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

What could have been an excellent treatise on this subject was ruined by the authors’ painful bias and blind spots delivered, ironically, in Chapter 2 concerning blind spots and biases! I’m not going into great depth, because doing so would require a chapter’s worth of typing and nobody wants that. But I will issue this warning for those of you who know the Truth concerning vaccines, the history of vaccines and disease, thimeresol, aluminum adjuvants, the CDC, Andrew Wakefield, Paul Thorsen, fraudulent studies and Paul Offut...either skip Chapter 2, or don’t buy this book. Because I promise that you’ll be incensed at the absolute nonsense you’ll find written therein. Seriously. It made me so angry I almost couldn’t finish the book.(Plus at the end of Chapter 2 there was a gratuitous homage to the fraudulent legacy of “Honest” Abe Lincoln! My head nearly exploded from all this nonsense. So, Lincoln surrounded himself with dissenting voices, did he? This same President who jailed everyone who disagreed with him? Who shut down newspapers for criticizing him and the war? Who suspended habeus corpus? Who had a Congressman deported to Canada for disagreeing with him? THAT Lincoln? I’m sure that if anyone in his inner circle did disagree with him, they had the good sense to keep it to themselves!)And while the authors’ did address their tendency to possess their own biases and blind spots in the introduction, it still reeks of a betrayal. It’s much like being warned that someone could possibly vomit on you. When it happens you’re just as offended.Okay. I’m done. Buyer beware!

Insightful and scary at the same time. From my research I found some of the same information while working on my doctorate. However, this book is written so well that I was captivated by the arrogance of the human mind. Cognitive dissonance should be taught at the middle school level and with critical thinking to follow. I'm dismayed and fascinated with people who continue to believe fanciful ideas while concrete disconfirming evidence is right before their eyes. This doesn't bode well for organizations where toxic leaders deny any kind of negative feedback while simultaneously collecting and inculcating evidence that only supports their beliefs, impressions or opinions while ignoring evidence that could move the organization forward.

I'm going to keep this simple, and risk "not helpful" check-marks.This book is so important, and if your head is crankable, then reading the book will crank your head 180 degrees toward "clarity of self-understanding." I think it should be mandatory periodic reading (let's say, maybe we pass a law that, to get your driver's license renewed, you have to read this book, cover to cover, and be somehow monitored while reading, and tested afterward. Crazy, I know, but we put a man on the moon... ; )Seriously, every page, every section, every chapter, will have most people saying, "Whoa - holy jeez. This is me. Oh... I'm so ashamed... I'm so glad I found this...." ....while shaking your head, breaking quickly here and there, adding to your jot list of people you MUST buy copies for....When you cut someone off in traffic, it was because there was ICE... but when someone cuts you off, he was a sorry piece of good-for-nothing &^*%# who can't DRIVE!!! // So it begins, and goes DEEP FAST. Get this and learn about yourself, and about those your live with, and read aloud to them! (Or... maybe not - maybe have them read for themselves.)

Ben Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanac said, “It’s the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself.” Even the casual observers of human behavior are well-aware of our inability to see our blind spots. Or to detect our own self-deception. We often fail to notice our tendency to engage in self-justification and rationalization. Our human nature is to protect our ego, our sense of self no matter the cost.We see this type of behavior on a daily basis. Yet we rarely pause to consider how damaging it can be to ourselves and others.Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, authors of Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) have done an outstanding job of collecting and presenting dozens of examples of our inability to honestly face our mistakes and deal with them in a healthy way.The stories are highly engaging, they pull you along, offering insights and explanations to some of the most complex and perplexing human behaviors. The story telling writing style makes it easy to read. At times it is entertaining, at times you will become enraged at the behavior of some of the people in the stories. I found myself asking, “How could a person possibly do this?” and then I realized we all engage in the same type of behavior. Maybe not with the same dire consequences. But it does tend to make us more aware of the flaws in our own behavior.The stories cover a wide range of human behavior – our blind spots, self-justification, and our inability to let things go. These have shown up in numerous fields with some rather dramatic, unfortunate results. Frankly is was quite upsetting to read about the injustices that happen in our judicial system as a result of law enforcement and judge’s tendency to self-justification. And it was disturbing to read about those in the mental health profession who relied on bad science and developed blind spots to self-justify their previous decisions.It is fascinating reading – it is also a bit alarming to read so many examples woven together in such a short space.The takeaway is that we all need to become self-aware of our human tendencies. We cannot change the way the brain is hard wired. We do have the ability to stop and question our motives and behaviors.If you want a better understanding of human behavior, this should be on your reading list.

Most people have heard of Cognitive Dissonance - the experience of holding two conflicting beliefs at the same time, and the search for a way to reconcile them. This book is a good popular introduction to the subject, and also covers Confirmation Bias, which is what happens when we choose to believe or disbelieve evidence depending on what we think to be true, and whether it's consistent with opinions we have already expressed.Although marketed as a kind of self-help book, and written in a breezy, anecdotal fashion, the book contains many cases that are deeply disturbing, and have major social and even political implications. You may have heard about the unreliability of eyewitness evidence, but you will be surprised to find just how useless and easily manipulated it is. Stories of police inventing or hiding evidence to convict those they had already decided to be guilty will not improve your opinion of the forces of law and order. And the discussion of cases of "recovered memory" where parents and teachers were sent to prison for abuse of children which the children "remembered" under hypnosis or drugs, is quite horrifying, especially when you realise that some of the "therapists" responsible have never apologised or retracted.This is an American book, and so must include a compulsory discussion of how to overcome the problems described. But in practice, these problems seem to be very deeply rooted in the human psyche, and, even if we know that they exist in theory, it's not clear that we can - or would want - to avoid them in practice. The real issues raised are quite fundamental ones about, for example, how criminal justice systems work, and the book does not really explore them. It would also help if the authors had included a few more examples from outside the US - it would be interesting to know how, if at all, cultural factors affect psychological problems of this kind.

This book had two profound effects on me.1. It explained 'dissonance' as a difference between a self view and any external evidance to the contrary, which will be dismissed. I have witnessed first hand this effect where someone invested a lot of time and effort choosing software which turned out to be causing apparently unrelated problems with the computer in question. In spite of demonstrating to the person that the new software caused the problem, they rejected the evidence forcefully. As if 'the problem is the software' was heard as 'the problem is you got the software choice wrong, it's your fault'. I now have a hook to hang these behavoiurs on so to speak.2. The description of memory as reconstructive has helped me enormously. Believing in something that I vividly remember is not the same as it being actually true. I always give others with conflicting memories to mine more consideration now.This book should be read with an open mind. I thing everyone could learn something from it.

I bought this after it featured on R4 'A Good Read'. The first chapter is interesting, the problem is every subsequent chapter is a repeat of it. The book only deals with one idea, it's an interesting idea, but repeating it over and over again it soon becomes very very boring.

It's a good reference point, a good reminder to check yourself. I have seen some reviews here about repetition and I have to agree. The book could probably have been a quarter to one-third shorter if every point made was repeated only twice, as opposed to several times. Tip? once, you've read the same point twice, move on. No need to suffer it

The title refers to the typical statement made by officials when there was enough evidence that they made a mistake or a bad decision. They would acknowledge that mistakes were made but also that they were not personally responsible.In a broader sense this book deals with the way how people reduce personal dissonance, how we lie to ourselves, in order to increase our comfort level in life. Self justification seems to be the reason why it is so hard to accept mistakes. Major historical conflicts which ended up in war are examples how far the involved parties go to justify their actions. Other examples go from simple matters like people at work doing private stuff by justifying it that they deserved it since they worked so hard anyway. There seemed to be a whole generation of psychotherapists who engaged in the field of memory recovery and destroyed families due to their wrong believes and lack of proper scientific research. Furthermore, it goes on by comparing whole societies, for example Japanese children seem to have less fear of making mistakes compared to their American peers which in turn leads to better qualifications. In Japan, mistakes are encouraged instead of punished as they are seen as a natural way to improve.The last section of the book includes tons of references to literature for further reading.Overall, the book really helped to reflect on my own behaviour and better understand people around me.