Redemption bedwetting and consequences movie part 1

Mistakes Were Made

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

Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON

IT- ­

I !

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 …