DADS READ: "Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)" by Carol Tavris and Elliott Aronson

"Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)" opened my eyes to how easily a person could be lulled into "justifying foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts" as the sub-title so succinctly puts it.  Furthermore, it made me question how often I have allowed "self-justification" to affect my own judgment.

"Self-justification" is the way the human brain is wired to "lie to ourselves".  The Introduction explains it this way:

"Now, between the conscious lie to fool others and unconscious self-justification to fool ourselves, there's a fascinating gray area patrolled by an unreliable, self-serving historian - memory.  Memories are often pruned and shaped with an ego-enhancing bias that blurs the edges of past events, softens culpability, and distorts what really happened.  When researchers ask wives what percentage of the housework they do, they say, 'Are you kidding?  I do almost everything, at least 90 percent.'  And when they ask husbands the same question, the men 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.  It's tempting to conclude that one spouse is lying, but it is more likely that each is remembering in a way that enhances his or her contributions." (Pg. 7)

One famous example of "self-justification" comes from the Stanley Milgram experiments detailed in his book "Obedience to Authority" where he performed 18 experiments on between 20-40 subjects each.  The experiment involved a volunteer and a paid actor who drew lots to see who would be the "teacher" and who would be the "learner".  It was set up so that the volunteer always took on the role of "teacher" and the paid actor took on the role of "learner".  The volunteer was told they were studying the effect of punishment on speed of learning.  The "learner" was given tasks to learn, each time they gave an incorrect answer, they would be "shocked" with increasing voltage to see if they responded better or worse to increased punishment.

"In Milgram's original version, two-thirds of the participants administered what they thought were life-threatening levels of electric shock to another person simply because the experimenter kept saying, 'The experiment requires that you continue.'  This experiment is almost always described as a study of obedience to authority.  Indeed it is.  But it is more than that; it is also a demonstration of long-term results of self-justification. . . . 

Where do you draw the line?  When do you decide enough is enough?  Will you keep going to 450 volts, or even beyond that, to a switch marked XXX DANGER?  When people were asked in advance how far they imagined they would go, almost no one said they would go to 450.  But when they were actually in the situation, two-thirds of them went all the way to the maximum level they believed was dangerous.  They did this by justifying each step as they went along: 'This small shock doesn't hurt; twenty isn't much worse than ten; if I've given twenty, why not thirty?'  Every time they justified a step, they committed themselves further.  By the time people were administering what they believed were strong shocks, most found it difficult to justify a decision to quit.  Participants who resisted early in the study, questioning the very validity of the procedure, were less likely to become trapped 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 behavior and subsequent self-justification." (Pgs. 48-49)

As the Milgram experiment demonstrates, the problem of "self-justification" has a bigger effect than merely deluding ourselves with "lies to ourselves", it can affect others.  In one important area, it has led to false confessions and wrongful convictions.  There is a National Registry list of "unequivocally exonerated prisoners" - people who exonerated through DNA or other evidence - but 13-15 percent of those exonerated prisoners had "confessed to crimes they had not committed" - to crimes they were "unequivocally exonerated" for.  The Innocence Project keeps similar statistics, and 28% of their exonerated prisoners involved a false confession.  This phenomenon can happen when police officers or investigators reach a premature conclusion on the identity of the guilty suspect, which is a problem since:

"there is nothing to prevent police from planting evidence and committing perjury to convict someone they believe is guilty - but who is innocent.  Corrupt cops are certainly a danger to the public, but so are many of the well-intentioned ones who would never dream of railroading an innocent person into prison.  In a sense, honest cops are even more dangerous than corrupts cops, because they are far more numerous and harder to detect.  The problem is that once they have decided on a likely suspect, they don't think it's possible that he or she is innocent.  Therefore, once they have a suspect, they behave in ways to confirm that initial judgment of guilt, justifying the techniques they use in the belief that only guilty people be vulnerable to them."  (Pg. 182)

"Self-justification" can also creep into our personal relationships.  Slowly leading two people down paths that will end in their separation or mistrust of each other.

"Of course, some couples separate because of a cataclysmic revelation, an act of betrayal, or violence that one partner can no longer tolerate or ignore.  But the vast majority of couples who drift apart do so slowly, over time, in a snowballing pattern of blame and self-justification.  Each partner focuses on what the other one is doing wrong while justifying his or her own preferences, attitudes, and ways of doing things.  Each side's intransigence, in turn, makes the other side even more determined not to budge.  Before the couple realize it, they have taken up polarized positions, each feeling right and righteous.  Self-justification will then cause their hearts to harden against the entreaties of empathy."  (Pg. 209)

The way to avoid "self-justification" on a practical level, is to offer people the "benefit of the doubt".  The authors explain:

"Our implicit theories of why we and other people behave as we do come in one of two versions.  We can say it's because of something in the situation or environment: 'The bank teller snapped at me because she is overworked today; there aren't enough tellers to handle these lines.'  Or we can say it's because something is wrong with the person: 'That teller snapped at me because she is plain rude.'  When we explain our own behavior, self-justification allows us to flatter ourselves: We give ourselves credit of our good actions but let the situation excuse the bad ones.  When we do something that hurts another, for example, we rarely say, 'I behaved this way because I am a cruel and heartless human being.'  We say, 'I was provoked; anyone would do what I did' or 'I had no choice' or 'Yes, I said some awful things, but that wasn't me - it's because I was drunk.'  Yet when we do something generous, helpful, or brave, we don't say we did it because we were provoked or drunk or had no choice or because the guy on the phone guilt-induced us into donating to charity.  We did it because we are generous and open-hearted.

Successful partners extend to each other the same self-forgiving ways of thinking we extend to ourselves: They forgive each other's missteps as being due to the situation but give each other credit for the thoughtful and loving things they do.  If one partner does something thoughtless or is in a crabby mood, the other tends to write it off as a result of events that aren't the partner's fault: 'Poor guy, he is under a lot of stress'; 'I can understand why she snapped at me; she she's been living with back pain for days.'  But if one does something especially nice, the other credits that partner's inherent good nature and sweet personality: 'My honey brought me flowers for no reason at all,' a wife might say; 'he is the dearest guy.'

While happy partners are giving each other the benefit of the doubt, unhappy partners are doing just the opposite."

This book helped me realize there are many ways in which all people overlook disconfirming evidence and focus on confirming evidence to justify their viewpoint, world view, and decisions.  We are all capable of making mistakes, and these mistakes may be hard-wired into our brains.  How then do we overcome our self-interest in engaging in self-justification?  Luckily, the authors have some advice to help people be self-aware without descending into self-flagellation:

"By identifying the two dissonant cognitions that are causing distress, we can often find a way to resolve them constructively or, when we can't, learn to live with them until we have more information.  For example when we hear about a sensational allegation in the news, especially one in which sex is involved, we can resist the emotional impulse to hurl ourselves off that pyramid in outraged support of the accussed or the accuser.  Instead of slotting the story into an idealogical framework - 'Children never lie'; 'Believe survivors, even if they remember nothing'; 'All fraternity men are rapists' - we can do something harder and more radical: Wait for the evidence.  If we don't and instead take sides impulsively, it will be difficult to accept that evidence later if it suggests that we were wrong, as happened in the McMartin preschool case (where, the nation later learned, children had been pressured to report increasingly preposterous allegations of abuse) or the Duke lacrosse case (where, the nation later learned, a stripper's allegations of rape against a group of players were false, and district attorney was disbarred for prosecutorial misconduct).  We can try to balance sympathy and skepticism.  And then we can learn to hold our conclusions lightly, lightly enough so that we can let the go if justice demands that we do.

Becoming aware that we are in a state of dissonance can also help us make sharper, smarter, conscious choices, instead of letting automatic, self-protective mechanisms resolve our discomfort in our favor.  Suppose your unpleasant, aggressive coworker has just made an innovative suggestion at a group meeting.  You could say to yourself, 'An ignorant jerk like her could not possibly have a good idea about anything,' and shoot her suggestion down in flames because you dislike the woman so much (and, you admit it, you feel competitive with her for your manager's approval).  Or you could give yourself some breathing room and ask yourself: 'Could the idea be a smart one?  How would I feel about it if it came from my ally on this project?'  If it is a good idea, you might support your coworker's proposal even if you continue to dislike her as a person.  You keep the message separate from the messenger.  In this way, we might learn how to change our minds before our brains freeze our thoughts into consistent patterns." (Pgs. 292-293)