say, "I do a lot, actually, about 40 percent." Although the specific numbers differ from couple to couple. the total always exceeds 100 percent by a large margin.4 It's tempting [Q conclude that one spouse is lying, but it is more likely that each is remembering in a way (hat enhances his or her contribution.

Over time, as the self-serving distortions of memory kick in and we forget or disrort past events, we may come ro believe our own lies, little by litcle. We know we did something wrong. bue gradually we begin to think it wasn't all our fault, and after all the situation was complex.

We start underestimating our own responsibility, whittling away at it until it is a mere shadow of its former hulking self Before long, we have persuaded ourselves, believing privately what we originally said publicly. John Dean, Richard Nixon's White House counsel, the man who blew the whiscle on the conspiracy to cover up the iUega] activi� ties of the Watergate scandal, explained how this process works:

Interviewer: You mean those who made up the srories were believing their own lies?

I MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 7 !

Dean: That's right. If you said it often enough, it would be� come rrue. When the press learned of the wire taps on news­ men and White House staffers, for example, and Aat denials failed. it was claimed that this was a national-security matter. I'm sure many people believed that me taps were for national security; they weren't. That was concocted as a justification after [he fact. But when they said it, you understand. they really beliroedir,s

Like Nixon, Lyndon Johnson was a master of self-jusdfication. According to his biographer Roben Caro, when Johnson came to be­ lieve in something, he would believe in it "totally, with absolute con­

viction, regardless of previous beliefs, or of the facts in the matter." George Reedy. one of Johnson's aides, said that he "had a remarkable capacity to convince himself that he held the principles he should hold at any given time, and there was something charming about the air of injured innocence with which he would treat anyone who

brought forth evidence that he had held other views in the past. It

was not an act .... He had a fantastic capacity [0 persuade himself thar me 'truth' which was convenient for the present was the truth and anything that conflicted with it was the prevarication of ene­ mies. He literally willed what was in his mind to become reality. "6 Although Johnson's supporters found this to be a ramet charming as­ pect of the man's character, it might well have been one of the major reasons that Johnson could not extricate the coumry from the quag­ mire of Vietnam. A president who justifies his actions only to the public might be induced to change them. A president who has jus­ tified his actions to himself, believing mat he has the troth, becomes impervious to self-correction.

o o o

The Dinka and Nuer tribes of the Sudan have a curious tradition. They extract (he permanenr from teeth of their children-as many

8 CAROL TAVRIS lIud ELLIOT ARONSON

as six bottom teem and two top teeth-which produces a sunken

chin, a collapsed lower lip. and speech impediments. This practice

apparently began during a period when tetanus (lockjaw, which

causes me jaws [0 clench together) was widespread. Villagers began

pulling oU[ their front teeth and those of their children to make it

possible to drink liquids through the gap. The lockjaw epidemic is

long past, yet the Dinka and Nuee are still pulling our their children's front teeth.7 How come?

In 1847. Igoac Semmelweiss famously exhoned his fellow physi� cians to wash their hands before delivering babies. He realized that

they must have acquired some kind of "morbid poison" on their

hands from doing autopsies on women who had died of childbed fever. then transferred the poison to women in labor. (He didn't know

the exact mechanism, but he had the right idea.) Semmelweiss or· dered his own medical students to wash their hands in a chlorine an­

tiseptic solution, and death rates from childbed fever dropped rapidly

thereafter. Yet his colleagues refused to accep{ Semmelweiss's conctete

evidence, the lower death rate among his own patients.' Why didn't

they embrace Semmelweiss's discovery immediately, thanking him ef­

fusively for finding the reason for so many unnecessary deaths? After World War II. Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia Farnham

published the bestseller Madan WOman: The Lost Sa. in which mey claimed that a woman who achieves in "male spheres of action" may seem to be successful in the "big league," but she pays a big price:

"sacrifice of her most fundamental instinctual strivings. She is not.

in sober reality, temperamentally suited to this sort of rough and tumble competition, and it damages her, particularly in her own

feelings." And it makes her frigid. besides: "ChaHenging men on every hand. refusing any longer to play even a rdatively submissive

role, multitudes of women found their capacity for sexual gratifica­

tion dwindling."9 In the ensuing decade, Dr. Farnham. who earned

her MD from the University of Minnesota and did postgraduate

work at Harvard Medical School. made a career OUt of telling women

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but Ilot by me) 9

noc ro have careers. Wasn'c she worried about becoming frigid and damaging her fundamental instinctual strivings?

The sheriff's department in Kern County, California, arrested a retired high-school principal, Patrick Dunn, on suspicion of the murder of his wife. They interviewed twO people who raid conflict­ ing stories. One was a woman who had no criminal record and no personal incentive to lie about the suspect, and who had calendars and her boss ro back up her account of events. The other was a ca­ reer criminal facing six years in prison, who had offered ro incrim­ inate Dunn as part of a deal with prosecutors, and who offered nothing ro suppon his srory except his word for it. The detectives had to choose between believing the woman (and in Dunn's inno­ cence), or the criminal (and in Dunn's guilt). They chose ro believe the criminal.1O Why?

By understanding the inner workings of self-justification, we can answer these questions and make sense of dozens of other things that people do that would ocherwise seem unfathomable or crazy. We can answer the question so many people ask when mey look at ruthless dictators, greedy corporate CEOs, religious zealots who murder in the name of God, priests who molest children, or people who cheat their siblings out of a family inheritance: How in the world can they Iiv�with themselves? The answer is: exactly the way the rest of us do.

Self-justification has COStS and benefits. By itself, it's not necessar­ ily a bad thing. It lets us sleep at night. Withom it, we would pro­ long the awful pangs of embarrassment. We would tonure ourselves wirh regret over the road not taken or over how badly we navigated the road we did take. We would agonize in the aftermath of almost every decision: Did we do the right rhing, marry the right person, buy the right house, choose the best car, enter the right career? Yet mindless self-justificarion, like quicksand, can draw us deeper into disaster. It blocks our abiHty ro even see our errors, let alone correct them. It distorts reality, keeping us from getting all the information we need and assessing issues clearly. It prolongs and widens rifts between

/0 CAROL TAVRIS lind ElLIOT ARONSON

lovers, friends, and nations. It keeps us from letting go of unhealthy habits. It permits the guilty to avoid taking responsibility for their

deeds. And it keeps many professionals from changing ourdated at­

titudes and procedures that can be harmful to the public. None of us can live without making blunders. But we do have the

ability (0 say: "This is not working Out here. This is not making sense." To err is human, but humans then have a choice between cov­ ering up or fessi ng up. The choice we make is crucial to what we do

next. We are forever being told that we should learn from OUf mis­

takes. but how can we learn unless we nrSt admit thar we made any?

To do that, we have co recognize the siren song of self-justification. In the next chapter, we will discuss cognitive dissonance, the hard­

wired psychological mechanism that creates self-justification and pro­ tects our certainties, self-esteem, and tribal affiliations. tn the chapters

that follow. we will elaborate on the most harmful consequences of self-justification: how it exacerbates prejudice and corruption, dis­

tortS memory. turns professional confidence into arrogance. creates

and perpetuates injustice, warps love, and generates feuds and rifts.

The good news is that by understanding how this mechanism works, we can defeat me wiring. Accordingly. in the final chapter. we will step back and see what solutions emerge for ourselves as individ­

uals. for our relationships, for society. Understanding is the first step

toward finding solutions that will lead to change and redemption.

That is why we wrote this book.

C H APTER 1

o o o

Cognitive Dissonance:

The Engine of Self-justification

Press release dare: November " 1993

WE DIDN'T MAKE A MISTAKE when we wrote in our previous releases

that New York would be destroyed on September 4 and October 14,

1993. We didn't make a mistake, not even a teeny eeny one!

Press release date: April 4, 1994

All the dates we have given in our past releases arc correct dares

given by God as contained in Holy Scriptures. Nor one of these dates

was wrong ... Ezekiel gives a total of 430 days for the siege of the

city . . . rwhichl brings us exactly to May2, 1994. By now, all rhe people have been forewarned. We have done our job. ...

We are rhe only ones in the entire world guiding the people to

their safety, security, and salvation!

We have a 100 percent track record!'

12 CAROL TAVRIS lIud ELLIOT ARONSON

ITS FASCINATING. A"ID SOMeTIMES funny, to read dooms­ day predictions. but it's even more fascinating to watch what hap­ pens to the reasoning of true believers when the prediction Rops and the world keeps muddling along. Notice that hardly anyone ever says, "1 blew it! I can't believe how stupid I was to believe mat non­ sense"? On the contrary, mOSt of the time they become even morc deeply convinced of their powers of prediction. The people who believe mat the Bible's hook of Revelation or the writings of the sixteenth-century self-proclaimed prophet Nostradamus have pre­ dicted every disaster from the bubonic plague to 9/11 cling to their convictions, unfazed by me small problem that their vague and murky pre

Half a century ago, a young social psychologiS[ named Leon Fes­ tinget and twO associates infiluared a group of people who believed the world would end on December 21.1 They wanted to know what would happen to the group when (they hoped!) the propheey failed. The group's leader, whom the researchers called Marian Keech, prom­ ised that the Faithful would be picked up by a Hying saucer and ele­ vated to safety at midnight on December 20. Many of her followers quit their jobs, gave away their homes, and dispersed their savings, waiting for the end. Who needs money in outer space? Others waited in fear or resignation in their homes. (Mrs. Keech's own husband, a nonbeliever, went [Q bed early and slept soundly through the night as his wife and her followers prayed in the living room.) Festinger made his own prediction: The believers who had not made a strong com­ mitment [Q the prophecy-who awaited the end of the world by memselves at home, hoping they weren't going to die at midnight­ would quiedy lose their faith in Mrs. Keech. But those who had given away their possessions and were waiting with the others for the space­ ship would increase their belief in her mystical abilities. In Fact, they would now do everything they could to get others to join them.

At midnight, with no sign of a spaceship in the yard, the group felt a little nervous. By 2 A.M., they were getting seriously worried.

MISTAKES WERE MADE (bur nOl by me) 13

Ar 4:45 A.M., Mrs. Keech had a new vision: The world had been spared, she said, because of the impressive faith of her lircie band.

"And mighty is the word of God," she told her followers, "and by his word have ye been saved-for from the mouth of death have ye been delivered and at no time has there been such a force loosed upon [he Earth. Not since the beginning of rime upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and light as now floods this room."

The group's mood shifted from despair to exhilararion. Many of (he group's members, who had nor felt the need to proselytize before December 21, began calling rhe press to report the miracle, and soon they were ou( on the streets. buttonholing passersby, trying to convert them. Mrs. Keech's prediction had failed, but nor Leon Fesringer's .

• • •

The engine rhar drives self-jusrificarion. the energy rhat produces the need {Q justify our actions and decisions-especially me wrong ones-is an unpleasant feeling thar Festinger called "cognitive disso­ nance." Cognitive dissonance is a stare of tension that occurs when­ ever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) [har are psychologically inconsistent, such as "Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kil1 me" and "I smoke two packs a day." Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs {o deep anguish; people don't rest easy until they find a way to re­

duce it. In this example. the moS( direct way for a smoker to reduce dissonance is by quitting. But if she has cried to quit and failed, now she must reduce dissonance by convincing herself that smoking isn't really so harmful. or that smoking is worth the risk because it helps her relax or prevents her from gaining weight (and after all, obesity is a health risk, too), and so on. Most smokers manage to reduce dissonance in many such ingenious. if self-deluding, ways.

Dissonance is disquieting because to hold twO ideas that con­ tradict each other is to flirt wirh absurdity and, as Albert Camus observed. we humans are creatures who spend our lives crying to

CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

convince ourselves that our existence is nO{ absurd. At the hean of it, Festinger's theory is about how people strive to make sense our of

contradictory ideas and lead lives that are, at least in their own

minds, consistent and meaningful. The theory inspired more man 3,000 experiments that, taken together. have transformed psycholo­ gists' understanding of how the human mind works. Cognitive dis­ sonance has even escaped academia and entered popular culcure. The term is everywhere. The twO of us have heard it in TV newscasts, po­ litical columns, magazine articles, bumper srickers, even on a soap opera. AJex Trebek used it on Jeopardy, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and President Bartlet on The west Wlng. Almough the expres­ sion has been thrown around a lot, few people fully understand its meaning or appreciate its enormous motivational power.

In 1956, one of us (Elliot) arrived at Stanford University as a graduate student in psychology. Festinger had arrived that same year as a young professor, and they immediately began working together,

designing experiments to test and expand dissonance theory.3 T heir

thinking challenged many notions that were gospel in psychology and among the general public. such as the behaviorist's view that people do things primarily for the rewards they bring, the econo­ mist's view that human beings generally make rational decisions. and me psychoanalyst's view that acting aggressively gets rid of ag­

gressive impulses. Consider how dissonance theory challenged behaviorism. At the

time, most scientific psychologists were convinced that people's ac­ tions are governed by reward and punishment. It is cerrainiy true that if you feed a rat at the end of a maze, he will learn the maze faster than if you don't feed him; if you give your dog a biscuit when she gives you her paw. she will learn that nick faster than if you sit around hoping she wiU do it on her own. Conversely, if you punish

your pup when you carch her peeing on the carpet, she will soon stop doing it. Behaviorists funher argued that anything that was

merely associared with reward would become more attractive-your

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but 1'101 by me) 15

puppy will like you because you give her biscuits-and anything as­ sociated with pain would become noxious and undesirable.

Behavioral laws do apply to human beings. too, of course; no one

would stay in a boring job wimout pay, and if you give your toddler a cookie to stop him from having a rantrum, you have taught him ro have another tantrum when he wants a cookie. Bm, for better or worse, the human mind is more complex than the brain of a rat or a puppy. A dog may appear conttite for having been caught peeing on the carpet, but she will not try to think up justifications for her mis­ behavior. Humans think; and because we think, dissonance theory demonstrated that our behavior transcends the effects of rewards and punishments and often contradicts memo

For example, Elliot predicted that if people go through a great deal of pain, discomfort, effort, or embarrassment to get something, they will be happier with that "something" than if it came to them easily. For behaviorists, (his was a preposterous prediction. Why would people like anything associated with pain? But for Elliot, the

answer was obvious: self-justification. The cognition that I am a sen­ sible, competent person is dissonant with the cognition that I went through a painful procedure [0 achieve something-say, joining a group that curned om to be boring and worthless. Therefore. I would distort my perceptions of the group in a positive direction, rrying to find good things about them and ignoring the downside.

It might seem that the easiest way to test this hypothesis would be to rate a number of college fraternities on the basis of how severe their initiations are, and then interview members and ask them how much they like their fraternity. If the members of severe-initiation fraterni­ ties like their frat brmhers more than do members of mild-initiation

fraternities, does this prove that severity produces the liking? It does not. It may be just (he reverse. If the members of a fraternity regard themselves as being a highly desirable, elite group, they may require

a severe initiation to prevent the riffraff from joining. Only those who are highly attracted to the severe-initiation group to begin with

-

16 CAROL TAVRIS II"d ELLIOT ARONSON

would be willing to go through the iniriation to get into it. Those who are not excited by a particular fraternity but just want to be in one, any one, will choose fraternities that require mild initiacions.

That is why if is essential to conduct a controlled experiment. The beauty of an experiment is the random assignment of people to conditions. Regardless of a person's degree of inreresr ar the outset in joining the group. each participant would be randomly assigned (0 either the severe-initiation or the mild·iniriarion condition. If people who go through a cough rime [Q get ima a group later find that group to he more atcracrive than those who get in with no effort, then we

know that it was the effof[ that caused it, not differences in initial levels of interest.

And so Elliot and his colleague Judson Mills conducted just such an experiment.· Stanford students were invited to join a group that would be discussing the psychology of sex, bur before they could qualify for admission. they would first have to pass an entrance re­

quirement. Some of me students were randomly assigned to a severely

embarrassing initiation procedure: They had to recite. out loud to the experimenter. lurid, sexually explicit passages from Lady Chatlerlty} Lover and other racy novels. (For conventional 19505 students. this was a painfully embarrassing thing to do.) Others were randomly as­ signed to a mildly embarrassing initiation procedure: reading aloud sexual words from the dictionary.

After the initiation. each of the students listened to an identical rape

recording of a discussion allegedly being held by the group of people they had just joined. Actually. the audiotape was prepared in advance so that the discussion was as boring and worthless as it could be. The ruscussants talked haltingly, with long pauses, about the secondary sex characteristics of birds-changes in plumage during courtship, that sort of thing. The taped discussants hemmed and hawed. frequently interrupted one another, and left sentences unfinished.

Finally, the students rated the discussion on a number of dimen­ sions. Those who had undergone only a mild initiation saw the dis-

MISTAKES WERE MADE (bul AO( by me) 17

cussion for what it was, worthless and dull, and they correctly rated me group members as being unappealing and boring. One guy on the tape, stammering and mutrering, admitted that he hadn't done the required reading on the courtship practices of some rare bird, and the mild­ iniciation listeners were annoyed by him. What an irresponsible idiot! He rudn'[ even do the basic reading! He let the group down! Who'd wane to be in a group wim him? But those who had gone through a severe initiation rated the discussion as imeresting and exciting and me group members as attractive and sharp. They forgave the irrespon­ sible idiot. His candor was refreshing! Who wouldn't want to be in a group with such an honest guy? It was hard to believe that they were listening to the same rape recording. Such is the power of dissonance.

This experimenc has been replicated several times by other scien­ tists who have used a variety of initiation techniques, from electric shock to excessive physical exertion.' The results are always me same: Severe initiations increase a member's liking for the group. These findings do not mean that people enjoy painful experiences, such as filling Out their income-tax forms, or that people enjoy things be­ cause they are associated with pain. Whar they do show is mat if a person voluntarily goes through a difficult or a painful experience in order to attain some goal or object, that goal or object becomes more amacrive. If, on your way to join a discussion group, a flowerpot fell from the open window of an apartment building and hit you on the head, you would not like thar discussion group any better. But if you volunteered to get hit on the head by a flowerpot to become a mem­ ber of the group, you would definitely like the group more.

Believing Is Seeing

I will look at any additional evidence to confirm the opinion to which I have already come.

-Lord Molson, British politidan (1903-199\)

18 CAROL TAVRIS !Hld elliOT ARONSON

Dissonance clteory also exploded the self-fl.atrering idea that we humans, being Homo sapims, process information logically. On the contrary: If the new information is consonant with our beliefs, we think it is well founded and useful: "Just what I always said!" But if the new information is dissonant, then we consider it biased or fool­ ish: "What a dumb argumend" So powerful is the need for conso­ nance that when people are forced [0 look at disconfirming evidence, they will find a way to criticize. distort. or dismiss it so chat they can maintain or even strengthen their existing belief. This men[3] con­ tortion is called the "confirmation bias. "6 Lenny Bruce, the legendary American humorist and social commentator, described it vividly as he watched the famous 1960 confrontation between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, in the nation's very first televised presidential debate:

I would be with a bunch of Kennedy fans watching the debate and

their comment would be. "He's really slaughtering Nixon." Then

we would all go to another apartment, and the Nixon fans would say, "How do you like the shellacking he gave Kennedy?" And then

I reaJized that each group loved their candidate so that a guy would

have to be this blatant-he would have (0 look into the camera and

say: "I am a thief, a crook, do you hear me, I am the worst choice you could ever make for the Presidency!" And even men his follow­

ing would say. "Now there's an honest man for you. It takes a big guy to admit that. There's the kind of guy we need for President."1

In 2003, after it had become abundantly clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Americans who had suppOrted the war and President Bush's reason for launching it were thrown into dissonance: We believed the president, and we (and he) were wrong. How to resolve this? For Democrats who had thought Saddam Hus­ sein had WMDs, the resolution was relatively easy: The Republicans were wrong again; the president lied. or at least was too eager to lis-

M I STAKES WERE M A D E (but not by me) 19

ten [Q faulty information; how foolish of me to believe him. For Re­ publicans, however, the dissonance was sharper. More than haJf of them resolved it by refusing to accept the evidence, telling a Knowlp

edge Networks poll that they believed the weapons had been found. The survey's director said, "For some Americans, their desire to sup­ port the war may be leading them to screen out information that weapons of mass destruction have not been found. Given the inren­ sive news coverage and high levels of public attention to the (opic, this level of misinformation suggests that some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance." You ber.'

Neuroscienrists have recently shown that these biases in thinking are built into the very way the brain processes information-all brains, regardless of their owners' political affiliation. For example, in a study of people who were being monitored by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) while they were trying to process dissonant or con­ sonant information about George Bush or John Kerry, Drew Westen and his colleagues found that the reasoning areas of the brain virtu­

ally shut down when participanrs were confronred with dissonant in­ formation, and the emotion circuits of the brain lit up happily when consonance was restored.' These mechanisms provide a neurological basis for the observation that once our minds are made up, it is hard to change them.

Indeed, even reading information that goes against your point of view can make you aJl the more convinced you are right. In one ex­ periment, researchers selected people who either favored or opposed capital punishment and asked them [Q read twO scholarly, well­ documented articles on the emotionaJly charged issue of whether the death penaJty deters violent crimes. One article concluded that it did; {he other that it didn't. If the readers were processing informa­ tion rationally, they would ac least realize thac me issue is more com­ plex than they had previously believed and would therefore move a bit closer to each other in their beliefs about capical punishment as a deterrence. But dissonance theory predicts that the readers would

20 CAROL TAVRIS (lI!d ELLIOT ARONSON

find a way ro distort the twO anicles. They would find reasons to clasp the confirming article fO their bosoms, hailing it as a higWy competent piece of work. And they would be supercritical of the dis­ confirming mide. finding minor Raws and magnifying them into major reasons why they need. not be influenced by it. This is precisely what happened. Not only did each side discredit me other's argu­ ments; each side became even more committed to its own.1Q

The confirmation bias even sees to it that no evidence-the ab­ sence of evidence-is evidence for what we believe. When the FBI and orner investigators Failed to find any evidence whatsoever for the belief that the nation had been infiirrared by Satanic cults that were ritually slaughtering babies. believers in these cults were unfazed. The absence of evidence. they said, was confirmation of how clever and evil the cult leaders were: They were eating those babies, bones and all. Ir's not JUSt fringe cultists and proponents of pop psychology who fall prey to this reasoning. When Franklin D. Roosevelt made the terrible decision to uproot thousands of Japanese Americans and put them in incarceration camps for the duration of World War II, he did so emirely on the basis of rumors that Japanese Americans were planning to sabotage the war effort. There was no proof then or later to suppOrt this rumor. Indeed. the Army's West Coast com­ mander, General John DeWitt, admitted that they had no evidence of sabotage or treason against a single Japanese-American citizen. "The very fact that no sabotage has taken place," he said, "is a dis­ turbing and confirming indication mat such action wi/l be taken."u

Ingrid's Choice. N ick's Mercedes, and El l iot's Canoe

Dissonance theory came to explain far more than the reasonable no­ tion that people are unreasonable at processing information. It also showed why they cominue to be biased after they have made impor-

MISTAKES WERE M A D E (but n.Ot by me) 21

tant decisions.12 Social psychologist Dan Gilbert, in his illuminating book Stumbling on Happintss, asks us to consider what would have happened at the end of Casablanca if Ingrid Bergman did not patri­ otically rejoin her Nazi-fighting husband but instead remained with

Humphrey Bogart in Morocco. L.I Would she, as Bogan tells her in a hean-wrenching speech, have regretted it-"maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life"? Or did she forever regret leaving Bogart? Gilber[ marshals a wealth of data to show chat the answer to both questions is no, that either decision

would have made her happy in the long run. Bogart was eloquent bur wrong, and dissonance theory telis us why: lngrid would have found reasons to justify eicher choice, along with reasons to be glad she did not make the orher.

Once we make a decision, we have all kinds of tools at our dis� posal to bolster it. When our frugal, unflashy friend Nick traded in his eight�year�old Honda Civic on a sudden impulse and bought a new. fully loaded Mercedes. he began behaving oddly (for Nick). He

started criticizing his friends' cars, saying things like "Isn't it about time you traded in that wreck? Don't you think you deserve the plea� sure of driving a well�engineered machine?" and "You know, it's

really unsafe to drive little cars. If you got in an accident, you could be killed. Isn't your life worth an extra few thousand dollars? You have no idea how much peace of mind it brings me to know that my family is safe because I'm driving a solid automobile."

It's possible chat Nick simply got bitten by the safety bug and decided, coolly and rationally, char it would be wonderful if every­ one drove a great car like the Mercedes. But we don't think so. His behavior. both in spending all that money on a luxury car and in nagging his friends to do the same, was so uncharacteristic that we suspected that he was reducing me dissonance he must have felt over impulsively spending a big chunk of his life's savings on what he would once have referred ro as "just a car." Besides, he was doing this JUSt when his kids were about to go ro college, an event mat would

22 CAROL TAVRIS lind ELLIOT ARONSON

pur a strain on his hank accounr. So Nick began marshalling argu� menrs to justify his decision: "The Mercedes is a wonderful ma­ chine; I've worked hard all my life and I deserve it; besides. it's so safe." And if he could persuade his cheapskate friends to buy one toO, he would feel doubly justified. Like Mrs. Keech's converts, he began to proselytize.

Nick's need to reduce dissonance (like Ingrid's) was increased by me irrevocability of his decision; he could not unmake that decision without losing a lot of money. Some scientific evidence for che power of irrevocability comes from a clever study of the mental maneuvec­ ings of gamblers at a racetrack. The racetrack is an ideal place to study irrevocability because once you've placed your bet, you can't go back and tell the nice man behind the window you've changed your mind. In this srudy, the researchers simply imercepted people who were standing in line to place two-dollar bets and other people who had just left the window. The investigacors asked everyone how cer­ tain they were that their horses would win. The bettors who had placed their betS were far more certain about their choice than were the folks waiting in line.14 But, of course, nothing had changed ex­ cept the finality of placing the bet. People become more certain they are right about something they just did if they can't undo it.

You can see one immediate benefit of understanding how disso* oance works: Don't listen co Nick. The more costly a decision, in terms of time, money, effort, or inconvenience, and the more irrev* ocable its consequences, the greater the dissonance and the greater the need co reduce it by overemphasiz.ing the good things about the choice made. Therefore, when you are about to make a big purchase or an importam decision-which car or computer to buy. whether to undergo plastic surgery, or whether to sign up for a cosdy self-help program-don't ask someone who has just done it. That person will be highly motivated to convince you that it is the right thing to do. Ask people who have spem twelve years and $50,000 00 a particu* lar therapy if it helped, and most will say, "Dr. Weltschmerz. is won*

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but nOt by me) 23

derful! J would nroer have found true love [got a new job 1 [lost weight] ifit hadn't been for him." After all mat time and money, they aren't likely to say, "Yeah, J saw Dr. Weltschmen for twelve years, and boy, was it ever a waste." If you want advice on what product to buy, ask someone who is still garhering information and is srill open­ minded. And if you want to know whether a program will help you, don't rely on testimonials: Get the data from controlled experiments.

Self-justification is complicated enough when jt follows our con­ scious choices; at least we know we can expeCt it. But it also occurs

in the aftermath of things we do for unconscious reasons, when we haven't a due about why we hold some belief or cling to some cus­ tom but are (00 proud to admit it. For example, in the introduction we described the custom of the Dinka and Nuer tribes of the Sudan. who exuact several of the permanent front teeth of their children­ a painful procedure, done with a fish hook. Anthropologists suggest that this tradition originated during an epidemic of lockjaw; missing front teeth would enable sufferers to get some nourishment. But if

that were the reason, why in the world would the villagers continue

this custom once the danger had passed? A practice that makes no sense at all to outsiders makes perfect

sense when seen through the lens of dissonance theory. During the epidemic, the villagers would have begun extracting the front teeth of all meir children, so that if any later contracted tetanus, the adults would be able to feed them. But this is a painful thing to do to chil­ dren, especially since only some would become affiicted. To further justify their actions, to themselves and their children, the villagers would need to bolster the decision by adding benefits to the proce­ dure after the fact. For example, they might convince themselves that pulling teeth has aesthetic value-say, that sunken-chin look is really quite attractive-and they might even turn the surgical ordeal into a rite of passage into adulthood. And. indeed, that is just what hap­ pened. "The [Qorhless look is beautiful," the villagers say. "People who have all their teeth are ugly: They look like cannibals who

24 CAROL TAVRIS lind ELLIOT ARONSON

would eat a person. A full set of teeth makes a man look like a don­ key." The toothless look has other aesthetic advantages: "We like the hissing sound it creates when we speak." And adults reassure fright­

ened children by saying, "This ritual is a sign of maturity."'s The original medical justification for the practice is long gone. The psy­ chological self-justification remains.

People wane (0 believe that, as smart and rational individuals. they know why they made the choices they did, so they are not al­

ways happy when you tell chern the actual reason for their actions. ElI.ior learned this firsthand after that initiation experiment. "After

each participam had finished, It he recalls, "I explained [he scudy in detail and went over the theory carefully. Although everyone who went through the severe initiation said that they found the hypoth­ esis intriguing and that they could see how mOSt people would be af­ fected in the way I predicted, they all took pains to assure me that their preference for the group had nothing to do with the severity of

the inidation. They each claimed that they liked the group because

mat's the way they really felt. Yet almost all of them liked the group more than any of the people in the mild-initiation condition did."

No one is immune to the need to reduce dissonance, even those who know the theory inside out. Elliot cells this story: "When I was a young professor at the University of Minnesota, my wife and I tired of renting apartments; so, in December, we set out £0 buy our

first home. We could find only twO reasonable houses in our price range. One was older, charming, and within walking distance from

the campus. I liked it a lot, primarily because it meant that I could have my students over for research meetings, serve beer, and play the role of the hip professor. But that house was in an industrial area, without a lor of space for our children to play. The other choice was a tract house, newer but £Otally without distinction. It was in the

suburbs, a thiny-minute drive from campus but only a mile from a lake. After goi ng back and forth on mat decision for a few weeks, we

decided on the house in the suburbs.

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 25

"Shortly after moving in, I noeiced an ad in [he newspaper for a

used canoe and immediareiy boughr ir as a surprise for my wife and

kids. When I drove home on a freezing, bleak January day with the canoe lashed to rhe roof of my car, my wife took one look and burst into laughter. 'What's so funny?' I asked. She said, 'Ask Leon Fes­ tinger!' Of course! I had felr so much dissonance abour buying the house in me suburbs mat I needed to do something righr away to justify mat purchase. I somehow managed to forget that it was the middJe of winter and mat, in Minneapolis, i[ would be months be­ fore the frozen lake would thaw am enough for rhe canoe to be us­ able. But, in a sense, without my quire realizing it, I used that canoe anyway. All wimer, even as it sar in the garage, its presence made me feel bener abom our decision."

Spirals of Violence -and Vi rUie

Feeling Stressed? One Internet source teaches you how to make your own little Damn It Doll, which "can be rhrown. jabbed, sromped and even strangled rill all the frusrration leaves you." A little poem

goes wim it:

When you want to kick the desk or rhrow the phone and shout

Here's a little damnir doll you cannot do witham. JUSt grasp it firmly by the legs. and find a place to slam it. And as you whack its stuffing out, yell, "damnit, damnir,

damnit!"

The Damn Ir Doll reflects one of rhe most entrenched convictions

in our culture. fostered by the psychoanalytic belief in the benefirs of catharsis: rhat expressing anger or behaving aggressively gets rid of anger. Throw that doll, hit a punching bag, shout at your spouse;

26 CAROL TAVRIS Qnd EllIOT ARONSON

you'll feel bettcr afterward. Actually, decades of experimental re­ search have found exacdy the opposite: that when people vent their feelings aggressively they often fed worse, pump up their blood pres­ sure, and make themselves even angrier.16

Venting is especially likely to backfire if a person commies an aggressive act against anomer person directly, which is exactly what cognitive dissonance theory would predict. When you do anything that harms someone else-get them in trouble. verbaHy abuse them, or punch them our-a powerful new factor comes into play: the need to justify what you did. Take a boy who goes aJong with a group of his fellow seventh graders who are taunting and bullying a weaker kid who did them no harm. The hoy likes being part of the gang but his heart really isn't in me bullying. Later, he feels some dissonance about what he did. "How can a decent kid like me," he wonders, "have done such a cruel thing to a nice, in nocent little kid like him?" To reduce dissonance, he will try to convince himself that the victim is neither nice nor innocem: "He is such a nerd and cry�

baby. Besides, he would have done the same to me if he had the chance.» Once the boy starts down the path of blaming the victim, he becomes more likely (0 beat up on the victim with even greater ferocity (he next chance he gets. Justifying his first hurrful act sets the stage for more aggression. That's why the catharsis hypothesis is wrong.

The first experiment that demonstrated this actually came as a complete surprise to the investigawr. Michael Kahn, then a graduate student in clinical psychology at Harvard, designed an ingenious experiment that he was sure would demonstrate the benefits of catharsis. Posing as a medical technician, Kahn took polygraph and blood pressure measurements from college students, one at a time, allegedly as parr of a medical experiment. As he was taking these measurements, Kahn feigned annoyance and made some insulting remarks to the students (having to do with their mothers). The Stu� dents got angry; their blood pressure soared. In the experimental

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 27

condition, the students were allowed to vent their anger by inform� ing Kahn's supervisor of his insules; thus, they believed they were get­ ting him into big trouble. In the control condition, ehe students did

nOt get a chance [0 express their anger. Kahn, a good Freudian, was astonished by the results: Catharsis

was a [Otal Aop. The people who were allowed to express their anger about Kahn fele far greater animosity toward him than did those who were not given that opportunity. In addition, expressing their anger increased their already heightened blood pressure; ehe high blood pressure of those who were not allowed to express their anger soon returned to normal.17 Seeking an explanation for this unex­

pecred pacrern, Kahn discovered dissonance theory, which was JUSt gening attention at the time, and realized it could beautifully ac­ count for his results, Because the students thought they had gorren

him into serious trouble, they had to justify their action by convinc­ ing themselves that he deserved it, thus increasing their anger against him-and their blood pressure.

Children learn to justify their aggressive actions early: They hit a younger sibling, who starts [0 cry, and immediately claim, "But he started it! He deserved it!" Most parents find these childish self­ justifications to be of no great consequence, and usually they aren't. But ie is sobering (0 realize that the same mechanism underlies the behavior of gangs who bully weaker children, employers who mis­ treat workers, lovers who abuse each other, police officers who con­ tinue beating a suspeCt who has surrendered, tyrancs who imprison and torture ethnic minorities, and soldiers who commit atrocities against civilians. In all these cases, a vicious circle is created: Aggres­ sion begets self-justification, which begets more aggression. Fyodor Doseoevsky understood perfectly how this process works. In The Brothers Karamazov, he has Fyodor Paviovitch, the brothers' scoundrel of a father, recall "how he had once in the past been asked, 'Why do you hate so and so, so much?' And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, 'I'll tell you. He has done me no

28 CAIWL TAVRIS and ElLIOT ARONSON

harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him.'"

Fortunately, dissonance theory also shows us how a person's gen­

erous actions can create a spiral of benevolence and compassion, a "virruous cirde." When people do a good deed, panicularly when

they do it on a whim or by chance. they will come to see the benefi­ ciary of their generosity in a warmer light. Their cognition mar they wem out of cheir way to do a favor for this person is dissonant with any negative feelings they might have had about him. In effect, after doing the favor, they ask themselves: "Why would I do something nice for a jerk? Therefore. he's not as big a jerk as r thought he was­

as a manee of fact. he is a pretty nice guy who deserves a break." Several experiments have supported this prediction. In one, col­

lege scudents participated in a contest where they won a substantial

sum of money. Afterward, the experimenter approached one third of them and explained that he was using his own funds for the experi­ ment and was running shan, which meant he might be forced to

close down the experiment prematurely. He asked, "As a special favor to me, would you mind returning the money you won?" (They all agreed.) A second group was also asked to return the money, but this rime it was the departmental secretary who made the request, ex­ plaining that the psychology department's research fund was run­

ning low. (They still all agreed.) The remaining participants were not asked to return their winnings at all. Finally, everyone filled out a

questionnaire thar included an opportunity to rate the experimenter. Participants who had been cajoled into doing a special favor for him liked him the best; they convinced themselves he was a particularly

nne, deserving fellow. The others thought he was preay nice but not anywhere near as wonderful as the people who had done him a per­ sonal favor believed. II

Although scientific research on the virtuous circle is new, the general idea may have been discovered in the eighteenth century by

Benjamin Franklin, a serious student of human nature as well as

MISTAKES WERE MADE (bllt not by me) 29

science and politics. While serving in the Pennsylvania legislamre,

Franklin was disturbed by the opposition and animosity of a fellow legislator. So he set out to win him over. He didn't do it, he wrote,

by "paying any servile respect to him"-that is, by doing the other

man a favor-but by inducing his target to do a favor for him­ loaning him a rare book from his library:

He sem it immediately and I relUrned it in about a week with an·

other nOtc, expressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we next

met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done be·

fore), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readi·

ness to serve me on all occasions, SO that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance

of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another

(han he whom you yoursdfhave obliged.""

o o o

Dissonance is bothersome under any circumstance, but it is most

painful to people when an important element of their self-concept is threatened-typicaJly when they do something that is inconsistent with their view of themselves,lO If an athlete or celebrity you admire

is accused of rape, child molestation, or murder. you will feel a pang of dissonance. The more you identify with this person, the greater

the dissonance. because more of yourself would be involved. Bur you

would feel a much more devastating rush of dissonance if you re·

garded yourself as a person of high integrity and you did something

criminaL After all, you can always change your allegiance to a celebrity

and find another hero. But if you violated your own values, you

would feel much greater dissonance because. at the end of the day,

you have to go on living with yourself.

Because most people have a reasonably positive self·concept. be· lieving themselves to be competent, moral, and smart, their efforts

30 CAROL TAVRIS lind ELLIOT ARONSON

at reducing dissonance will be designed to preserve their positive self_irnages.21 When Mrs. Keech's doomsday predictions failed, for example, imagine the excruciating dissonance her commined follow­ ers felt: "I am a smart person" clashed with '" just did an incredibly stupid thing: I gave away my house and possessions and quit my job because I believed a crazy woman," To reduce that dissonance, her followers could either have modified their opinion of their intelli­ gence or justified the "incredibly stupid" thing they did. It's nOt a close COntest; i['s justification by three lengths. Mrs. Keech's true be­ lievers saved their self-esteem by deciding they hadn't done anything stupid; in fact, they had been really smart to join this group because their faith saved the world from descruction. In fact, if everyone else were smarr, they would join, (00. Where's that busy streer corner?

None of us is off the hook on this one. We might feel amused at them, those foolish people who believe fervently in doomsday pre­ dictions; bur, as political scientist Philip Tetlock shows in his book Expert Political Judgmmt: How Good Is It? How Can W( Know? even professional "experts" who are in the business of economic and po­ litical forecasting are usually no more accurate than us umrained folks-or than Mrs. Keech, for that matter.12 Hundreds of studies have shown that predictions based on an experr's "personal experi­ ence" or "years of training" are rarely better than chance. in comraS[ to predictions based on actuarial data. But when experrs are wrong, the cemerpiece of their professional idemiry is threatened. There­ fore, as dissonance theory would predict. rhe more self-confident and famous they are, the less likely they will be to admit mistakes. And that is just what Tetlock found. Experrs reduce the dissonance caused by their failed forecascs by coming up with explanations of why they would have been right "if only"-if only that improbable calamity had not imervened; if only the timing of events had been different; if only blah blah blah.

Dissonance reduction operates like a thermostat, keeping our self-esteem bubbling along on high. That is why we are usually obliv-

MIST .... KES WERE M .... D E (but not by me) 31

ious to the self�justifications, the little lies [0 ourselves that prevem

us from even acknowledging that we made mistakes or foolish deci� sions. But dissonance theory applies to people with low self�esteem,

too, to people who consider themselves (Q be schnooks. crooks. or

incompetems. They are not surprised when their behavior confirms their negative self�image. When they make a wrongheaded predic� tion or go through a severe initiation (Q get into a dull group. they merely say, "Yup. I screwed up again; that's just like me." A used�car salesman who knows that he is dishonest does not feel dissonance when he conceals the dismal repair record of the car he is trying CO

unload; a woman who believes she is unlovable does not feel disso­ nance when men reject her; a con man does not experience disso­ nance when he cheats an old man out of his life's savings.

Our convictions about who we are carry us through che day, and we are constantly imerpreting the things that happen to us through

the filter of those core beliefs. When they are violated. even by a good experience, it causes us discomfort. An appreciation of the

power of self-justificarjon helps us understand, therefore, why people who have low self-esteem, or who simply believe chat they are in­

competem in some domain, are not totally overjoyed when they do something well; why, on the contrary, they often feel like frauds. If the woman who believes she is unlovable meets a terrific guy who

starts pursuing her seriously, she will feel momemarily pleased, but that pleasure is likely to be tarnished by a rush of dissonance: "What does he see in me?" Her resolution is unlikely to be "How nice; I must be more appealing than I thought I was." More likely, it will be "As soon as he discovers the real me, he'll dump me." She will pay a high psychological price to have that consonance restored.

Indeed, several experiments find that mOSt people who have low self-esteem or a low estimate of their abilities do feel uncomfortable

with their dissonant successes and dismiss them as accidents or anom� a1ies.:tl This is why they seem so stubborn to friends and family members who try to cheer them up. "Look, you JUSt won the Pulitzer

32 CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

Prize for literature! Doesn't that mean you're good?" "Yeah, ie's nice, but just a Auke. I'll never be able to write another word, you'll see." Self-justification, therefore. is nO[ only about protecting high self­ esteem; it's also about protecting low self-esteem if that is how a per­ son sees himself.

The Pyramid of Choice

Imagine two young men who are identical in terms of attitudes, abil­ ities, and psychological heaJrh. They are reasonably honest and have the same middling attitude toward. say, cheating: They think it is not a good thing to do, but there are worse crimes in the world. Now they are both in the midst of taking an exam that will determine whether they will get into graduate school. They each draw a blank on a crucial essay question. Failure looms . . . at which point each

one gets an easy opportunity [Q cheat, by reading another studem's answers. The two young men struggle with the temptation. After a long momem of anguish, one yields and the other resists. Their de­ cisions are a hair's breadth apart; it could easily have gone {he other way for each of them. Each gains something importam. but at a cOSt: One gives up imegrity for a good grade, the other gives up a good grade to preserve his integrity.

Now me question is: How do they feel about cheating a week

later? Each student has had ample time to justify the course of action he [Ook. The one who yielded to temptation will decide that chear­ ing is nor so great a crime. He will say to himself: "Hey, everyone cheats. It's no big deal. And I really needed [0 do this for my furure career." But the one who resisted rhe remprarion will decide rhat cheating is far more immoral man he originally rhought: "In fact. people who chear are disgracefuL In faa. people who cheat should be permanendy expelled from school. We have [Q make an example

of them."

MISTAKES WERE MADE (bul nOI by me) 33

By the time the srudems are mrough wim their increasingly in­ cense levels of self-justification, two mings have happened: One, mey are now very far apart from one another; and twO, they have inter­ nalized their beliefs and are convinced mat mey have always felt that way.l4 It is as if mey had started off at the tOP of a pyramid, a mil­ limeter apart; but by the time they have finished justifying their individual actions, they have slid to the bottom and now stand at op­ posite corners of its base. The one who didn't cheat considers the other to be totally immoral, and che one who cheated thinks the other is hopelessly puritanical. This process illustrates how people who have been sorely tempted, hattled temptation, and almost given in [0 it-hut resisted at the eleventh how-come to dislike, even despise. those who did not succeed in the same effort. It's the people who almost decide to live in glass houses who throw the first stones.

The metaphor of the pyramid applies to most important deci­ sions involving moral choices or life options. Instead of cheating on an exam, for example. now substitute: deciding to begin a casual af­ fair (or nor), sample an illegal drug (or not), take steroids [0 improve your athletic ability (or not), stay in a troubled marriage (or not). name names ro the Howe Un-American Activities Committee (or not), lie to prorect your employer and job (or not), have children (or not), pursue a demanding career (or stay home wich me kids). When the person ar the top of the pyramid is uncertain, when there are benefits and costs of bath choices, then he or she will feel a particu­ lar urgency to jwtify the choice made. But by the time the person is at rhe bottom of me pyramid, ambivalence will have morphed into certainty. and he or she will be miles away from anyone who took a diffetent route.

This process blurs the distinction mar people like to draw be­ tween "us good guys" and "chose bad guys." Often. standing at the top of the pyramid, we are faced not with a black-and-white, gol no-go decision. but with a gray choice whose consequences are shrouded. The first steps along the path are morally ambiguous. and

34 CAROL TAVRIS lind ELLIOT ARONSON

the right decision is not always clear. We make an early, apparently inconsequencial decision, and then we justify it to reduce the ambi· guity of the choice. This stares a process of entrapment-action, justification, further action-that increases our intensity and com· mitmenr, and may end up taking us far from our original intentions or principles.

It certainly worked that way for Jeb Stuart Magruder, Richard Nixon's special assistant, who was a key player in the plot to burglar· ize the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Water­ gate complex, concealed the White House's involvement, and lied under oath to protect himself and others responsible. When Ma­ gruder was first hired, Nixon's adviser Bob Haldeman did not tell him that perjury, cheating. and breaking the law were pan of the job description. If he had, Magruder almost certainly would have re­ fused. How, then, did he end up as a central player in the Watergate scandal? It is easy, in hindsight, to say "He should have known" or "He should have drawn me line the first time they asked him to do something illegal."

In his autobiography, Magruder describes his first meeting with Bob Haldeman at San Clemente. Haldeman flattered and charmed him. "Here you're working for something more than just to make money for your company," Haldeman told him. "You're working to solve the problems of the country and the world. Jeb, I sat with the President on the night the first astronauts stepped onto the moon . . . I'm pan of hisrory being made." At the end of a day of meetings, Haldeman and Magruder left the compound to go to the president's house. Haldeman was enraged that his golf cart was not right there awaiting him, and he gave his assistant a "brmal chewing out," threatening to fire the guy if he couldn't do his job. Magruder couldn't believe what he was hearing, especially since it was a beau­ tiful evening and a short walk to their destination. At first Magruder thought Haldeman's tirade was rude and excessive. But before long, wanting the job as much as he did, Magruder was justifying Halde-

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but nol by me) 35

man's behavior: "In JUSt a few hours at San Clemente I had been struck by the sheer perfection of life there . . . Afrer you have been spoiled like that for a while, something as minor as a missing golf cart can seem a major affront. "lS

And so, before dinner and even before having been offered a job, Magruder is hooked. Ie is a tiny first step, but he is on the road to Watergate. Once in the White House, he went along with all of the small ethical compromises that just about all politicians justify in the goal of serving their party. Then, when Magruder and others were working to reelect Nixon, G. Gordon Liddy entered the picture, hired by Attorney General John Mitchell to be Magruder's general counsel. Liddy was a wild card, a James Bond wannabe. His first plan to ensure Nixon's reelection was to spend one million dollars to hire "mugging squads" that would rough up demonstrators; kidnap ac­ tivists who might disrupt the Republican convention; sabotage the Democratic convention; use "high-class" prostitutes to entice and then blackmail leading Democrats; break into Democratic offices;

and use electronic surveillance and wiretapping on their perceived enemies.

Mitchell disapproved of the more extreme aspects of this plan; besides, he said, it was too expensive. So Liddy returned with a pro­ posal merely to break into the DNC offices at the Watergate com­ plex and install wiretaps. This time Mitchell approved, and everyone went along. How did they juStify bteaking the law? "If [Liddy] had come to us at the outset and said, 'I have a plan to burglarize and wiretap Larry O'Brien's office,' we might have rejected the idea out of hand," wrote Magruder. "Instead. he came to us with his elab­ orate call girllkidnappinglmugging/sabotage/wiretapping scheme, and we began to tone it down. always with a feeling that we should leave Liddy a little something-we felt we needed him. and we were reiucrant to send him away with nothing." Finally, Magruder added, Liddy's plan was approved because of the paranoid climate in the White House: "Decisions that now seem insane seemed at the time

36 CAROL TAVR IS and ELLIOT ARONSON

(0 be rational . . . . We were past the point of halfway measures or gendemanly tacriCS,"!6

When Magruder first entered the White House, he was a decent man. But. one small step at a time. he went along with dishonest ac­ tions, justifying each one as he did. He was entrapped in pretty much the same way as were the 3,000 people who took part in the famous experiment created by social psychologist Stanley Milgram,l1 In Milgram's original version, cwo-chirds of the parcicipants admin­ is[ered what they thought were life-threatening levels of electric shock to another person, simply because the experimenter kept say­ ing, "The experiment requires that you continue.» This experiment is almost always described as a study of obedience [0 authority. In­ deed it is. But it is more than that: It is also a demonsrration of long­ rerm resulrs of self-jusrificarion.2&

Imagine thar a distinguished-looking man in a whire lab coar walks up CO you and offers you twenty dollars to participate in a sci­ entific experiment. He says, "I want you to inflict 500 volrs of in­ credibly painful shock to anomer person to help us understand the role of punishment in learning." Chances are you would refuse; the money isn'r worth it to harm another person, even for science. Of course, a few people would do it for twenty bucks and some would not do it for twenty thousand, but most would tell the scientist where he could stick his money.

Now suppose the scientist lures you along more gradually. Sup­ pose he offers you twenty dollars to administer a minuscule amount of shock, say 10 volts, to a fellow in the adjoining room, to see if this zap will improve rhe man's ability to learn. The experimenter even tries the 10 volrs on you, and you can barely feel ie So you agree. It's harmless and the study seems pretty interesting. (Besides, you've al­ ways wanted to know wherner spanking your kids will get them to shape up.) You go along for the moment, and now the experimenter tdls you that if the learner ge[S the wrong answer, you must move to the next toggle switch, which delivers a shock of 20 volts. Again,

MISTAKES WERE MADE (bur not by me) 37

it's a small and harmless jolt. Because you JUSt gave the learner to,

you see no reason why you shouldn't give him 20. And because you just gave him 20, you say to yourself, 30 isn't much more than 20. so I'll go to 30. He makes another mistake, and the scientist says,

"Please administer the next level-40 volts." Where do you draw the line? When do you decide enough is

enough? Will you keep going [Q 450 volts. or even beyond that, to a

switch marked XXX DANGER? When people are asked in advance how far (hey imagine they would go, almost no one says they would go

to 450. But when they are actually in the situation, two-thirds of

them go all the way to the maximum level they believe is dangerous. They do this by justifying each step as they went along: This small shock doesn't hurt; 20 isn't much worse than 10; if I've given 20, why not 3D? As (hey justified each step, they committed themselves fur­ ther. By the time people were administering what they believed were

strong shocks, most found it difficult to justify a sudden decision to quit. Participants who resisted early in the study, questioning the

very validity of the procedure, were less likely to become entrapped by it and more likely to walk out.

The Milgram experiment shows us how ordinary people can end up doing immoral and harmful things through a chain reaction of beha\'ior and subsequent self-justification. When we, as observers, look at them in puzz.lement or dismay, we fail to realiz.e that we are

often looking at the end of a long, slow process down that pyramid. At his sentencing, Magruder said to Judge John Sirica: "I know what I have done, and Your Honor knows what I have done. Somewhere between my ambition and my ideals, I lost my ethical compass." How do you get an honest man [0 lose his ethical compass? You get him to take one step at a time, and self-justification will do the rest .

• • •

Knowing how dissonance works won't make any of us automatically immune to the allure of self-justification, as Elliot learned when he

38 CAROL TAVRIS alld ELLIOT ARONSON

bought chat canoe in January. You can't JUSt say to people. as he did after the initiation experiments, "See how you reduced dissonance?

Isn't that interesting?" and expect chern to reply, "Oh, thank you for showing me the real reason I like the group. That sure makes me feel smart!" All of us, to preserve our belief that we are smart, will occa­ sionally do dumb things. We can't help it. We are wired that way.

But trus does not mean that we are doomed to keep striving to justify our actions after the fact-like Sisyphus. never r�ching the

(OP of the hill of self-acceptance. A richer undersranding of how and

why our minds work as they do is the first step toward breaking the self-justification habit. And char, in turn, requires us to be more

mindful of our behavior and the reasons for our choices. It takes time, sdf-reflection, and willingness.

The conservative columnist William Saflre once described the

"psychopolitical challenge" that voters face: "how to deal with cog­ nitive dissonance."� He began with a story of his own such chal­

lenge. During the Clinton administration, Safire recounted, he had

criticized Hillary Clinton for trying to conceaJ the identity of the members of her health-care task force. He wrote a column castigat­ ing her effores at secrecy, which he said were toxic to democracy. No dissonance there; those bad Democrats are always doing bad things. Six years later, however, he found that he was "afflicted" by cognitive dissonance when Vice President Dick Cheney, a fellow conservative Republican whom Safire admires, insisted on keeping the identity of his energy-policy task force a secret. What did Safire do? Because of his awareness of dissonance and how it works. he took a deep breath, hitched up his trousers, and did the tough but virtuous thing: He wrote a column publicly criticizing Cheney's actions. The irony is that because of his criticism of Cheney, Safire received several lauda­

tory leners from liberals-which, he admitted, produced enormous dissonance. Oh, Lord, he did something those people approved of?

Saflre's ability to recognjze his own dissonance, and resolve it by doing the fait thing, is rare. As we will see, his willingness to concede

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 39

that his own side made a miscake is something that few are prepared co share. Instead. people will bend over backward to reduce disso­ nance in a way that is favorable to them and their team. The specific ways vary. but our efforts at self-justification are all designed to serve our need to feel good about what we have done, what we believe. and who we are.

CHAPTE R 2

o o o

Pride and Prejudice . . . and Orher Blind Spots

And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, bur do nor consider the plank in your own eye?

-Matthew 7:3 (New King James version)

WI-lEN THE PUBLIC LEARNED that Supreme Court Justice An­ (onin Scalia was Hying to Louisiana on a government plane to go duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney. despite Cheney's having a pending case before the Supreme Coun. there was a Rurry of protest at Scalia's apparent conAicr of interest. Scalia himself was indignant at the suggestion that his ability ro assess the constitution­ ality of Cheney's claim-that the vice president was legally entitled to keep the details of his energy task force secret-would be tainted by the ducks and the perks. In a letter ro the Los Angeles Timts ex­

plaining why he would not recuse himself, Scalia wrote, "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."

MISTAKES WERE MADE (bu[ no[ by mt) 41

Neuropsychologist Stanley Berent and neurologist James Albers were hired by CSX Transportation Inc. and Dow Chemical to investigate railroad workers' claims mat chemical exposure had caused perma­ nent brain damage and other medical problems. More than 600 rail­ road workers in fifteen states had been diagnosed with a form of brain damage following heavy exposure to cWorinared hydrocarbon solvents. CSX paid more man $170,000 to Berent and Albers' con­ sulting firm for research that eventually disputed a link berween ex­ posure ro the company's industrial solvents and brain damage. While conducting their study, which involved reviewing the workers' med­ ical files without the workers' informed consent, the rwo scientists served as expert wi messes for law firms representing CSX in lawsuits filed by workers. Berent saw nothing improper in his research, which he claimed "yielded importam information about solvent exposure." Berent and Albers were subsequently reprimanded by the federal Of­ fice of Human Research Protections for their conflict of interest in chis case.l

• • •

When you enter the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, you nnd yourself in a room of interactive exhibits designed to identify the people you can't tolerate. The familiar targets are there (blacks, women, Jews. gays), but also short people, fat people, blond-female people, disabled people, . . . You watch a video on the vast variety of prejudices, designed to convince you thar everyone has at least a few, and then you are invited to enter the museum proper through one of rwo doors: one marked PREJUDICED, the other marked UN­ PREJUDICED. The latter door is locked, in case anyone misses the poim, but occasionally some people do. When we were visiting the museum one afternoon, we were treated to the sight of four Hasidic Jews pounding angrily on the Unprejudiced door, demanding to be let in.

42 CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

The brain is designed with blind spots, optical and psychologica1, and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on us the comforting de­ lusion that we, personally, do not have any. In a sense. dissonance meory is a theory of blind spots-of how and why people unimen­ tionally blind themselves so that they fail to notice vital events and information that might make them question their behavior or their convictions. Along with the confirmation bias, the brain comes packaged with other self-serving habits that allow us ro justify our

own perceptions and beliefs as being accurate, realistic, and un­ biased. Social psychologist � Ross calls this phenomenon "naive

realism," the inescapable conviction that we perceive objects and events clearly, "as they really are."2 We assume that ocher reasonable people see things the same way we do. If they disagree with us, they obviously aren't seeing clearly. NaiVe realism creates a logical labyrinth because it presupposes two things: One, people who are open­ minded and fair ought to agree with a reasonable opinion. And two, any opinion I hold must be reasonable; if it weren't, I wouldn't

hold it. Therefore, if I can just get my opponents to sit down here

and listen to me, so I can tell them how things really are, they will agree with me. And if they don't, it must be because they are biased.

Ross knows whereof he speaks, from his laboratory experimems

and from his efforts to reduce the bitter conRict between Israelis and Palestinians. Even when each side recognizes that the other side per­ ceives the issues differently, each thinks that the other side is biased while they themselves are objective, and that their own perceptions of reality should provide the basis for settlement. In one experiment, Ross took peace proposals created by Israeli negotiators, labeled them as Palestinian proposals, and asked Israeli citizens to judge them. "The Israelis liked the Palestinian proposal attributed (0 Israel more than they liked the Israeli proposal attributed to the Palestini­ ans," he says. "If your own proposal isn't going to be attractive to you

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by mtl 43

when it comes from the other side, what chance is there that the other side's proposal is going co be attractive when it actually comes from the other side?"j Closer to home, social psychologist Geoffrey Cohen found that Democrats will endorse an extremely restrictive welfare proposaJ, one usually associated with Republicans, if they think it has been proposed by the Democratic Party, and Republi­ cans will suppon a generous welfare policy if they think it comes from the Republican Party.4 Label the same proposal as coming from the orner side, and you might as well be asking people if they will

favor a policy proposed by Osama bin Laden. No one in Cohen's study was aware of theif blind spot-that they were being influ­

enced by their parry's posicion. Insread, they all claimed thar their beliefs followed logically from their own careful study of the policy at hand, guided by their general philosophy of government.

Ross and his colleagues have found thar we believe our own judg­ ments are less biased and more independent than those of others pardy because we rely on introspection to tell us what we are think­

ing and feeling, but we have no way of knowing what others are really thinking.s And when we introspect, looking into OUf souls and hearts, the need to avoid dissonance assures us that we have only the best and most honorable of motives. We rake our own involvement in an issue as a source of accuracy and enlightenment-"l've felt strongly about gun control for years; therefore, I know what I'm talk­ ing about"-but we regard such personal feelings on the parr of oth­ ers who hold different views as a source of bias-"She can't possibly be imparrial about gun control because she's felt strongly about it for years."

AU of us are as unaware of our blind SpOts as fish are unaware of the water they swim in, but those who swim in the waters of privilege have a parcicuiar motivation ro remain oblivious. When Marynia Farnham achieved fame and forrune during the late 1940s

and 1950s by advising women co stay at home and raise children,

44 CAROL TAVRIS and elLIOT ARONSON

otherwise risking frigidity, neurosis, and a loss of femininity, she saw no inconsistency (or irony) in the fact thar she was privileged to be a physician who was nor staying at home raising children, in­ cluding her own two. When amuent people speak of the underpriv­ ileged, they rarely bless their lucky stars that they are privileged, let alone consider that they might be overprivileged. Privilege is their blind spot.' It is invisible; they don't think twice about it; they jus­ tify their social position as something they are emided to. In one way or another, all of us are blind to whatever privileges life has handed us, even if those privileges are temporary. Most people who normally By in what is euphemistically called the "main cabin" re­ gard me privileged people in business and firsc class as wasteful snobs, if enviable ones. Imagine paying all that extra money for a shorr, six-hour Right! But as soon as they are the ones paying for a busi­ ness seat or are upgraded, mat attitude vanishes, replaced by a self­ justifying mixture of piey and disdain for meir fellow passengers, forlornly trooping pase them inca steerage.

Drivers cannot avoid having blind spots in their field of vision, but good drivers are aware of them; they know they had better be careful backing up and changing lanes if they don't want to crash imo fire hydrants and other cars. Our innate biases are, as two legal scholars put it, "like optical illusions in twO important respects­ they lead us to wrong conclusions from data, and meir apparent rightness persists even when we have been shown the trick. "7 We cannot avoid our psychological blind spots, but if we are unaware of them we may become unwittingly reckless, crossing ethical lines and making foolish decisions. Introspection alone will not help our vision, because it will simply confirm our self-justifying beliefs that we, personally, cannm be coopted or corrupted, and that our dislikes or hatreds of orner groups are not irrational but reasoned and legitimate. Blind spots enhance our pride and activate our prejudices.

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 45

The Road to Sr. Andrews

The greatest of faules, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

-historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle

The New York Times edirorial writer Dorothy Samuels summarized [he thinking of most of us in the aftermath of learning that Con­ gressman Toni Delay, former leader of the House Republicans, had

accepted a trip to the legendary St. Andrews golf course in Scotland

with Jack Abramoff, the corrupt lobbyist-tumed-informer in the congressional corruption scandal that ensued. "I've been writing

abom the foibles of powerful public officials for more years man I care to reveal without a subpoena," she wrote, "'and I still don't get

it: why wouJd someone risk his or her reputation and career for a

lobbyist-bestowed freebie like a vacation at a deluxe resort?"8 Dissonance theory gives us the answer: one step at a time. Al­

though there are plenty of unashamedly corrupt politicians who sell

their votes to the largest campaign contributor, most politicians,

thanks to their blind sPOtS, believe they are incorruptible. When they

first enter politics, they accept lunch with a lobbyist, because, after all, that's how politics works and it's an efficient way to get infor­

mation about a pending bill, isn't it? "Besides," the politician says.

"lobbyists, like any mher citizens. are exercising their right to free

speech. 1 only have to listen; I'll decide how to vote on the basis of whether my parry and constituents support [his bill and on whether

it is the right thing to do for the American people."

Once you accept the first small inducement and justify it that way, however, you have started your slide down the pyramid. If you had lunch wim a lobbyist to talk about that pending legislation, why not

calk things over on the local golf course? What's the difference? It's a

nicer place to have a conversation. And if you talked things over on

46 CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

the local course, why nor accept a friendly oWer (0 go to a better course to play golf with him or her-say. to St, Andrews in Scodand? What's wrong with that? By the time the politician is at the bonom of the pyramid, having accepted and justified ever.larger induce­ men[S, the public is screaming, "What's wrong with mat? AIe you kidding?" At one level, the policician is not kidding. Dorothy Samuels is fight: Who would jeopardize a career and reputation for a trip to Scotland? The answer is: no one, if that were the ficse offer he got; but many of us would, if it were an offer preceded by many smaller ones mat we had accepted. Pride, followed by self-justification, paves the road to Scotland.

Conflict of interest and politics are synonymous. and everyone understands the cozy collaborations that politicians forge to preserve their own power at the expense of the common welfare. It's harder to see that exactly the same process affects judges, scientists, and physi­ cians, professionals who pride themselves on their ability to be intel­ lectually independent for the sake of justice, scientific advancement, or public health. These are professionals whose training and culture promote the core value of impartiality, so most become indignant at the mere suggestion mar financial or personal inreresrs could con­ taminate their work. Their professional pride makes them see them­ selves as being above such maners. No doubr, some are; just as, at me other c:xrreme, some judges and scienrists are Rar-our dishonesr, corrupted by ambition or money. (The South Korean scienrisr

Hwang Woo-Suk, who admirrcd mar he had faked his data on cloning. was the scientific equivalent of former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who wenr [0 prison for taking millions in bribes and evading taxes.) In berween rhe extremes of rare integrity and blatant dishonesty are the grear majoriry who, being human, have all [he blind spots the rest of us have. Unfortunately, mey are

also more likely to mink rhey don't, which makes rhem even more vulnerable to being hooked.

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 47

Once upon a time, not so long ago, most scientists ignored the lure of commerce. When Jonas Salk was questioned about patenting his polio vaccine in 1954, he replied, "Could you patent the sun?"

How charming, yet how naive, his remark seems today; imagine, handing over your discovery to the public interest without keeping a few million bucks for yourself. The culture of science valued the sep­ aration of research and commerce, and universities maintained a fire­ wall between them. Scientists got their money from the government or independent funding institutions, and were more or less free [0

spend years investigating a problem that might or might nOt pay off,

either intellectually or practically. A scientist who went public, prof­ iting from his or her discoveries, was regarded with suspicion, even

disdain. "It was once considered unseemly for a biologist to be think­ ing abom some kind of commercial enterprise while at the same time

doing basic research," says bioethicist and scientist Sheldon Krimsky.9 'The two didn't seem [0 mix. But as the leading figures of the field of biology began intensively finding commercial ourlets and get-rich­

quick schemes, they helped to change the ethos of the field. Now it is the mwtivested scientists who have the prestige."

The critical event occurred in 1980, when the Supreme Couer

rwed that patents could be issued on genetically modified bacteria, independent of its process of development. That meant that you could get a patent for discovering a virus, altering a plant, isolating a gene, or modifying any orner living organism as a "product of manufacture." The gold rush was on-the scientists' road to St. An­

drews. Before long, many professors of molecular biology were serv­ ing on the advisory boards of biotechnology corporations and owned stock in companies selling products based on their research. Univer­ sities, seeking new sources of revenue, began establishing intellectual

property offices and providing incendves for faculty who patented their discoveries. Throughout the 1980s, the ideological climate shifted from one in which science was valued for its own sake, or for

48 CAROL TAVRIS and ElLIOT ARONSON

the public interest, to one in which science was valued for the prof­ its it could generate in the private interest. Major changes in tax and parem laws were enacted; federaJ funding of research declined sharply;

and tax benefits created a steep rise in funding from industry. The pharmaceutical industry was deregulated, and within a decade it had become one of the most profitable businesses in the United States.1O

And then scandals involving conflicts of interest on the part of re­ searchers and physicians began to erupt. Big Pharma was producing

new, lifesaving drugs bur also drugs that were unnecessary at best and risky at worst: More chan three-fourths of all drugs approved be­ tween 1989 and 2000 were no more than minor improvements over existing medications. cost nearly twice as much. and had higher risks. II By 1999, seven major drugs. including Rez.ulin and Lotronex. had been removed from the market for safety reasons. None had

been necessary to save lives (one was for hearrburn. one a diet pill. one a painkiller. one an antibiotic) and none was better than older,

safer drugs. Yet mese seven drugs were responsible for 1,002 deaths

and mousands of troubling complications.12 The public has reacted to such news not only with the anger they

are accustomed ro feeling toward dishonest politicians. but also with dismay and surprise: How can sciemists and physicians possibly pro­ mote a drug they know is harmful? Can't they see that they are seil­ ing out? How can they justify what they are doing? Cerrainly some investigarofS, like corrupt politicians, know exactly whar they are doing. They are doing what they were hired to do-get results mat their employers wam and suppress results that their employers don't want to hear, as tobacco-company researchers did for decades. But at least public-interest groups. watchdog agencies. and independent scientists can eventually blow the whistle on bad or deceptive research. The greater danger to the public comes from the self-justifications of well-intentioned scientists and physicians who. because of their need to reduce dissonance, truly believe themselves to be above the influ­ ence of their corporate funders. Yet, like a plant turning toward the

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 49

sun, they turn coward the interests of their sponsors without even

being aware that they are doing so. How do we know this? One way is by comparing the results of

studies funded independently and those funded by industry, which consistently reveal a funding bias.

• Two investigators selected 161 studies, aU published during me same six-year span, of the possible risks co human health of four chemicals. Of the srudies funded by industry, only

14 percent found harmful effects on health; of those funded independenrly, fully 60 percent found harmful effects.u

• A researcher examined more than 100 controlled clinical tri­ als designed to determine the effectiveness of a new medica­ tion over older ones. Of those favoring the traditional drug,

13 percent had been funded by drug companies and 87 per­ cent by nonprofit instiruoons. W

• Two Danish investigators examined 159 clinical trials that had been published between 1997 and 2001 in [he British Medical Journal where authors are required co declare po­ rential conRicts of interest. The researchers could therefore compare studies in which me investigators had declared a conRict of interest with those in which there was none. The

findings were "significandy more positive tOward the exper­ imental imervention" (i.e., the new drug compared to an older one) when the study had been funded by a for-profit

organization. IS

If most of the scientists funded by industry are not consciously

cheating, what is causing the funding bias? Clinical trials of new drugs are complicated by many factors, including length of treat­ ment, severity of the patients' disease, side effects, dosage of new drug, and variability in the patients being treated. The interpretation of results is rarely clear and unambiguous; that is why all scientific

50 CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

studies require replication and refinement and why most findings are open co legitimate differences of interpretation. If you are an im­ partial scientist and your research turns up an ambiguous but wor­ risome finding about your new drug, perhaps what seems like a slightly increased risk of heart attack or stroke. you might say, "This is troubling; let's investigate: further. Is this increased risk a fluke, was it due (0 the drug, or were the pariems unusually vulnerable?"

However, if you are motivated (0 show that your new drug is ef­ fective and benee than older drugs. you will be inclined to downplay your misgivings and resolve me ambiguity in the company's favor. "Ie's nothing. There's no need to look further." "Those patients were already quite sick, anyway." "Let's assume the drug is safe until proven otherwise." This was the reasoning of the Merck-funded in­ vestigators who had been studying the company's multibillion-dollar painkiller drug Vioxx before evidence of the drug's risks was pro­ duced by independent scientists. w;

You will also be motivated to seek only confirming evidence for

your hypothesis and your sponsor's wishes. In 1998, a team of scien­ tists reported in the distinguished medical journal the Lancet thar they had found a positive correlation between autism and childhood vaccines. Naturally, this study generated enormous alarm among parents and caused many to StOP vaccinating their children. Six years later, ten of the thirteen scientists involved in this study retracted that particular result and revealed that the lead author, Andrew Wakefield, had had a conflict of interest he had £ailed to disclose to the journal: He was conducting research on behalf of lawyers repre­ senting parents of auristic children. Wakefield had been paid more than $800,000 to determine whether there were grounds for pursu­ ing legal action, and he gave the study's "yes" answer to the lawyers before publication. "We judge that all this information would have been material to our decision-making about the paper's suitability, credibility, and validity for publication," wrote Richard Horton, ed­ iror of the Lancet.17

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but 1101 by mr) 51

Wakefield, however, did not sign the retraction and could not see a problem. "Conflict of interest," he wrote in his defense, " is created when involvement in one project potentially could, or actively does, interfere with the objective and dispassionate assessment of the processes or outcomes of anomer project. We cannot accept that the knowledge that affected children were later to pursue litigation, fol­ lowing their clinical referral and investigation, inRuenced the con­ tent or tone of [our earlier] paper . . . . We emphasise mat this was nOt a scientific paper but a clinical report."1B Oh. It wasn't a scientific paper, anyway.

Of course we do not know Andrew Wakefield's real motives or thoughts about his research. But we suspecr that he, like Stanley Berem in our opening story, convinced himself that he was acting honorably, that he was doing good work, and that he was uninflu­ enced by having been paid $800,000 by the lawyers. Unlike truly independent sciemists, however, he had no incemive to look for dis­ confirming evidence of a correlation between vaccines and autism, and every incentive to overlook other explanations. In fact, five major studies have found no causal relationship between autism and the preservative in the vaccines (which was discontinued in 2001, with no anend:mt decrease in amism rates), The correlation is co­ incidental, a result of the fact that aucism is typically diagnosed in children at the same age they are vaccinated.19

The Gift rhJt Keeps on Giving

Physicians, like scientists, want to believe their imegrity cannot be compromised. Yet every time physicians accept a fee or other incen­ tive for performing certain testS and procedures, for channeling some of their patiems into clinical trials, or for prescribing a new, ex­ pensive drug that is not better or safer than an older one, dtey are balancing their patients' welfare against their own financial concerns.

52 CAROL TAVRIS lind ElLIOT ARONSON

Their blind SpOt helps them tip the balance in their own favor. and then justify it: "If a pharmaceutical company wants to give us pens,

norepads. calendars, lunches. honoraria, or small consulting fees, why not? We can't he bought by rrinkecs and pizzas." According to surveys, physicians regard small gifts as being ethically more accept­ able than large gifts. The American Medical Association agrees, ap­ proving of gift-taking from pharmaceutical representatives as long as no single gifr is worth much more man $100. The evidence shows,

however. that most physicians are influenced even more by small gifts than by hig ones.lO Drug companies know this, which might have something {O do with their increased spending on marketing to physicians, from $12.1 billion in 1999 to $22 billion in 2003. That's a lot of trinkecs.

The reason Big Pharma spends so much on small gifts is well known [Q marketers, iobbyiscs, and social psychologists: Being given a gift evokes an implicit desire to reciprocate. The Fuller Brush sales­

people understood this principle decades ago, when they pioneered the foot-in-the-door technique: Give a housewife a little brush as a gift, and she won't slam the door in your face. And once she hasn't slammed the door in your face, she will be more inclined to invite you in, and eventually to buy your expensive brushes. Robert Cial­ dini, who has spent many years studying influence and persuasion techniques, systematically observed Hare Krishna advocates raise money at airports.21 Asking weary travelers for a donation wasn't working; the Krishnas just made the travelers mad at them. And so the Krishnas came up with a better idea: They would approach tar­ get travelers and press a Rower into their hands or pin the flower to their jackets. If the target refused the flower and tried to give it back, the Krishna would demur and say, "It is our gift to you." Only then did the Krishna ask for a donation. This time the request was likely

to be accepted, because the gift of the flower had established a feel­ ing of indebtedness and obligation in the traveler. How to repay the

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 53

gift? With a small donation . . . and perhaps the purchase of a charming, overpriced edition of the Bhagavad Gita.

Were the travelers aware of the power of reciprocity to affect their behavior? Nor at all. But once reciprocity kicks in, self-justification

wiIJ follow: "I've always wanted a copy of the Bhagavad Gita; what is it, exactly?" The power of the Rower is unconscious. "Ie's only a Hower," the traveler says. "It's only a pizza," the medical resident says. "It's only a small donation that we need to have this educational symposium," the physician says. Yet the power of the Hower is one reason that the amount of contact doctors have with pharmaceutical representatives is positively correlated with the cost of rhe drugs the

doctors later prescribe. "That rep has been awfully persuasive about that new drug; I might as well try it; my patients might do well on it." Once you take the gift, no matter how small, the process starts. You will feel the urge to give something back, even if it's only, at first, your attemion, your willingness to lisren, your sympathy for the giver. Eventually, you will become more willing to give your pre­

scription, your ruling, your vote, Your behavior changes, but, thanks to blind SPOtS and self-justification, your view of your intellectual and professional integrity remains the same.

Carl Elliott, a bioethicist and philosopher who also has an MD. has written extensively about the ways that small gifts entrap their re­ cipients. His brother Hal, a psychiatrist, told him how he ended up on the speakers bureau of a large pharmaceutical company: First they

asked him to give a talk about depression to a community group. Why not, he thought; it wouJd be a public service. Next they asked him to speak on the same subject at a hospital. Next they began making suggestions about the contenr of his talk, urging rum to speak not about depression, but about antidepressams. Then they told him they could get him on a national speaking circuit, "where the real money is." Then they asked him to lecture about their own

new antidepressant. Looking back, Hal told his brother:

54 CAROl. TAVRIS gild ELLIOT ARONSON

It's kind of like you're a woman at a party, and your boss says to you, "Look, do me a favor: be nice (0 this guy over there." And you

see the guy is nOt bad-looking, and you're unattached. so you say,

"Why noc? r can be nice." Soon you find yourself on the way to a Bangkok brothel in the cargo hold of an unmarked plane. And you

say, "Whoa, this is not what I agreed to." But then you have to ask yourself: "When did the prostitution actually stan? Wasn't it at

that parcy?"U

Nowadays. even professional ethicists are going (0 the party: The watchdogs are being tamed by the foxes they were trained to catch. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries are offering consulting fees. comracts, and honoraria to bioerhicists. the very people who write about. among orner things. (he dangers of conflicts of interest between physicians and drug companies. Carl Elliott has described his colleagues' justifications for taking the money. "Defenders of corporate consultation often bristle at the suggestion that accepting

money from industry compromises their impartiality or makes them any less objective a moral critic," he writes. " 'Objectivity is a myth: [bioethicist Evan} DeRenzo told me, marshaling arguments from feminist philosophy to bolster her cause. 'I don't think mere is a per­ son alive who is engaged in an activity who has absolutely no inter­ est in how it wil1 (Urn Out.' n There's a clever dissonance-reducing claim for you-"perfect objectivity is impossible anyway, so I might as well accept that consulting fee.n

Thomas Donaldson, director of the ethics program at the Whar­ ton School, justified this practice by comparing ethics consultants

to independent accounting firms that a company might hire to audit their finances. Why not audit their ethics? This stab at self­ justification didn't get past Carl Elliot[ eimer. "Ethical analysis does

not look anything like a financial audit,n he says. An accounram's transgression can be detected and verified, but how do you detect the transgressions of an ethics consuham? "How do you tell the differ-

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me) 55

ence between an ethics consuhant who has changed her mind for le­ gitimate reasons and one who has changed her mind for money? How do you disdnguish between a consultant who has been hired for his imegrity and one who has been hired because he suppons what the company plans to do?".u Still, Elliott says wryly, perhaps we can be grateful that the AMA's Council on Ethical and Judicial Af­ fairs designed an initiative to educate doctors about the ethical prob­ lems involved in accepting gifts from the drug industry. That iniciacive was funded by $590,000 in gifts from Eli Lilly and Com­ pany; GlaxoSmirhKline, Inc.; Pfizer, Inc.; U. S. Pharmaceutical Group; AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals; Bayer Corporation; Procter & Gamble; and Wyeth-Ayerst Pharmaceutical.

A Sl ip of the Brain

AI C3mpanis was a very nice man, even a sweet man, bur also a flawed man who made one colossal mistake in his 81 years on earth-a mistake that would come to define him forevermore.

-sports writer Mike Linwin, on Campanis's death in 1998

On April 6, 1987, Mghtlint devoted its whole show to the fortieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson's Major League dehut. Ted Koppel interviewed N Campanis, general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had been part of the Dodger organization since 1943 and who had been Robinson's teammate on the Montreal Royals in 1946. That year, he punched a bigoted player who had insulted Robinson and, subsequently, championed the admission of black players into Major League BasebaJl. And then, in talking with Kop­ pel, Campanis put his brain on automatic drive. Koppel asked him, as an old friend of Jackie Robinson's, why there wert no black man­ agers, general managers. at owners in baseball. Campanis was, at first, evasive-you have to pay your dues by working in the minors;

56 CAROL TAVRIS lind ELLIOT ARONSON

there's not much pay while you're working your way up-but Kop­ pel pressed him:

Koppel- Yeah, hut you know in your heart ofhearrs . . . you know that that's a lot of baloney. I mean, there are a lot of black players, there are a lor of great black baseball men who would dearly love to be in managerial positions, and 1 guess what I'm really asking you is to, you know, peel it away a little

bit. JUSt tell me why you mink it is. Is there sdll that much prejudice in baseball today?

Campanis: No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager.

Koppel, Do you really believe that? Campanis: Well, I don't say that all of (hem, but they cer­

tainly are shorr. How many quarterbacks do you have? How

many pitchers do you have that are black?

Two days after this interview and the public uproar it caused, the Dodgers fired Campanis. A year later, he said he had been "wiped out" when the interview took place and dlerefore not emirely himself.

Who was the real AI Campanis? A bigot or a victim of political correctness? Neither. He was a man who liked and respected the black players he knew, who defended Jackie Robinson when doing so was neither fashionable nor expected, and who had a blind SpOt: He thought that blacks were perfecdy able ro be great players, merely not smart enough ro be managers. And in his heart of hearts, he rold Koppel, he didn't see what was wrong with that attitude; "{ don't be­ lieve it's prejudice," he said. Campanis was not lying or being coy. But, as general manager, he was in a position to recommend the hir­ ing of a black manager, and his blind spot kept him from even con­ sidering that possibility.

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but nOt by In,,) 51

Just as we can identify hypocrisy in everyone bur ourselves. just as ir's obvious that others can be inRuenced by money bur nor our­ selves. so we can see prejudices in everyone else but ourselves. Thanks ro our ego-preserving blind SpOts, we cannot possibly have a preju­ dice, which is an irrational or mean-spirited feeling about all mem­ bers of another group. Because we are not irrational or mean spirited, any negative feelings we have about anomer group are jus­ tified; our dislikes are rational and well founded. It's theirs we need to suppress. Like the Hasids pounding on the Unprejudiced door at the Museum of Tolerance, we are blind to our own prejudices.

Prejudices emerge from {he disposition of the human mind to perceive and process information in caregories. "Categories" is a nicer. more neutral word than "stereotypes." bur ie's the same thing. Cognitive psychologists consider stereotypes to be energy-saving de­ vices thar allow us to make efficiem decisions on the basis of past experience; help us quickly process new information and retrieve memories; make sense of real differences be[Ween groups; and pre­ dict, often with considerable accuracy, how others will behave or how they think.24 We wisely rely on stereotypes and the quick infor­ mation they give us to avoid danger, approach possible new friends, choose one school or job over another, or decide that that person across this crowded room will be the love of our lives.

That's the upside. The downside is that stereotypes Ranen out differences within the category we are looking at and exaggerate dif­ ferences he[Ween categories. Red Seaters and Blue Staters often see each other as nonoverlapping categories, but plenty of Kansans do want evolution taught in their schools, and plenty of Californians disapprove of gay marriage. All of us recognize variation within our own gender. parry. ethnicity, or nation. bur we are inclined to gen­ eralize from a few encounters with people of other caregories and lump them all together as thmz. This habit starts awfully early. Social psychologist Marilynn Brewer, who has been studying the nature of stereotypes for many years, once reported that her daughter returned

58 CAROL TAVRIS Qnd ELUOT ARONSON

from kindergarten complaining that "boys are crybabies. "IS The child's evidence was thac she had seen cwo boys crying on their first day away from home. Brewer, ever the scientist, asked whether there

hadn't also been little girls who cried. "Oh yes," said her daughter. "But only somegiris cry. I didn't cry."

Brewer's litde girl was already dividing the world, as everyone does. inco us and them. Us is the most fundamemal social category in [he brain's organizing system, and it's hardwired. Even the collec­ tive pronouns us and them are powerful emotional signals. In one experimenc, in which participants believed their verbal skills were being tested, nonsense syllables such as xeh, yof. fa), or wuh were ran­ domly paired with either an in-group word (us, we, or ours), an out­ group word {them, they, or theirs}, or, for a control measure, another pronoun (such as he, hers, or yours). Everyone then had to rate the syllables on how pleasant or unpleasant they were. You might won­ der why anyone would have an emorional feeling toward a nonsense word like yofor mink wuh is cuter than laj. Yet participants liked me nonsense syUables more when they had been linked with in-group words man with any ocher word.Ui Not one of rhem guessed why; not one was aware of how the words had been paired.

As soon as people have created a category called us, however. they invariably perceive everybody else as not-us. The specific con rent of us can change in a flash: It's us sensible midwesterners against you Rashy coastal types; ie's us Prius owners against the rest of you gas guzzlers; it's us Boston Red Sox fans against you Los Angeles Angels fans (ro pick a random example mar happens ro describe me twO of us during baseball season). "Us-ness" can be manufactured in a minure in rhe laborarory. as Henri Tajfel and his colleagues dem­ onstrared in a classic experiment with British schoolboysY Tajfel showed the boys slides with varying numbers of dots on them and asked me boys to guess how many dots mere were. He arbitrarily told some of them that they were overestimators and others that they were underestimators, and then asked all the boys ro work on an-

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but no[ by me) 59

other task. In this phase. they had a chance to give points to other boys identified as overestimators or underestimators. AJthough each boy worked alone in his cubicle, almost every single one assigned more points to boys he thought were like him, an overestimator or an underestimaror. As the boys emerged from their rooms, the other kids asked them "Which were you?" The answers received cheers from those like them and boos from the others.

Obviously, certain categories of us are more crucial to our identi� ties than the kind of car we drive or the number of dots we can guess on a slide-gender, sexuality, religion, politics, ethnicity, and nation� aliry, for starters. Without feeling attached ro groups that give our lives meaning, identity, and purpose, we would suffer the intolerable sensation mat we were loose marbles floating in a random universe. Therefore, we will do what it takes to preserve these attachments. Evolutionary psychologists argue that ethnocemrism-the belief that our own culture, nation, or religion is superior to all others-aids survival by suengrhening our bonds ro our primary social groups and thus increasing our willingness to work. fight. and occasionally die for them. When things are going well, people feel pretty toleram of other cultures and religions-they even feel pretty tolerant of the other sex!-but when they are angry. anxious. or threatened. the default position is to activate their blind spocs. W( have the human qualities of intelligence and deep emotions, but they are dumb, they are cryba­ bies, they don't know the meaning of love, shame, grief, or remorse.28

The very act of thinking that they are not as smart or reasonable as we are makes us feel closer ro others who are like us. But, JUSt as crucially, it allows us to justify how we treat thmz. The usual way of thinking is that stereotyping causes discrimination: AJ Campanis, believing that blacks lack the "necessities" to be managers, refuses ro hire one. But the theory of cognitive dissonance shows that the path becween attitudes and action runs in both directions. Often it is dis­ crimination that evokes the self-justifying stereotype: AJ Campanis. lacking the will or guts to make the case to the Dodger organization

60 CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

for being the first ro hire a black manager, justifies his Failure to act by convincing himself that blacks couldn't do the job anyway. In the same way, if we have enslaved members of another group, deprived them of decem educations or jobs, kept them from encroaching on our professional turfs, or denied chern their human rights. then we evoke stereotypes about them to justify OUf actions. By convincing ourselves that they are unworthy. umeachable, incompetent. inher­ ently math-challenged, immoral, sinful, scupid, or even subhuman, we avoid feeling guilty Of unethicaJ abour how we treat them. And we certainly avoid feeling that we are prejudiced. "Why. we even like some of those people. as long as they know their place. which, by the

way. is not here, in our club. our university, our job. our neighbor­ hood. In shon, we invoke stereotypes to justify behavior that would otherwise make us feel bad about the kind of person we are or the kind of country we live in.

Why, though. given that everyone thinks in categories. do only

some people hold bitter. passionate prejudices toward other groups? Al Campanis was nOt prejudiced in terms of having a strong emo­ tional amipathy toward blacks; we suspect he could have been ar­ gued out of his notion that black players could not be good managers. A stereotype might bend or even shatter under the weight of disconfirming information. bur the hallmark of prejudice is that it is impervious to reason. experience. and counterexample. In his brilliam book The Nature of Prejudiu, written more man fifty years ago, social psychologist Gordon Allport described me responses characteristic of a prejudiced man when confromed with evidence contradicting his beliefs:

Mr. X: The trouble with Jews is mat they only take care of their own group.

Mr. Y: But me record of the Community Chest campaign shows that they give more generously. in proportion to their

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but nOI by mt) 61

numbers, to me general charities of me community, than do non-Jews.

Mr. X: That shows mey are always trying to buy favor and intrude into Christian affairs. They mink of nothing but money; that is why there are so many Jewish bankers.

Mr. 1: Bur a recent study shows that the percentage of Jews in the banking business is negligible, far smaller than me per­ centage of non-Jews.

Mr. X: Thar's just it; they don't go in for respectable busi­

ness; they are only in me movie business or run night dubs.l�

Allport nailed Mr. X's reasoning perfectly: Mr. X doesn't even try to respond to Mr. Y's evidence; he just slides along to another reason for his dislike of Jews. Once people have a prejudice, JUSt as once they have a political ideology, mey do not easily drop it, even if me evidence indisputably comradiC[s a core juscification for it. Rather, they come up with anomer justification [0 preserve meir belief or course of action. Suppose our reasonable Mr. Y told you mat insects were a gtear source of protein and that the sensational new chef at the Slugs & Bugs Diner is offering delicious entrees involving pureed caterpillars. Will you rush our to try chis culinary adventure? If you have a prejudice against eating insects, probably not, even if this chef has made the front page of me Nnv York Tim�s Dining Our section. You will, like the bigoted Mr. X, find another reason to jusrify it. "Ugh," you would telJ Mr. Y. "insects are ugly and squishy." "Sure," he says. 'Tell me agajn why you eat lobster and raw oysters?"

Once people acquire a prejudice, therefore, it's hard to dislodge. As the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, "Trying to edu­ cate a bigot is like shining light into the pupil of an eye-it con­ stricts." Most people will put a lot of mencaJ energy into preserving their prejudice rather than having to change it, often by waving away disconfirming evidence as "exceptions thac prove che rule." {What

62 CAROL TAVRIS I1l1d ELLIOT ARONSON

would disprove the rule, we wonder?) The line "Bur some of my best friends are . . . ," well deserving of the taunts it now gets, has per· sisred because it is such an efficient way of resolving the dissonance

created when a prejudice runs headlong into an exception. When Elliot moved to Minneapolis years ago to reach at the University of Minnesota, a neighbor said to him, "You're Jewish? But you're so much nicer chan . . . n She Stopped. "Than what?" he asked. "Than what I expected," she finished lamely. By admirting that Elliot didn't fit her stereotype. she was able to feel open-minded and generous, while maintaining her basic prejudice toward the whole category of Jews. In her mind she was even paying him a compliment; he's so much nicer than all (hose others of his . . . race.

Jeffrey Sherman and his colleagues have done a series of experi­ menes that demonstrate the effort that highly prejudiced people are prepared to PUt into maintaining consonance becween their preju­ dice and information that is inconsistent with it. They actually pay more attention to this inconsistent information than to consistent

information, because, like Mr. X and the Minnesota neighbor, they need to figure ou{ how to explain away the dissonant evidence. In one experiment, (straighc) students were asked. to evaluate a gay man, "Roben," who was described as doing eight things that were consistent with the gay stereotype (e.g., he had studied interpretive dance) and eight things that were inconsistent (e.g., he had watched a football game one Sunday). Anti-gay participants twisted the evidence about Robert and later described him as being far more "feminine" than unbiased students did, thereby maintaining their prejudice. To resolve the dissonance caused by the inconsistent faces, they explained them away as being an artifact of the situation. Sure, Robert watched a football game, but only because his cousin Fred was visiting.)O

These days, mOSt Americans who are unashamedly prejudiced know better chan ro say so, except to a secure, like-minded audience, given that many people live and work in environments where they

MISTAKES WERE MADE (bul nOI by me) 63

can be slapped on the wrist, publicly humiliated, or sacked for say· ing anything that smacks of an "ism." However, JUSt as it takes men­

tal effort [0 maintain a prejudice despite conflicting informacion, it

takes mental effort ro suppress those negative feelings. Social psy.

chologists Chris Crandall and Amy Eshelman, reviewing the huge research literacure on prejudice, found thar whenever people are

emotionally depleted-when they are sleepy, frustrated, angry, anx­ ious, drunk, or stressed-they become more willing co express their real prejudices toward another group. When Mel Gibson was ar­

rested for drunk driving and launched into an anti-Semitic tirade, he

claimed, in his inevitable statement of apology the nexr day, thar " I said things thar I do nor believe to be true and which are despicable.

I am deeply ashamed of everything I said . . . . I apologize for any be­ havior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state." Translation: It wasn'r me, if was the booze. Nice try. bur the evidence shows clearly

that while inebriation makes it easier for people to reveal their prej­ udices, it doesn't pur those attitudes in their minds in the firsr place.

Therefore. when people apologize by saying. "I don't really believe what I said; 1 was cired/worried/angry/drunk"-or, as AI Campanis

pur ie, "wiped our"-we can be pretty sure they really do believe it. But most people are unhappy about believing it, and thar creates

dissonance: "I dislike those people" collides with an equally strong

conviction chat it is morally or socially wrong to say so. People who feel this dissonance. Crandall and Eshelman suggest, will eagerly

reach for any self-justification thar allows rhem to express rheir [Cue

beliefs yer continue co feel that [hey are moral and good. "Justin.· euion," they explain, "undoes suppression. it provides cover. and ir protects a sense of egalitarianism and a nonprejudiced self-image.")1 No wonder ir is such a popular dissonance reducer.

For example, in one typical experiment, white students were cold they would be inflicting e1ecuic shock on another student. the

"learner," whom they knew was white or African American, as part of an apparent study of biofeedback. The students initially gave a

64 CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

lower intensity of shock to black learners than to white ones-reflect­ ing a desire, perhaps, to show they were not prejudiced. Then the stu­ dents overheard the learner making derogacory comments about them, which, naturally. made them angry. Now. given another oppor­ tunity [0 inflict electric shock. the students who were working with a black learner administered higher levels of shock than did students who were working with a white learner. The same result appears in scudies of how English-speaking Canadians behave coward French­ speaking Canadians, straights toward homosexuals. non-Jewish stu­ dents toward Jews, and men toward women.ll Parcicipants successfully control their negative fee lings under normal conditions, but as soon as they become angry or frustrated, or meie self-esteem wobbles. they ex­ press their prejudice directly because now they can justify it: "I'm not a bad or prejudiced person, but hey-he inswted me!"

In this way, ptejudice is the energy of ethnocentrism. It lurks there, napping, until ethnocentrism summons it to do its direy work.

justifying the occasional bad things we good people want to do. For example. in the nineteenth-century American Wesc, Chinese immi­ grants were hired to work in the gold mines. potentially raking jobs from white laborers. The white·run newspapers fomented prejudice against them, describing the Chinese as "depraved and vicious." "gross glu({ons." "bloodrhirscy and inhuman." Yet only a decade later. when the Chinese were willing to accept the dangerous, arduous work of building the transcontinental railroad-work that white laborers were unwilling to undertake-public prejudice toward them sub­ sided, replaced by the opinion that the Chinese were sober, indusrri· ous, and law-abiding. "They are equal (Q the best white men." said the railroad tycoon Charles Crocker. "They are very crusty. very in­ telligent and they live up to their contracts." After the completion of the railroad. jobs again became scarce, and the end of the Civil War brought an influx of war veterans into an already tight job market. Anri·Chinese prejudice returned. with the press now describing the Chinese as "criminal," "conniving," "crafty," and "stupid."j.l

MISTAKES WERE MADE (b(lt not by me) 65

Prejudice justifies the ill treatment we want to inflict on others, and we want to inflicr ill treatment on others because we don't like rhem. And why don't we like them? Because they are competing with us for jobs in a scarce job marker. Because their presence makes us doubt that we have the one [Cue religion. Because we want to pre­ serve our positions of status, power, and privilege. Because we need to feel we are bener than somebody. Because our country is waging war against them. Because we are uncomfortable with their customs, especially their sexual cUStoms, those promiscuous pervertS. Because

they refuse to assimilate into our culture. Because they are trying too hard to assimilate into our culture.

By understanding prejudice as our self-justifying servant, we can bener see why some prejudices are so hard to eradicate: They allow people to justify and defend their most important social identities­ their race, their religion, their sexuality-while reducing the disso­ nance between "I am a good person" and "I really don't like those people." Fortunately, we can also better understand the conditions

under which prejudices diminish: when the economic competition

subsides, when the truce is signed, when the profession is integrated, when they become more familiar and comfortable, when we are in a position to realize that they aren't so different from us.

o o o

"In normal circumstances," wrote Hider's henchman AJbert Speer in his memoirs, "people who turn their backs on reality are soon set straight by the mockery and criticism of those around them, which makes mem aware they have lost credibility. In the Third Reich there were no such correctives, especially for those who belonged to the upper Stratum. On the contrary, every self-deception was multiplied as in a hall of distorting mirrors, becoming a repeatedly confirmed picture of a fantastical dream world which no longer bore any rela­

tionship to the grim outside world. In those mirrors I could see norhing bur my own face reproduced many times over.":M

66 CAROL TAVRIS arid ELLIOT ARONSON

Given [hat everyone has some blind SpOts, our greaten hope of self�correc[ion lies in making sure we are not operating in a haJl of mirrors, in which all we see are distorted reflections of our own de­ sires and convictions. We need a few trusted naysayers in our lives, critics who are willing ro puncture our protective bubble of self­ justifications and yank us back to reality if we veer too far off. This is especially important for people in positions of power.

According (0 historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Abraham Lincoln was one of the rare presidentS who understood the imporrance of surrounding himself with people willing to disagree with him. Lin­ coln created a cabinet that included four of his political opponents, three of whom had run against him for the Republican nomination in 1860 and who felt humiliated, shaken, and angry to have lose to a relatively unknown backwoods lawyer: WiJliam H. Seward (whom Lincoln made secretary of state), Salmon P. Chase (secretary of the treasury), and Edward Bates (anorney general). Although all shared Lincoln's goal of preserving the Union and ending slavery, this "team of rivals" (as Goodwin calls them) disagreed with one another furi­ ously on how to do it. Early in the Civil War, Lincoln was in deep trouble politically. He had to placate not only the Northern aboli­ tionists who wanted escaped slaves emancipated, but also the slave owners from border states like Missouri and Kentucky who could have joined the Confederacy at any time, which would have been a disaster for the Union. As a result of the ensuing debates with his ad­ visers, who had differing ideas about how to keep both sides in line, Lincoln avoided the illusion that he had group consensus on every decision. He was able to consider alternatives and eventually enlise the respect and support of his erstwhile competitors.))

As long as we are convinced that we are completely objective, above corruption, and immune to prejudice, most of us from time

to time will find ourselves on our own personal road to St. An­ drews-and some of us will be on that plane to Bangkok. Jeb Stu­ art Magruder, whose entrapment into the political corruption of the

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but 1101 by me) 67

Watergate scandal we described in me previous chapter, was blinded by his beliefin the importance of doing whatever it took, even if that involved illegal actions, to defeat "them," Nixon's political enemies. But, when caught, Magruder had me guts to face himself. It's a shoclcing, excruciating moment for anyone. like catching sight of yourself in the mirror and suddenly realizing that a huge purple growth has appeared on your forehead. Magruder could have done what most of us would be inclined to do: Get some heavy makeup and say. "What purple growth?" But he resisted me impulse. In me final analysis, Magruder said, no one forced him or me others to break the law. "We could have objected to what was happening or resigned in protest," he wrote.X> "Instead, we convinced ourselves that wrong was right, and plunged ahead.

'There is no way to justify burglary, wiretapping, perjury, and all the other elements of me cover-up . . . . I and others rationalized ille­ gal actions on the grounds of 'politics as usual' or 'intelligence gath­ ering' or 'national security.' We were completely wrong. and only

when we have admitted that and paid the public price of our mis­ rakes can we expect the public at large to have much faith in our gov­ ernment or our political system."

C H A PTER 3

o o o

Memory, the Self-justifying Historian

What we . . . refer to confidently as memory . . . is really a form of

storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with [he telling.

-memoirist and editor William Maxwell

MANY YEAf�S AGO, DURING the Jimmy Carter administration, Gore Vidal was on the Today show being interviewed by Tom

Brokaw, the host. According to Vidal, Brokaw started by saying. "You've written a lor about bisexuality . . . " bur Vidal Cut him off, say­ ing. "Tom, let me rell you abom these morning shows. h's (00 early to talk about sex. Nobody wantS to hear about it at this hour, or if they do, they are doing it. Don't bring it up." "Yeah, uh, but Gore, uh, you have wrinen a lot about bisex . . . " Vidal interrupted, saying that his new book had nothing to do with bisexuality and he'd rather talk about politics. Brokaw tried once more, and VidaJ again de· dined, saying, "Now lee's taJk about Carter . . . . What is he doing

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but nOI by ,ut) 69

with these Brazilian diccawrs pretending they are freedom-loving, democratic leaders?" And so the conversation mmed to Carter for the rest of (he interview. Several years later, when Brokaw had become anchor of the Nightly Nws, Time did a feature on him, asking him about any especially difficult interviews he had conducted. Brokaw singled Out the conversation with Gore Vidal: "'I wanced to talk poli­ tics," Brokaw recalled, "and he wanted (0 talk about bisexuality."

It was a "(Otal reversal.» Vidal said, "(0 make me the villain of the S(Ory.»1

Was it Tom Brokaw's intencion to rum Gore Vidal inco the vil­ lain of the story? Was Brokaw lying. as Vidal implied? That is un­ likely. After all, Brokaw chose the s(Ory to tell the Time reporter; he could have selected any difficult interview in his long career (0 talk aboUl, rather than one that required him to embellish or lie; indeed, for all he knew, the reporter would check the original transcript. Brokaw made the reversal of who-said-what unconsciously, not to make Vidal look bad, but to make himselflook good. As the new an­ chor of the Nightly Nws, it would have been unseemly for him to have been asking questions about bisexuality; better to believe (and remember) rhar he had always chosen rhe intcllecrual high road of politics.

When [Wo people produce entirely different memories of the same evenr, observers usually assume that one of them is lying. Of course, some people do invent or embellish stories to manipulate or deceive their audiences, as James Frey norably did with his bestseller A Million Little Pieces. But most of us, most of the time, are neither telling the whole truth nor intentionally deceiving. We aren't lying; we are self-justifying. All of us, as we tell our stories, add details and omit inconvenient facts; we give the tale a small, self-enhancing spin; that spin goes over so well that the next time we add a slightly more dramatic embellishment; we justify that little white lie as making the story better and clearer-until what we remember may not have happened that way. or even may not have happened at all.

70 CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

in chis way, memory becomes QUf personal, live-in, self-justifying

historian. Social psychologist Anthony Greenwald once described the self as being ruled by a "tOtalitarian ego" that ruthlessly destroys

informadon it doesn't wanr to hear and. like all fascist leaders, rewrites hismry from the standpoint of the victor.2 But whereas a to­ raIicarian ruler rewrites hinory co put one over on future generations, the rotalitarian ego rewrites history to put one over on itself. History

is wrinen by the vicmcs, and when we write our own histories, we do so just as the conquerors of nations do: to justify our actions and

make us look and feel good about ourselves and what we did or what we failed to do. If misrakes were made. memory helps us remember

that they were made by someone else. If we were there. we were JUSt

innocent bystanders. At me simplest level. memory smoothes out the wrinkles of dis­

sonance by enabling the confirmation bias to hum along. selectively

causing us to forger discrepant. disconfirming information about be­

liefs we hold dear. For example. if we were perfectly rational beings,

we would try to remember smarr. sensible ideas and not bother tax­ ing our minds by remembering foolish ones. But dissonance theory predicts that we will conveniently forget good arguments made by an opponent just as we forget foolish arguments made by our own side.

A silly argument in fuvor of our own position arouses dissonance because it raises doubts about the wisdom of mat position or the in­ tell.igence of the people who agree with it. Likewise. a sensible argu­

ment by an opponent also arouses dissonance because it raises the

possibility thar the other side, God forbid. may be right or have a point to take seriously. Because a silly argument on our side and a good argument on the orner guy's side both arouse dissonance. the theory predicts that we will either not learn these arguments very

well or will forget them quickly. And that is JUSt what Edward Jones

and RH(a Kohler showed in a classic experiment on attitudes toward desegregation in North Carolina in 1958.J Each side tended to re­ member the plausible arguments agreeing with their own position

MISTAKES WERE MADE (but nOt by mt) 71

and the implausible arguments agreeing with the opposing position;

each side forgot the implausible arguments for their view and the plausible arguments for me opposition.

Of course, our memories can be remarkably detailed and accurate, too. We remember first kisses and favorite teachers. We remember family stories, movies, dates, baseball stats, childhood humiliations and triumphs. We remember the central events of our life stories. But when we do misremember, our mistakes aren't random. The everyday, dissonance-reducing distortions of memory help us make sense of the world and our place in it, protecting our decisions and beliefs. The distortion is even more powerful when it is motivated by the need to keep our self-concept consistent; by the wish to be right; by the need to preserve self-esteem; by the need to excuse failures or bad decisions; or by the need to find an explanation, preferably one safely in the past, of current problems.· Confabulation, distortion, and plain forgetting are the foot soldiers of memory, and they are summoned to the front lines when the totalitarian ego wants to pro­

tect US from the pain and embarrassment of actions we took that are dissonant with our core self-images: "I did that?" That is why mem­ ory researchers love to quote Nietzsche: "'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that,' says my pride, and remains in­ exorable. Eventually-memory yields."

The Biases of Memory

One of us (Carol) had a favorite children's book, James Thurber's The Wontkrful O, which she remembers her father giving her when she was a child. "A band of pirates takes over an island and forbids the locaJs to speak any word or use any object containing the letter 0," Carol recalls. "I have a vivid memory of my father reading The Wontkrfol 0 and our laughing together at the thought of shy Ophe­ lia Oliver saying her name without its a's. I remember trying valiantly,

72 CAROL TAVRIS And ElliOT ARONSON

along with (he invaded islanders, to guess the fourth 0 word that must never be lost (after love. hope. and valor), and my farner's teas· ing guesses: Oregon? Orangutan? Ophthalmologisr? And then, not long ago, I found my first edition of The Wonderfol O. ft had been published in 1957. one year after my father's death. I stared at that date in disbelief and shock. Obviously, someone else gave me that book, someone else read it to me, someone else laughed with me about Phelia Liver, someone else wamed me [0 understand that the fourth a was freedom. Someone lost CO my recoileccion."

This small story illustrates [hree important things about memory: how disorieming if is to realize that a vivid memory, one full of emo­ tion and derail, is indisputably wrong; that even being absolutely, positively sure a memory is accurate does not mean that it is; and how errors in memory support our current feelings and beliefs. "I have a set of beliefs about my father," Carol observes. "the warm man he was, me funny and devoted dad who loved to read to me and take me rummaging through libraries, the lover of wordplay. So it

was logical for me to assume-no, [Q remember-that he was me one who read me The Wondafol 0."

The metaphors of memory fit our times and technology. Cen­ turies ago, philosophers compared memory to a soft wax tablet that would preserve anything imprinted on it. With the advent of the priming press, people began to think of memory as a library that stores events and facts for later reuievaJ. (Those of us of a certain age still think of it mat way, muttering about where we "filed" infor­ mation i n our cluttered memal cabinets.) With the inventions of movies and tape recorders, people started thinking of memory as a video camera, clicking on at the momem of birth and automatically recording every momem thereafter. Nowadays we think of memory in computer terms, and although some of us wish for more RAM, we assume that just about everything that happens to us is "saved." Your brain might not choose to screen all those memories. but they

MISTAKES WERE. MADE (bur nOt by Tn!') 13

are in rhere, jusr wairing for you co retrieve them, bring our the pop­ corn, and watch.

These metaphors of memory are popular, reassuring, and wrong. Memories are nor buried somewhere in the brain, as if they were bones at an archeologica1 sire; nor can we uproor rhem, as if they were radishes; nor, when they are dug up, are they perfecrly pre­ served. We do not remember everything that happens to us; we se­ leet only highlighcs. (If we didn'r forget, our minds could nor work efficiently, because they would be cluttered with mental junk-the temperature lasr Wednesday, a boring conversation on the bus, every phone number we ever dialed.) Moreover, recovering a memory is not at all like retrieving a file or replaying a tape; it is like watching a few unconnecred frames of a film and then figuring out whar the rest of rhe scene must have been like. We may reproduce poetry, jokes, and other kinds of informacion by rote, but when we remem­ ber complex information we shape it co fit it into a story line.

Because memory is reconsrructive, ir is subject to confabula­

tion-confusing an evenr rhat happened to someone else with one that happened to you, or coming to believe that you remember something rhar never happened at all. In reconsuucring a memory, people draw on many sources. When you remember your fifth birth­ day parry, you may have a direct recollection of your younger brother putting his finger in the cake and spoiling it for you, bur you will also incorporate information rhat you got later from family sto­ ries, photographs, home videos, and birthday parties you've seen on television. You weave all these elemencs together inro one integrated accounr. If someone hypnotizes you and regresses you to your fifth birthday parry. you'll [ell a lively story about if that will feel terribly real (0 you, but it will include many of those postparry derails that never actually happened. Afrer a while, you won't be able to distin­ guish your actual memory from subsequenr informacion thar crept in from elsewhere. Thar phenomenon is caJled "source confusion,"