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    Tavris and Aronson Mistakes Were Made PDF

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    Mistakes Were Made | (but not by me) ALSO BY CAROL TAVRIS || Ange: The Minded Econ The Mismeasr of Woman Why We Justify uae Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, | ALSO BY ELLIOT ARONSON ‘and Hurtful Acts | The Sac Aina pg © 9 © ‘eo Praga is ath Pras) | Social Pychalg (with Timotty Wison and Robin Ake) CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON Oris Aun Newiork Sex Die Tooe Loon opti ©2007 by Cal Ta Ee Acasa Alig exe No prt of his pbleeon may be mpd cece snyfoen oy nce deen of ecient 07 ‘loeaon sag nds em, hot pc ewig en th pula equ fr erminon oe cpt fay ofthe wk shoud bid pe elope eee ae rier oy arm emisins Deprmee, Harun, (627 Sear De, On, Ble 2857-77. esate aia “anand Deb ee fom Ande Cheesen an NS. Jobo Rosi iors © 200 Gad Psa ped wi peminon Galore. ‘Tier Congna Clegg Aoi Ce “Tet Gee Mints nt mate ut ot ye hy we jay bee nd estou, bt se/Carel Toes lee An Ince biog ce inde 1, Gopie dimmer 2 Sb cepie. Lemon lie 1 Ti Bawcesrst 07 hdc esos SBN ITSO 1010981 ‘Terms Ache Gomme ‘ri in he Uae Se oes ‘Rarcionr To Roman, my Wonderful 0 Cael Tavis To Vera ofcourse Eli Aronson INTRODUCTION Knaves, Fools, Villains, and Hypocrites: How Do They Live with Themselves? Mistakes were quite possibly made by the administrations in which | served Hen Kings esprit charges hae commit ts in ie nthe Unio Sea acini ‘Vetnam, Carbo, and Scuth Amer in hes 1 in hindsight, we also discover thar mistakes may have been sade... Lam deeply sory. Canal aed gan of New Yok, frig the isos ‘whofe wth hid mnletts among the Cathal egy Mistakes were made in communicating co the public and customers about the ingredients in ou French fies and hash browns. —MeDonall’s, plogsng to Hindus and the vegans fo ng tir he thre nau vig” In he potatoes contained bee byprdts “This weeks question: How can you ell when a presidential scandal is |A. The president’ poll numbers drop. B. The press goes alter him. . The opposition calls for his impeachment . His own party members urn cn hi, E, Orthe White House say, "mistakes were mace Bi seeder on CNN bide alts AS FALLIBLE HUMAN BEINGS, all of us share che impulse ro justify ourselves and avoid raking responsibilty for any actions that tum out to be harmful, immoral, or stupid, Most of us will never be ina position to make decisions affecting the lives and deaths of mil- lions of peopl, but whether the consequences of oar mistakes are ‘vial or tragic, on a small sale oF a national canvas, most of us find i difficult, if noe impossible, ro say, "Iwas wrong: I made a terible mistake.” The higher the sakes—emotiona, financial, moral—the sreater the difficulty Ie goes furher than that: Most people, when diecly confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do nox change their poinc of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even ie- fable evidence is rarely enough to perce the mental armor of se justification. When we began working on this book, the poster boy for “tenacious clinging ta discredited belie” was George W. Bush. ‘Bush was wrong in his claim thar Saddam Hussein had weapons of smass destruction, he was wrong i claiming that Saddam was linked ‘with Al Queda, he was wrong in predicting chat Iraqis would be dancing joyflly in the sreets to receive the American soldiers, he -was wrong in predicting chat che conflce would be over quickly, he _was wrong in his gros underestimate of the financial cost of the war, and he was most famously wrong in his photo-op speech six wecks afer the invasion began, when he announced (under a banner read- MISTAKES WERE MADE (but ae by me) 3 ing wssion ACCOMPLISHED) that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” Achat time, the woof us watched with Fscinaton as commenta- tos ftom the right and left began fantasizing in print about what ic ‘would be kero hae a president who admied mistakes. The coner- ‘ative columnist George Will nd the liberal columnis Paul Krugman both called for Bush ro admit he had been wrong, but the president remained ineransigent. In 2006, wih Iraq sliding into civil war and sateen American inelligence agencies having sued a epor tha the occupation of ag had increase lami adicalism and che sk of ter rorim, Bush sid co a delegation of conservative columnists, “I've never been more convinced thatthe decisions I made ate the right decisions.”* OF course, Bush had to justify the war hs adsinisraion parsed in frag; be had too much invested in tht couse of action to do otherwise —thousands of deaths and, acording wo conserva sve estimate from the American Enterprise Intute in 2006, a east a illion dollars. Accordingly when he was proved wrong in his orig inal reasons for the war, he found new ones getting rd ofa "very bad gus” fighting terorins, promoting peace in the Middle Fast bringing democracy to Iraq, increasing che security ofthe United Sates, and finishing “the ak [our oops) gave cei ves fr.” In other word, we must continue the war because we began the war Politicians ate the most visible of eljusifirs, which is why they provide such juicy examples. They have refined the ac of speaking in the passive voice; when ther backs are o che wall they will lc tancly acknowledge error but not responsiilry. Oh allright, mis takes were made, but nor by me by someone ele, who shll main nameless? When Henry Kissinger id that the ‘administation” may have made mistakes, he was sidetepping te fact tha as national e- catty adviser and secretary of tae (Simultaneously he, in effe, was the adminisration, This slfusifcaion allowed him ro accept che Nobel Peace Prize witha staghe face and 2 clear conscience. ‘We look a the behavior of politicians with amusement or alarm 4 (CAROL TAVRIS anf ELLIOT ARONSON cor horror, but, psychologically, whac they do is no different in kind, though cern in consequence, from what most of us have done at ‘one time of another in our private lives. We ay in an unhappy rla~ tionship ot merely one that is going nowhere because afterall, we in- ‘ested so much time in making it work. We sayin @ deadening job way to long because we lok forall he reasons to justify staying and are unable to clearly assess the benefits of leaving. We buy a lemon of a carbecause it looks gorgeous, spend thousands of dolls ro keep the ‘damn thing running, and then we spend even more to justify that in- vetment. We slfighteously ceatea rift with fiend or relative over some real or imagined slight, yee see ourselves as the pursuers of, ‘peace—if ony the other side would apologize and make amends Self justification isnot the same thing a lying or making excuses ‘Obviously, people will ie or invent facil stories to duck the fury ‘of a lover, parent, or employer; to keep from being sued or sen to prison; to avoid losing fice; eo avoid losing a job to stay in power Bat there is aig difence between what a guilty man say to the public to convince chem of something he knows is untrue ("I did not have sex with that woman’; “I am nota crook"), and the proces of persuading himself hac he did a good thing In he former situation, he is lying and knows he is lying to save his own ski. In the later, he is lying to himself That i why selfjutifcation is more powerful and more dangerous than the explicit ie. It allows people to con- vince themselves that what they did was the best ching they could hhave done. Infact, come to think oft, i was the right thing “There swas nothing cs I could have done.” “Actually, it was a brilliant so- lution tothe problem,” “I was doing the best forthe nation.” “Those bastards deserve what they got.” “im entitle.” Seljustfction not only minimizes our mistakes and bad deci- sions; itis abo che reason chat everyone can se a hypoctite in action except the hypoctite, I allows us to create a distinction beween our ‘moral lpses and someone else's, and ro blur the discrepancy berween cour actions and our moral convictions. Aldous Hlaxey was right when MISTAKES WERE MADE (br at by me) 5 hae sid, "There is probably no such thing as a conscious hypoctit.” It seems unlikely that New Gingrich said to himself, “My, what a hyp- crite Iam, There I wa, al led up about Bill Clinton's seal affair while I was having an extramarital affir of my own right here in town.” Similarly, the prominent evangolist Ted Haggard seemed abl ious to the hypocrisy of publielyfulminating against homosexuality while enjoying his own sexual relationship with a male prostcac. Tn the same way, we each draw our own moral lines and justify them. For example, have you ever done a litte finessing of expenses, ‘on income taxes? That probably compensates for the legitimate ex- ppenses you forgot abour, and besides, ould be a fool not to, consid ering that everybody else does. Did you fl to report some extra cash income? Youle entidled, given all the money that the government ‘wastes on porkcbarrel projects and programs you detest. Have you bboen wating personal e-mails and surfing the Net at you office when you should have been tending ro business? Those are perks of the job, and beside, its your own protest against those stupid company rues, and besides, your boss doesit appreciate all the extra work you do. Gordon Marino, a professor of philosophy and ethics, was staying in hotel when his pen slipped out of his jacket and left an ink spot cn the silk bedspread. He decided he would rel the manager, but be vas tired and did not wan to pay forthe damage, That evening he ‘went out with some fiends and asked their advice. “One of them told ime to stop with the moral funaticism,"” Marino said, “He argued, “The management expects such accidents and builds their cost into the price ofthe rooms.’ edd not take long vo persuade me thc there ‘yas no need to trouble the manager. I reasoned that if had spilled this ink in a family-owned bed-and-breakfst, then I would have im. mediately reported the accident, but thar this was a chain hotel, and ‘yadda yadda yadda went the hoodsrinking proces. I did leave a nore ae the front desk about the spor when T checked out.”> ‘But, you sll chose justifications are true! Hotel room charges do include the cose of repairs caused by clumsy guess! The government a CAROL TAVRIS and ELLIOT ARONSON does waste money! My company probably wouldst mind i spend a lide ime on e-mail and I do get my work done (centul)! ‘Whether those cms are rue or fle is eelevane. When we cross these lines, wear jusilying behavior tha we know is wrong pre- cisely 50 that we can continue co se ousltes as honest people and not timinals or thieves. Whether the behavior in question is a small ‘hin ike sping ink on a hotel bedspread ora big hing ike em- bezlemen, the mechanism of se Now, between the conscious lit fool thes and unconscious sl jasificaion o fool ourselves lisa fiscinating gray aca, paroled by thar unreliable, s-serving hisorian—memory. Memos ate ofen pruned and shaped by an ego-enhancing bis that blurs the edges of past evens softens culpubiliy. and ditors what relly happened. ‘When researchers ask husbands and wines what perentage of the housework they do, che wives sy, “Are you kidding Ido almost every- thing, at lease 90 percent.” And the husbands sy, “I doa lor acal about 40 percent.” Although the specife numbers dir from couple 0 couple, he tel always exceeds 10 percent by a large margin Is tempting conclude that one spouses yng, buts more key cha ‘each i remembering in a way that enhances hs or her contribution. Overtime, asthe selserving isotons of memory Kickin and we forge: or distor past evens, we may come to believe our awa lies litle by litle. We know we did something wrong, bur gradully we begin to think ic wasr al our fault, and afer all che situation was comple. ‘We sart underestimating ou owa responsi, whiting away ai unc it isa mere shadow of is Former hulking self. Before lng, we have pesuaded ourselves, baiving privately what we originally sid public John Dean, Richard Nixon’ Whiee House counsel, the man ‘sho blew the whistle onthe conspiracy wo coverup the legal ac es of che Watergate scandal, exphined how his process works: Interviewer: You mean those who made up the stories were believing their own lies? ‘Dean: That tight. Ifyou sid it often enough, it would be- ‘come true, When the press leaned ofthe wire taps on news ‘men and White House safes, for example, and flat denials failed, ic was claimed that this was a national-security mater Tm sure many people believed that the taps were for national security; they werent. That was concocted as a justification afer the fac. Bur when they said it, you understand, they realy believed it? Like Nixon, Lyndon Johnson was 2 master of selfjustifcation. ‘According to his biographer Robert Caro, when Johnson came to be- iw in something, he would believe ini “tral, with absolute con- vietion, regardless of previous belief, or of che facts in the martes.” George Reedy, one of Johnsons aides, said chat he “had a remarkable capacity to convince himself that he held che principles he should hold at any given time, and there was something charming about the sir of injured innocence with which he would treat anyone who brought forth evidence chat he had held other views in the past. It ‘was not an act... He had a fantastic capacity to persuade himself thac the ‘eh’ which was convenient forthe present was she ruth and anything that conflicted with ie was the prevarication of ene- mics. He literally willed what was in his mind co become realiy.”* Although Johnsonis supporter found this wo bea rather charming as- pect of dhe mais charactes ic might wll have been one ofthe major reasons that Johnson could not extricae the counry fom the quag- mire of Vietnam. A president who justifies his actions only to the public might be induced to change them. A president who has jus- tied his ations to himsel, believing that he has the rath, becomes impervious to selcorrection ‘The Dinka and Nuer uibes of the Sudan have a curious tradition. ‘They extract the permanent front teeth of theie children —as many ® (CAROL TAVIS and ELLIOT ARONSON 2s sx bortom teeth and two top teth—which produces «sunken chin, a collapsed lower lip, and speech impediments. This practice apparently began during a period when tetanus (locjaw, which cause the jaws to clench together) was widespread. Villagers began pulling ou their fone teeth and those of thei children to male ie ‘possible to drink liquids through the gap. The lockjaw epidemic is Jong past, yet the Dinka and Nuer ae sil pulling out theircildren's front teeth,’ How come? In 1847, Ignac Semmelwiss famously exhorted his fllow physi- cians to wash their hands before dliveng babies. He realized dat they must have acquired some kind of “morbid poison” on thee hands from doing auopsies on women who had died of chldbed fever, then transfered the poison to women in labor (He dida'eknow the exact mechanism, but he had the right idea) Semmelweis or dered his own medical students to wash their hands in a chlorine an- ‘septic solution, and death rats fiom childbed ever dropped rapidly thereafter. Yc his colleagues refused to acept Semmelweis’ concrete evidence, the loner death rae among his own patents* Why dit they embrace Semmelweis disovery immediately thanking him ef- fasively for finding che reason for so many unnecessary deaths? ‘Afr World War Il, Ferdinand Lundberg and Maryoia Faroham published the besteller Modern Woman: Th Lot Se, in which they

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