This book is a marvelous piece of work — inspiring, life changing even — and premised on a simple notion: cognitive dissonance, and the lengths to which humans will go to equilibrate it. The authors make a compelling case that cognitive dissonance — trying to balance two diametrically opposed beliefs — is at the heart of most of our problems. Humans, they argue, are wired to cognitively justify their actions and choices as we move through life, while at the same time blindly, almost willfully, spitefully, making horrible and ever-worsening decisions. As a result, we devote an enormous amount of energy, and neural pathways, to creating and maintaining false constructs designed to preserve a sense of individual exceptionalism.
Worse, this pattern of backward justifying occurs for societies as well.
Plumbing the news, case studies and anecdotal accounts, they build a compelling case for how we never, ever seem capable of admitting culpability, much less acknowledging that we made an actual mistake.
Caught cheating on your partner? Clearly, she was withholding affections and any rational person would be forced to seek satisfaction elsewhere. Sent an innocent person to prison? They were probably guilty of something else so what’s the big deal. Invaded a country to seize nonexistent WMDs? Obviously, they moved them, and anyway, the real reason we invaded was to bring Democracy to freedom-starved people.
It’s a truly fascinating lens through which to consider challenges of interpersonal and political interactions, the limits of the justice system, the blind spots of the health care system, barriers to advancing scientific knowledge and much more.
Not only did I find this a revolutionary way to think about the world and my role and responsibility in it, they enhanced it with a strong, simple visual representation of how we can transition from relatively decent human being to a failure standing knee deep in scandal and flailing about for any justification, no matter how farfetched. They envision a pyramid atop which we stand — at the pinnacle, we are morally upright creatures with no pesky dissonance. At the base, way down at the bottom, is a swamp of moral decay. The journey from the top to the bottom is rarely a headlong much less intentional rush, but rather a series of tiny, almost imperceptibly small steps into ever-greyer territory. We ratchet up the balancing act to deal with the increasing dissonance, using retroactive justification and the sometime wholesale rewriting of history, until we are mired in our own moral waste and bewildered as to how we got there.
Political scandals, medical malpractice and divorce proceedings are all perfect examples. No one — well, hardly any one — enters noble careers thinking they will be cheats or act immorally, hide evidence that could free an innocent person or fudge results to preserve theories, etc., but a thousand tiny decisions reinforced by cultural and organizational pressures, begin luring them down the pyramid and, eventually, the gravity of their initially innocent actions pulls them irreversibly into the muck.
Likewise, the hatred and vitriol and vile unearthed in many divorces stand in stark contrast to the relatively happy memories of many relationships, at least early on when love and romance brought two people together. Where does it come from? They posit that cognitive dissonance is to blame, associated with trying to maintain a sense of individual exceptionalism in difficult circumstances. “I’m a good person and good people aren’t to blame for the dissolution of marriages. Therefore, my partner must be a terrible person. Now let me set about prospecting for memories that can back-justify that belief.” Down the pyramid they go.
It’s a frightening and liberating paradigm that, once articulated, seems 'unputbackable.' It cautions us to always think about the cognitions we hold, and how they might be shaping our actions and responses, and blinding us to better courses of action. It warns us to pause and reflect before we act. It underscores the need for oversight of and transparency into our systems and organizations to ensure those in positions of power aren’t inadvertently, blinded by dissonance and therefore acting against the best inters of society.
The book is a bit dated, at 7 years old, but the concepts are sound and important. I would love to see this topic addressed again with a more current treatment of advances in neuroscience. But short of that, given how strongly it resonated with me, and the solid, engaging writing style, I highly recommend.
This line captures the essence of the book well: “The brain is designed with blind spots, optical and psychological, and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on us the comforting delusion that we, personally, do not have any.”
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Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Third Edition: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
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Top reviews from other countries
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- AnonymReviewed in Germany on August 14, 2020
Lots of examples for a useful concept
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