Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)
I heard about this intriguing book about the psychology of justifying mistakes. From car accidents to invasions of other countries, humans seem to have an amazing talent to "protect" one self from feeling drowned in guilt. I'd be lying if I haven't done my share of this in my life. A description about this book written by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why we justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts:
[CBC radio Quirks and Quarks feature description ] The human mind has a built-in mechanism for helping us escape the painful psychological penalty of bad decisions - mistakes, in essence. The benefit of this is that we can make decisions without paralysis. The cost, on the other hand, is what psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson explore in their new book, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why we justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts. They look at why human decision-making predisposes us to sometimes make mistakes even worse by mechanisms of self-justification and confirmation bias - which causes us to reinforce our decisions and beliefs (even mistaken ones) ever more strongly. The implications of this for our personal lives, as well as for social structure and politics, they say, are important to understand. We spoke with Dr. Tavris, an independent social psychologist and writer.
Link to interview with Carol Tavris.
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