DOCSLIB.ORG

Self-Deception

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Self-Deception Self-deception In a great book “The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics”, the author, Michael Shermer, writes on cognitive dissonance. “In December 1954, the psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleaguesnoticed this newspaper headline: PROPHECY FROM PLANET CLARION CALL TO CITY: FLEE THAT FLOOD.A Chicago housewife, MarionKeech, reported that she had received messages from the planet Clarion telling her that the world would end in a great flood sometime before dawn on December 21, 1954. If she and her followers gathered together at midnight, however, a mother ship would arrive just in time to whisk them away to safety. Festinger immediately saw an opportunity, not to save himself, but to study the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, the mental tension created when a person holds two conflicting thoughts simultaneously. “Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart,” Festinger said. “Suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.” Many of Keech’s followershad quit their jobs, left their spouses, and given away their possessions. Festinger predicted that these individuals with the strongest behavioral commitment would be the least likely to admit their error when the prophecy failed and instead rationalize a positive outcome. As midnight approached on December 20, Keech’s group gathered to await the arrival of the aliens’ mother craft. As dictated by Marion, the members eschewed all metallic items and other objects that would interfere with the operation of the spaceship. When one clock read 12:05 A.M. on the twenty-first, anxious squirming was calmed when someone pointed out a second clock reading 11:55 P.M. But as the minutes and hours tickedby, Keech’s clique grew restless. At 4:00 A.M., Keech began to weep in despair, recovering at 4:45 A.M. with the claim that she had received another message from Clarion informing her that God had decided to spare Earth because of the cohort’s stalwart efforts. “By dawn on the 21st, however, this semblance of organization had vanished as the members of the group sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs,” Festinger says. “In succeeding days, they also made a series of desperate attempts to erase “their ranklingsonance dis by making prediction after prediction in the hope that one would come true, and they conducted a vain search for guidance from the Guardians.” Marion Keech and her most devoted charges redoubled their recruitment efforts, arguing that the www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 1 Self-deception prophecy had actually been fulfilled with an opposite outcome as a result of their faith. Festinger concluded that Keech’s assemblage reduced the cognitive dissonance they experiencedby reconfiguring their perceptions to imagine a ,favorable outcome, reinforced by converting others to the cause. Doomsday cults are especially vulnerable to cognitive dissonance, particularly when they make specific end-of- the-world predictions that will be checked against reality. What typically happens is that the faithful spin-doctor the nonevent into a successful prophecy, with rationalizations including (1) the date was miscalculated; (2) the date was a loose prediction, not a specific prophecy; (3) the date was a warning, not a prophecy; (4) God changed his mind; (5) the prediction was just a test of the members’ faith; (6) the prophecy was fulfilled physically. but not as expected; and (7) the prophecy ,vas fulfilled-spiritually. Of course, cognitive dissonance is not unique to doomsday cults. We experience it when we hang on to losing stocks, unprofitable investments, failing businesses, and unsuccessful relationships. Why should past in- vestment influence future decisions? If we were perfectly rational, we should simply compute the odds of succeeding from this point forward, jettisoning our previous beliefs. Instead, we are stuck rationalizing our past choices, and those rationalizations influence our present ones. Unfortunately for those bent on curing themselves of the chronic effects of cognitive dissonance, research since Festinger shows that, if anything, he underestimated its potency. As two of Festinger’s students-Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson-demonstrate in their aptly titled book, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), our ability to rationalize our choices and actions through self-justification knows no bounds. The passive voice of the all-telling phrase-mistakes were made-shows the rationalization process at work. In March 2007, United States attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales used that very phrase in a public statement on the controversial firing of several U.S. attorneys: “I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility.” Nevertheless, he rationalized, “I stand by the decision, and I think it was a right decision.”5 The- phraseology is so common as to be almost cliche. “Mistakes were quite possibly made by the administrations in which I served,” confessed Henry Kissinger about Vietnam, Cambodia, and South America. “If, in hindsight, we also discover that mistakes may have been made. I am deeply sorry,” admitted Cardinal Edward Egan of New York about the Catholic Church’s failure to deal with priestly pedophiles. And, of course, corporate leaders are no less susceptible than politicians and religious leaders: “Mistakes were made in communicating to the public and customers about the ingredients in our French fries and hash browns,” acknowledged a McDonald’s spokesperson to a group of Hindus and other vegetarians after they discovered that the “natural flavoring” in www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 2 Self-deception their potatoes contained beef byproducts. “Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish; people don’t rest easy until they find a way to reduce it,” Tavris and Aronson note.6 It is in that process of reducing dissonance that our self-justification accelerators are throttled up. One of the practical benefits of self-justification is that no matter what decisioin we make – to take this or that job, to marry this or that person, to purchase this or that product-we will almost always be satisfied with the decision, even when the objective evidence is to the contrary. Once the decision is made, we carefully screen subsequent information and filter out all contradictory data, leaving only evidence in support of our choice. This process of cherry-picking happens at even the highest levels of expert assessment. In his book Expert Political Judgment, the political scientist Philip Tetlock reviews the evidence for the predictive ability of professional experts in politics and economics and finds them severely wanting. To the point, expert opinions turn out to be no better than those of nonexperts-or even chance-and yet, as self-justification theory would predict, experts are significantly less likely to admit that they are wrong than are nonexperts. Politics is rampantly self-justifying. Democrats see the world through liberal-tinted glasses, while Republicans filter it through conservative – shaded lenses. Tune in to talk radio any hour of the day, any day of the week- whether it is “conservative talk radio” or “progressive talk radio” and you’ll hear the same current events interpreted in ways that are 180 degrees out of phase. Social psychologist Geoffrey Cohen quantified this effect in a study in which he discovered that Democrats are more accepting of a welfare program if they believe it was proposed by a fellow Democrat, even when, in fact, the proposal comes from a Republican and is quite restrictive. Predictably, Cohen found the same effect for Republicans, who were far more likely to approve a generous welfare program if , they thought it was proposed by a fellow Republican. Economic positions, whether staked out by birthright, inheritance, or creative hard work, distort our perceptions of reality as much as political positions. The sociologist John Jost has studied how people justify their economic status, and the status of others. The wealthy tend to rationalize their position of privilege as deserved, earned, or justified by their benevolent social acts, and assuage-any cognitive dissonance regarding the poor by believing that the poor are happier and more honest. For their part, the underprivileged tend to rationalize their position as morally superior, nonelitist, and within the bounds of social normalcy, and look down upon the rich as living an undeserved life of accidental or ill-gotten privilege. Cognitive distortions can even turn deadly. Wrongly convicting people and sentencing them to death is a www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 3 Self-deception supreme source of’ cognitive dissonance. Since 1992, the Innocence Project has freed fourteen people from death row, and exonerated convicts in more than 250 non-death row cases. “If we reviewed prison sentences with the same level of care that we devote to death sentences,” says University of Michigan lawfessor pro Samuel n. Cross, “there would have been over 28,500 non-death – row exonerations in the past 15 years, rather than the 255 that have in fact occurred.” What is the ‘self-justification for reducing this form of dissonance? “You get in the system and you become very cynical,” explains Rob Warden of Northwestern University School of Law. “People are lying to you all over the place. Then you develop a theory of the crime, and it leads to what we call tunnel vision. Years later. overwhelming evidence comes out that the guy was innocent. And you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Wait a minute.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • False-Memory Stories
    Telling Incest: Narratives of Dangerous Remembering from Stein to Sapphire Janice Doane and Devon Hodges http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=10780 The University of Michigan Press, 2009. Chapter 5 The Science of Memory False-Memory Stories False Memory Syndrome Foundation members, largely those who have been accused of child abuse and expert witnesses on their behalf, have compelling reasons to insist that repressed memories of abuse be veri‹ed by clear and con- vincing empirical evidence, precisely the kind of evidence often lacking in incestuous abuse cases.1 While there are cases where a child with venereal dis- ease or a bleeding vagina is admitted to an emergency room and evidence obtained of abuse, signs of molestation may not be at all obvious. Adults have been mistakenly charged with abuse as a result of misreadings of physical evi- dence, resulting, for example, from incorrect assumptions about what “nor- mal” genitals and hymens are supposed to look like (Nathan and Snedeker, 180–81). And children enjoined to silence may long delay reports of abuse, with the result that physical marks of molestation, should they exist, would be healed by the time accusations are made. Without damning physical evidence, charges of incestuous abuse are hard to prove. If the memory wars re›ect deep ambivalence about the declining fortunes of patriarchal authority, they are sus- tained by problems with collecting incontrovertible evidence of sexual abuse, whether to vindicate accusers or the accused. What is debated are less tangible archives of the past. As we have seen, proponents of recovered memory focus on psychological processes, such as repression and dissociation, that long impede the recollection of sexual abuse.
    [Show full text]
  • Marita Sturken Source: Social Text, No
    The Remembering of Forgetting: Recovered Memory and the Question of Experience Author(s): Marita Sturken Source: Social Text, No. 57 (Winter, 1998), pp. 103-125 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466883 . Accessed: 22/01/2011 20:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Text. http://www.jstor.org The Remembering of Forgetting RECOVERED MEMORY AND THE QUESTION OF EXPERIENCE Recovered memory syndrome is a defining aspect of American culture in Marita Sturken the late twentieth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Cognitive Dissonance Theory Teaches Us About Cheating, Justice, Memory, Psychotherapy, Science, and the Rest of Life by Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson
    Self-Justification in Public and Private Spheres: What Cognitive Dissonance Theory Teaches Us about Cheating, Justice, Memory, Psychotherapy, Science, and the Rest of Life by Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson Social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson are authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why we Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (Harcourt, 2007). Both have written widely used textbooks and general-interest books in psychology. Dr. Aronson is professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. his year is the 50th anniversary of Leon Festinger’s powerful little book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Fifty years! How Tmany of our field’s theories have remained as potent as this one, generating so much research, let alone been the source of a question on Jeopardy? To our knowledge, not even intermittent reinforcement and the Müller-Lyer illusion have turned up on Jeopardy! Festinger (1957) defined cognitive dissonance as a state of ten- sion that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me” and “I smoke two packs a day.” It was not only a cognitive theory but a motivational one. Dissonance produces mental discomfort, believing themselves to be competent, moral, smart, and kind, a state that is as unpleasant as hunger, and people don’t rest their efforts at reducing dissonance will be designed to preserve easy until they find a way to reduce it. The most direct way for a their positive self-images—even when that perpetuates behav- smoker to reduce dissonance is by quitting.
    [Show full text]
  • O Que É O Cepticismo? Respostas Simples Para Algumas Questões Frequentes
    O que é o Cepticismo? Respostas Simples Para Algumas Questões Frequentes Adaptado de: The Media Guide to Skepticism Objectivo: Providenciar um guia claro e de fácil leitura sobre o ponto-de-vista “céptico” subscrito por muitos que podem chamar-se a si mesmos de cépticos ou pensadores críticos; para distinguir o cepticismo prático do uso popular da frase “eu sou céptico” e daqueles que afirmam ser “cépticos” de alguma conclusão científica bem-estabelecida (como as alterações climáticas). O que é o cepticismo? O cepticismo é uma abordagem usada para avaliar alegações que enfatiza as provas e aplica as ferramentas da ciência. O cepticismo é mais frequentemente aplicado a alegações extraordinárias – aquelas que contrariam a visão consensual actual. O processo céptico considera as provas obtidas por observação sistemática e pela razão. A conclusão a que se chega no fim deste processo céptico é provisória porque podem surgir posteriormente provas adicionais ou melhores que apontem para outra explicação mais adequada. Exemplo: O Sr. X diz-nos que um novo comprimido melhorou bastante a sua memória. Esta alegação, se for verdade, é importante e extraordinária. Desta forma, seria apropriado aplicar o cepticismo à mesma. Nós quereríamos ver as provas de que a sua memória melhorou e que o comprimido foi responsável por isso. Nós consideramos também explicações alternativas que possam explicar por que o Sr. X diria que o novo comprimido melhora a sua memória: ele pode estar enganado, pode estar a atravessar um período menos stressante, ele quer sentir que gastou o seu dinheiro nos comprimidos de forma sensata, ele foi pago para promover os comprimidos, etc.
    [Show full text]
  • By Discipline for Tavris and Aaronson's Mistakes Were Made
    Index by discipline for Tavris and Aaronson’s Mistakes Were Made American Government, Political Science, and History Abramoff, Jack, 45 Bush, George W. Iraq War, 2-3, 235 Cheney, Dick, 40 Clinton, Bill, adultery, 5 Dean, John; Nixon, Watergate, 6-7 DeLay, Tom; congressman, 45 Gingrich, Newt, adultery 5 Haldeman, Bob; Watergate, Nixon Administration, 34-35 Johnson, Lyndon; Vietnam War, 3, 7 Iranian hostage crisis, 187-188, 190-191 Kissinger, Henry; Nixon Administration, 1, 3 Liddy, G. Gordon; Watergate, Nixon Administration, 35 Magruder, Jeb Stuart; Watergate, Nixon Administration, 34-36 Mitchell, John; Watergate, Nixon Administration, 35 Party bias, 43 Scalia, Antonin; Supreme Court Justice, 40 Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,, 187-188 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 209-212 Criminal Justice and Law False confessions, 127-157 Wrongful convictions, 127-157 Ethics/Bioethics Adultery: Clinton, Bill, 5; Gingrich, Newt, 5 Biotechnological research, 47-51 Cheating, 32-33 Euthanasia, Schiavo, Terri, 186-187, 190 False confessions, 127-157 Industrial solvents and brain damage, 41 The virtuous circle of benevolence and compassion, 28-29 Marino, Gordon, 5 Pharmacological testing, 45-51 Reciprocity, 51-55 Torture, abuse, 197-208 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 209-212 Wrongful convictions, 127-157 Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology Alien abduction stories, 88-96 Catharsis theory false, 25-27 Confirmation bias, 18-20, 174 Dissonance theory’s challenge
    [Show full text]
  • The High Cost of Skepticism
    This article chronicles the tribulations noted psychologists Elizabeth Loftus and Melvin Guyer were put through for conduct- ing the investigation that is the subject of their ttvo-part article "Who Abused Jane Doe?" concluding in this issue of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (Pages 37-40).—The Editor The High Cost of Skepticism Here's what happened to two scientists who believed that tenure and the First Amendment would protect their rights to free inquiry. CAROL TAVRIS n the olden days, perhaps twenty or thirty years ago, aca- demic debates were marked by sweet discourse and the Iharmonious if impassioned hum of debate. (Also by sar- casm.) The rule used to be that if you disagreed with some- one's opinion or interpretations of data, you did the civilized thing—you called the person a knucklehead or an incompe- tent fool. Or you wrote a devastating reply explaining why the knucklehead was terminally wrong, misguided, or drunk. That was then. Just as noise trumps silence and rage trumps courtesy, the cudgel of lawsuits to silence or cower the opposition trumps free debate. In universities across the country, lawsuits, even spurious and unsuccessful ones, have weakened the once-sacrosanct guarantees to scholars of free SKEPTICAL INQUIRER luly/August 2002 41 speech and association. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) The Atlantic had conducted such an investigation, you would and Human Subjects Committees have proliferated, to protect know the city and state of all of the individuals interviewed, human subjects from harm caused by unethical scientists— their names (unless they requested anonymity), the data bases and to protect universities from any lawsuits that might ensue.
    [Show full text]
  • Police Interrogations, False Confessions, and Alleged Child Abuse Cases
    University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Volume 50 2017 Police Interrogations, False Confessions, and Alleged Child Abuse Cases Richard Leo University of San Francisco Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr Part of the Courts Commons, Evidence Commons, Juvenile Law Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, and the Medical Jurisprudence Commons Recommended Citation Richard Leo, Police Interrogations, False Confessions, and Alleged Child Abuse Cases, 50 U. MICH. J. L. REFORM 693 (2017). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr/vol50/iss3/7 This Symposium Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. POLICE INTERROGATION, FALSE CONFESSIONS, AND ALLEGED CHILD ABUSE CASES Richard A. Leo* I want to thank Justice McCormack for that great introduction. I want to thank Anna and Ben for having me here and for putting on this important Symposium. It’s a great honor to be at the University of Michigan, one of the great universities in the country and cer- tainly one of the great law schools. It’s always great to be in this building. When Justice McCormack’s assistant contacted me, I didn’t do what I usually do and send a bio and a CV. Instead, I sent her a 2012 opinion by the Michigan Supreme Court that trashed me and the scientific discipline that has empirically studied police interrogation and false confessions for more than a century.
    [Show full text]
  • Carol Tavris and Avrum Bluming Page 1 DANNY LENNON
    Carol Tavris and Avrum Bluming DANNY LENNON: So, here we are. Very welcome to both of you, Carol and Avrum. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today and discuss this impressive body of work. CAROL TAVRIS: Thank you for inviting us to talk with you. AVRUM BLUMING: It's our pleasure. DANNY LENNON: This has been really interesting for me. I think it was some stage, maybe the middle of last year where I originally reached out to you, Carol. Having read some of your previous books, was going to discuss some of that. And thankfully at that time you mentioned this new book that you've been working on and sent me a copy, which was quite eye-opening. So, we've been able to put this together and discuss some of these concepts. So, before we get into any of the specifics, maybe the best place to start is when we're talking about what happens with estrogen, particularly at menopause and post menopause. What is the best way to frame this for people in terms of number one, what happens during that stage to this hormone? And secondly, on a symptomatic level, what are some of the things that occur? AVRUM BLUMING: Estrogen is secreted largely by the ovaries. And around the time of menopause, usually Page 1 Carol Tavris and Avrum Bluming sometime between the ages 47 and 52, estrogen levels plummet. They can fall to 1% of the premenopausal level. And women are aware of this largely as the result of symptoms.
    [Show full text]
  • Selfish Gene Revisited Richard Dawkins
    Randi on Vaccinations | Miracle Tableau | UFO ‘Disclosure’ | FTC Tackles Homeopathy the Magazine for Science and Reason Vol. 41 No. 2 | March/April 2017 THE SELFISH GENE REVISITED RICHARD DAWKINS WHY SKEPTICISM? Ronald A. Lindsay WHY WE BELIEVE —LONG AFTER WE SHOULDN’T Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson GOD’S OWN MEDICINE Paul A. Offit SHOULDN’T SKEPTICS KNOW WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT? Massimo Pigliucci CSICON 2016 LAS VEGAS: A SPECIAL SECTION INTRODUCTORY PRICE U.S. and Canada $5.99 Published by the Center for Inquiry in association with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry a program of the Robyn E. Blumner, President and CEO Massimo Polidoro, Research Fellow Bar ry Karr, Ex ec u tive Di rect or Benjamin Radford, Research Fellow Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow Richard Wiseman, Research Fellow www.csicop.org Fellows James E. Al cock*, psy chol o gist, York Univ., Tor on to Mur ray Gell-Mann, pro fes sor of phys ics, San ta Fe In sti tute; Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA Mar cia An gell, MD, former edi tor-in-chief, No bel lau re ate Lor en Pan kratz, psy chol o gist, Or e gon Health New Eng land Jour nal of Med i cine Thom as Gi lov ich, psy chol o gist, Cor nell Univ. Sci en ces Univ. Kimball Atwood IV, MD, physician; author; Newton, MA David H. Gorski, cancer surgeon and researcher at Barbara Robert L. Park, professor of physics, Univ. of Maryland Steph en Bar rett, MD, psy chi a trist; au thor; con sum er ad vo cate, Ann Kar manos Cancer Institute and chief of breast surgery Jay M.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissonance and Political Hypocrisy from Psychology Today
    11/28/2020 Dissonance and Political Hypocrisy | Psychology Today US Find a Therapist (City or Zip) Verified by Psychology Today Daniel R. Stalder Ph.D. Bias Fundamentals Dissonance and Political Hypocrisy A pandemic of self-protection and self-presentation. Posted Oct 12, 2020 10 I’ve been academically intrigued in recent months to see so many political references to “cognitive dissonance.” As a social psychologist who has taught and conducted dissonance research for over 20 years, I see apparent dissonance processes unfolding in real life all the time. And certainly, the popular press caught on to “dissonance” years ago. But lately, perhaps as another consequence of the pandemic, there seem to be even more popular press shout- outs to dissonance. There are even entire articles devoted to applying cognitive dissonance theory to political happenings and, in particular, to the perplexing remarks by politicians about Covid-19 (Aronson and Tavris, 2020). What Is Cognitive Dissonance? Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by inconsistency which most of us are then motivated to try to reduce. In particular, it can be a feeling of hypocrisy or a realization of having made a mistake, and it’s unpleasant. Or it’s supposed to be unpleasant. How do so many politicians fall prey to it and then manage to handle it without coming clean? Of course, some admit their mistakes and even resign. And some have switched political sides even voicing the intention to make up for their perceived mistakes (Noor, 2020). This coming-clean mode of dissonance reduction can be called behavior change, but it is relatively rare.
    [Show full text]
  • PDF Download Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify
    MISTAKES WERE MADE (BUT NOT BY ME): WHY WE JUSTIFY FOOLISH BELIEFS, BAD DECISIONS, AND HURTFUL ACTS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Carol Tavris,University Emeritus Elliot Aronson | 400 pages | 20 Oct 2015 | Mariner Books | 9780544574786 | English | United States Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts PDF Book Hurts and grievances in both parties have probably been building for some time. Once again, we see what we expect to see. In an effort to convince ourselves that the more desirable belief is the correct one, we will selectively focus on evidence supporting the more desirable belief and deny, ignore, or minimize evidence supporting the less desirable belief confirmation bias. But just because all men are mortal, it does not follow that all mortals are men, and it certainly does not follow that all men are Socrates. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know—like the need for physical activity … More. Basically, we can have experiences that we think are real, especially in the past, yet they never happened. And while individual scientists can be recalcitrant, the discipline as a whole is self-correcting, and moves on. The answer is exactly the way the rest of us do. Their citations of clinical works also brings up the interesting possibility that mindfulness-based interventions may be most I've been a longtime fan of both authors especially Tavris , so my expectations were pleasantly met. More videos The theory is that we need to overcome the cognitive dissonance that emerges when our actions conflict with our self-image or beliefs.
    [Show full text]
  • Books and Ideas Podcast
    BOOKS AND IDEAS PODCAST With Ginger Campbell, MD Episode #431 Interview with Carol Tavris, PhD, Co-author of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts [music] INTRODUCTION This is Episode 43 of Books and Ideas, and I’m your host, Dr. Ginger Campbell. Today’s episode is one I hope you will share with others, which is why I am also putting it into the Brain Science Podcast feed. My guest today is Dr. Carol Tavris, co-author of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. I was fortunate to meet Dr. Tavris last year at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas, and I’m glad that we finally got together to record this interview. In the first part of the interview Dr. Tavris tells us a little bit about the field of social psychology, and we talk about the relationship between psychology and neuroscience. Then we get into the meat of the interview, which is about cognitive dissonance. If you aren’t familiar with cognitive dissonance, I think you will be surprised to learn how it applies to almost every aspect of human endeavor. 1 Click here for audio. 1 Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2011 After the interview I will be back to review a few of the key ideas, and to tell you about how you can learn more. As always, you can find detailed show notes, including links to references, and a free episode transcript at booksandideas.com.
    [Show full text]