Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

by Carol Tavris

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally 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, usually on a battlefield. —George Orwell, 1946

I see no reason why I should be consciously wrong today because I was unconsciously wrong yesterday. —Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, 1948

As fallible human beings, all of us share the impulse to justify ourselves and avoid taking responsibility for actions that turn out to be harmful, immoral, or stupid.

When we cross these lines, we are justifying behavior that we know is wrong precisely so that we can continue to see ourselves as honest people and not criminals or thieves.

Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent with each other, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me” and “I smoke two packs a day.”

The more costly a decision in terms of time, money, effort, or inconvenience and the more irrevocable its consequences, the greater the dissonance and the greater the need to reduce it by overemphasizing the good things about the choice made.

Rather than cutting their losses, most people will throw good money after bad in hopes of recouping those losses and justifying their original decision.

At his sentencing, Magruder said to Judge John Sirica: “I know what I have done, and Your Honor knows what I have done. Somewhere between my ambition and my ideals, I lost my ethical compass.”

By then, getting information that contradicts a strong belief may actually backfire, causing the person to hold on to the incorrect belief even more firmly.

In this way, prejudice is the energy of ethnocentrism.

History is written by the victors, and when we write our own histories, we have the same goals as the conquerors of nations have: to justify our actions and make us look and feel good about ourselves and what we did or failed to do.

Because memory is reconstructive, it is subject to confabulation—confusing an event that happened to someone else with one that happened to you or coming to believe that you remember something that never happened.

But an understanding of memory and self-justification leads us to a more nuanced perspective: a person doesn’t have to be lying to be wrong.

Watch for signs: if your child has nightmares, wets the bed, wants to sleep with a night-light, or masturbates, he or she may have been molested.

Medicine has advanced since their day, but the need for self-justification hasn’t budged.

“The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness.”

Because no one, no matter how well trained or well intentioned, is completely immune to the confirmation bias and his or her own cognitive blind spots, the leading social scientists who have studied wrongful conviction are unanimous in recommending safeguards, such as the electronic recording of all interviews.

Married partners are forced to learn more about each other than they ever expected (or perhaps wanted) to know.

Benjamin Franklin, who advised, “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterward,” understood the power of dissonance in relationships.

Each partner focuses on what the other one is doing wrong while justifying his or her own preferences, attitudes, and ways of doing things.

Successful couples have a ratio of five times as many positive interactions (such as expressions of love, affection, and humor) to negative ones (such as expressions of annoyance and complaints).

Most of the perpetrators reported that what they did, at least in retrospect, was reasonable; their actions might have been regrettable, but they were understandable, given the circumstances.

The second strategy was to admit wrongdoing but excuse or minimize it.

The third strategy, when the perpetrators were unequivocally caught and they could not deny or minimize responsibility, was to admit they had done something wrong and then try to get rid of the episode as fast as possible.

That is why history is written by the victors, but it’s victims who write the memoirs.

“When a friend makes a mistake,” he said, “the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake.”16