Mistakes Were Made
Purchase Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts
Mistakes Were made (but not by me)
This excellent book seeks to explain how, otherwise sensible people, can get things horribly wrong and then compound the mistake by reacting to it in a variety of strange ways, ranging from denying any involvement to insisting that they were, in fact, right all along. There are many examples of this in the modern age (with George W Bush proving to be a particularly rich source of inspiration) but this is by no means a modern phenomenon: unfortunately, we have always behaved this way because that’s the way we are wired.
The main engine for this self-deception is called “cognitive dissonance”. Basically, when our minds hold two contradictory thoughts or beliefs this makes us feel discomfort so we seek to ease this feeling by self justification or rationalizing them. For instance, someone may hold the belief that “they are an intelligent person who makes good decisions” BUT they also smoke cigarettes. These two things are entirely contradictory so many smokers rationalize this by generating explanations such as “if I didn’t smoke I would put weight on and that would be just as bad for my health” or “smoking helps me deal with stress so in a roundabout way it is good for me” or “smoking causes cancer but I might be one of the lucky ones who avoids it” etc. So rather than stand up and declare that we are making a bad decision or acting idiotically, our minds quickly step in and supply us with a reason that we find much more acceptable and this eases the feeling of “dissonance”.
Cognitive dissonance can be an escalating process – one little self-deception to save face can lead to another and another and, because you can’t go back without admitting you were wrong, this can lead to some bizaare and extreme beliefs. Tavris and Aronsen provide many examples of this – such as the man who firmly believes that he was a survivor of a childhood in a concentration camp (he even wrote a book about it) – despite all evidence to the contrary. When confronted with these way-out examples you ask yourself “how could anyone really arrive at this opinion?” and the answer is “one step at a time”.
Now this examination of the tricks the mind can play on us is all good fun when it is applied to politicians, celebrities and people who claim to have been abducted by aliens but it becomes far more alarming when they point out how it affects people who may have influence over our OWN lives. In two rather disturbing chapters Tavris and Aronson document a large number of cases where doctors, mental health professionals and police have been involved in shocking and damaging incidents and completely closed their minds to any possibility that they might have been wrong. I find it worrying that there are so many cases where highly trained professionals fall back on such simple self-deceptions as “I haven’t made a mistake because I don’t make mistakes”.
Closer to home, there is an excellent chapter on how we are ALL prone to absurd self justification in our personal relationships and if you can read the whole chapter without recognizing a little of yourself then you are a better man than me!
The chapter where the authors seek to give us a bit of hope that we can overcome these blind spots, self justifications and warped memories is, unfortunately, the weakest one. This is not any reflection on their skills, just that the examples they cite about people who have admitted their mistakes seem so few and far between compared to those who don’t. Although we all should be capable of taking a long hard look at ourselves, the mental defenses working against it are so quick and powerful that the odds seem stacked against us. From a personal development point of view, this book offers a lot of food for thought and not all of it very appetizing! Although the explanation they give about how the mind works is very compelling it means that summoning the necessary honesty to review your life as it really is is no straightforward matter. However, knowing more about the way that the mind is wired and the foibles that we all have is always useful unless, of course, we are the type of people who don’t make mistakes….
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