Question 1

I thoroughly enjoyed Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me. What can we expect to see in the updated 2020 version?

Carol Tavris · Accepted Answer

Thank you! Throughout the revision, we have updated our discussions with recent timely issues, including #MeToo, “he said/she said” controversies, Black Lives Matter, the Central Park Five, and the dissonance the public feels when their favorite artists and celebrities have turned out to be sex offenders, harassers, thieves, or bigots. We first wrote this book when George Bush was president, leading the country into a war he himself now acknowledges was based on the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The second edition appeared when Barack Obama was president, justifying his own mistaken claims. This time we added a final chapter, “Dissonance, Democracy, and the Demagogue,” in which we analyze the dissonance felt by many Republicans faced with the decision of whether to support a president out of party loyalty but one they know to be corrupt and incompetent.

Question 2

What role is cognitive dissonance having in people's responses to the pandemic?

Carol Tavris · Accepted Answer

The pandemic offers a perfect example of our “pyramid of choice.” If Donald Trump, at the beginning of the pandemic, had chosen to follow the science and explain to the public that wearing a mask and keeping social distance were the major weapons we have now in slowing the spread of Covid-19, that would have been that. But by setting himself in opposition to the scientific experts, and refusing to wear a mask himself, he made the issue political rather than medical. The public had to choose between loyalty to him (no mask) or what would have felt like disloyalty (mask).  No wonder the issue became so polarized so quickly.

Question 3

Is cognitive dissonance a part of mental illness?

Carol Tavris · Accepted Answer

No. It is a normal, self-protecting mental mechanism that allows us to finesse our mistakes, justify bad decisions and keep holding on to out-of-date beliefs, all in the service of protecting our self-concepts of being good, kind, smart, competent people. It’s therefore beneficial and adaptive—but can also cause great harm and misery for individuals and society.

Question 4

What can people do about cognitive dissonance given that cognitive dissonance reduction is an unconscious process and outside of awareness?

Carol Tavris · Accepted Answer

By understanding how it works, they can learn to watch for it—and recognize it in themselves. When people know that after every decision they make, big or small, important or minor, they will have to resolve dissonance in favor of the wisdom of that choice—and start ignoring any dissonant information that they might have been wrong—they can become alert to the clang of their mental doors shutting, and try to keep them open.  They can learn to pay attention to the sheer discomfort or even anger they feel when someone presents evidence they don’t like but cannot dispute.  That’s the hum of dissonance, and we all do well to pay attention to it: “Horrors—could that person be right?”

Question 5

Do psychopaths experience cognitive dissonance?

Carol Tavris · Accepted Answer

Probably not. In order to feel dissonance, you must be able to feel the moral emotions that link us to one another—guilt, remorse, empathy, sorrow. Con artists and sociopaths, lacking these emotions, feel no dissonance: “Did I just rob this woman of her life’s savings? Too bad. She’s a sucker. She’s so stupid she deserved it.”

Question 6

Does cognitive dissonance explain someone being a hypocrite?

Carol Tavris · Accepted Answer

It explains why everyone can see a hypocrite in action except the hypocrite. Did Mitch McConnell see himself as a hypocrite for blocking Barack Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court in Obama’s last year in office, but rammed through their own candidate in a month at the very end of Trump’s presidency? Of course not. He justified that hypocrisy as just doing his job for his party. We observers can easily see how often a person preaches against doing X and then is caught doing X.  But thanks to the ability to reduce cognitive dissonance, that person will have developed all kinds of self-justifications—“it was just this once”; “I deserved that money”; “it was the best decision, all things considered”; “I didn’t hurt anybody….”

Question 7

I have a friend who has done some bad things, and I have reluctance about keeping him in my life, but we have been friends for a very long time. Is this cognitive dissonance?

Carol Tavris · Accepted Answer

Yes, it sure is—as Sarah Silverman describes in a brilliant YouTube, where she talks about her love for her friend of 25 years, Louis C.K., who admitted to serious sexual misconduct. She loves and cares for him, she said, and he did something awful, and the victims must be heard. In our book we tell the story of Shimon Peres, the ex-Prime Minister of Israel, who was angry when his friend Ronald Reagan went to a cemetery in Germany for a US-German friendship ceremony—and it turned out that many Waffen SS soldiers were buried there. Many people were outraged by Reagan’s decision to go. But as Peres told a reporter, “When a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains a friend—and the mistake remains a mistake.” This is a very wise alternative to the usual way of reducing dissonance: either end the friendship or minimize the seriousness of the mistake. In the case of old friends who have done “some bad things,” we have to think carefully, weighing the benefits of a long friendship against what those bad things were. We might decide to end the friendship; help the friend admit those bad things and attempt to change; or live with dissonance.

Question 8

Does political correctness and having to say or not say things that we do/don't believe in etc lead to cognitive dissonance?

Carol Tavris · Accepted Answer

Not directly. It likely leads to anger and resentment. No one likes being told they are a racist, for example, or that they must suppress beliefs they consider reasonable. That’s different from the dissonance that would arise if, say, I believe myself to be a fair and impartial judge of whom to hire in my business, and then you show me evidence that in reviewing candidates with exactly the same qualifications, I consistently chose the white male. When blind auditions for orchestras came along, conductors felt major dissonance to realize that they had been discriminating against female musicians when they could see them. When they could not see the performer behind a curtain, they chose far more women. Bingo, end to their familiar justifications about the lesser skills of female musicians!

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The liar inside. ASK Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris about cognitive dissonance

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