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by
Carol Tavris
How do you get an honest man to lose his ethical compass? You get him to take one step at a time, and self-justification will do the rest.
Social psychologist Lee Ross calls this phenomenon "naïve realism," the inescapable conviction that we perceive objects and events clearly, "as they really are."2 We assume that other reasonable people see things the same way we do. If they disagree with us, they obviously aren't seeing clearly.
Naïve 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.
social psychologist Geoffrey Cohen found that Democrats will endorse an extremely restrictive welfare proposal, one usually associated with Republicans, if they think it has been proposed by the Democratic Party, and Republicans will support a generous welfare policy if they think it comes from the Republican Party.4
More than three-fourths of all drugs approved between 1989 and 2000 were no more than minor improvements over existing medications, cost nearly twice as much, and had higher risks.11 By 1999, seven major drugs, including Rezulin and Lotronex, had been removed from the market for safety reasons. None had been necessary to save lives (one was for heartburn, one a diet pill, one a painkiller, one an antibiotic) and none was better than older, safer drugs. Yet these seven drugs were responsible for 1,002 deaths and thousands of troubling complications.12
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 attention, your willingness to listen, your sympathy for the giver.
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
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
Parent blaming is a popular and convenient form of self-justification because it allows people to live less uncomfortably with their regrets and imperfections.
Clancy found that most had grown up with, but rejected, traditional religious beliefs, replacing them with a New Age emphasis on channeling and alternative healing practices. They are more prone to fantasy and suggestion than other people, and they have more trouble with source confusion, tending to confuse things that they have thought about or experienced directly with stories they read or have heard on television.
The most common justification for lying and planting evidence is that the end justifies the means. One officer told the Mollen Commission investigators that he was "doing God's work." Another said, "If we're going to catch these guys, fuck the Constitution." When one officer was arrested on charges of perjury, he asked in disbelief, "What's wrong with that? They're guilty."23
Kassin lectures widely to detectives and police officers to show them how their techniques of interrogation can backfire. They always nod knowingly, he says, and agree with him that false confessions are to be avoided; but then they immediately add that they themselves have never coerced anyone into a false confession. "How do you know?" Kassin asked one cop. "Because I never interrogate innocent people," he said.
As with the psychotherapists we discussed in chapter 4, training does not increase accuracy; it increases people's confidence in their accuracy.
Because terrific guys like me don't hurt innocent people, that guy must deserve every nasty thing I did to him. An experiment by David Glass confirmed this prediction: The higher the perpetrators' self-esteem, the greater their denigration of their victims.8
