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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Mistakes
Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and
Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Eliot Aronson |
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Rating: |
**** |
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(Highly Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Justification Psychologists
Carol Tavris and Eliot Aronson have collaborated to create a fascinating book
about why we people who do wrong justify our actions. Mistakes
Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and
Hurtful Acts is supported by years of research on how the brain works,
what extraordinary steps we take to deal with dissonance, and the happy world
of self-deception. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 3,
“Memory, the Self-justifying Historian,” pp. 68-71: What
we...refer to confidently as memory...is
really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often
changes with the telling. —memoirist
and editor William Maxwell Many years 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 lot about bisexuality. . .“ but
Vidal cut him off, saying, “Tom, let me tell you about these morning shows.
It’s too 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 written 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 Vidal again declined,
saying, “Now let’s talk about Carter. . . - What is he
doing with these Brazilian dictators pretending they are freedom-loving,
democratic leaders?” And so the conversation turned to Carter for the rest of
the interview. Several years later, when Brokaw had become anchor of the Nightly News, 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 wanted to talk politics,”
Brokaw recalled, “and he wanted to talk about bisexuality.” It was a “total
reversal,” Vidal said, “to make me the villain of the story.” Was it Tom Brokaw’s
intention to turn Gore Vidal into the villain of the story? Was Brokaw
lying, as Vidal implied? That is unlikely. After all, Brokaw chose the story
to tell the Time reporter; he could
have selected any difficult interview in his long career to talk about,
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 himself look good. As the new anchor of the Nightly News, it would have been unseemly for him to have been
asking questions about bisexuality; better to believe (and remember) that he
had always chosen the intellectual high road of politics. When two people
produce entirely different memories of the same event, 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
notably 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
selfjustifying. 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. In this way, memory
becomes our personal, live-in, self-justifying historian. Social psychologist
Anthony Greenwald once described the self as being ruled by a “totalitarian
ego” that ruthlessly destroys information it doesn’t want to hear and, like
all fascist leaders, rewrites history from the standpoint of the victor.2
But whereas a totalitarian ruler rewrites history to put one over on
future generations, the totalitarian ego rewrites history to put one over on
itself. History is written by the victors, 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 mistakes were made, memory helps us remember that
they were made by someone else. If we were there, we were just innocent
bystanders. At the simplest
level, memory smoothes out the wrinkles of dissonance by enabling the
confirmation bias to hum along, selectively causing us to forget discrepant,
disconfirming information about beliefs we hold dear. For example, if we
were perfectly rational beings, we would try to remember smart, sensible
ideas and not bother taxing 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 favor of our own position arouses dissonance because it
raises doubts about the wisdom of that position or the intelligence of the
people who agree with it. Likewise, a sensible argument by an opponent also
arouses dissonance because it raises the possibility that 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 other 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
Rika Kohier showed in a classic experiment on attitudes toward desegregation
in 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.4 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 protect us from the pain and embarrassment of
actions we took that are dissonant with our core self-images: “I did that?” That is why memory researchers
love to quote Nietzsche: “I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have
done that,’ says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—memory
yields.” The language throughout Mistakes
Were Made is clear and readable, and the many examples and illustrations
will illuminate every reader. The rest of the chapter excerpted above goes on
to explore the junk science behind repressed memory restoration. Every
chapter provides insight. If, like me, you become frustrated at evasions to
accepting culpability, you’ll love Mistakes
Were Made. At least now, we can understand why it happens. Steve
Hopkins, December 20, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Mistakes Were Made.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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