Mistakes Were Made - Carol Tavris [108]
Kardon’s exercise illuminates just how difficult it is to say, “Boy, did I mess up,” without the protective postscript of selfjustification—to say “I dropped a routine fly ball with the bases loaded” rather than “I dropped the ball because the sun was in my eyes” or “because a bird flew by” or “because it was windy” or “because a fan called me a jerk.” A friend returning from a day in traffic school told us that as participants went around the room, reporting the violations that had brought them there, a miraculous coincidence occurred: Not one of them was responsible for breaking the law. They all had justifications for why they were speeding, had ignored a stop sign, ran a red light, or made an illegal U-turn. He became so dismayed by the litany of flimsy excuses that, when his turn came, he was embarrassed to give in to the same impulse. He said, “I didn’t stop at a stop sign. I was entirely wrong and I got caught.” There was a moment’s silence, and then the room erupted in cheers for his candor.
There are plenty of good reasons for admitting mistakes, starting with the simple likelihood that you will probably be found out anyway—by your family, your company, your colleagues, your enemies, your biographer. Psychology professor Bob Abelson once had a graduate student who was persisting with an idea he was testing experimentally, hoping against hope it would come out the way he wanted it to. Finally Abelson said to him gently, “Would you rather admit you’re wrong now or wait until someone else proves it?” But there are more positive reasons for owning up. Other people will like you more. Someone else may be able to pick up your fumble and run with it; your error might inspire someone else’s solution. Children will realize that everyone screws up on occasion and that even adults have to say “I’m sorry.” And if you can admit a mistake when it is the size of an acorn, it is easier to repair than when it has become the size of a tree, with deep, wide-ranging roots.
If letting go of self-justification and admitting mistakes is so beneficial to the mind and relationships, why aren’t more of us doing it? If we are so grateful to others when they do it, why don’t we do it more often? First, we don’t do it because, as we have seen, most of the time we aren’t even aware that we need to. Self-justification purrs along automatically, just beneath consciousness, protecting us from the dissonant realization that we did anything wrong. “Mistake? What mistake? I didn’t make a mistake … The tree jumped in front of my car … And what do I have to be sorry about, anyway? She started it … He stole it … Not my fault.” Second, America is a mistake-phobic culture, one that links mistakes with incompetence and stupidity. So even when people are aware of having made a mistake, they are often reluctant to admit it, even to themselves, because they take it as evidence that they are a blithering idiot. If we really want more people to take responsibility for their mistakes and then strive to correct them, we need to overcome these two impediments.
As we have tracked the trail of self-justification through the territories of family, memory, therapy, law, prejudice, conflict, and war, two lessons from dissonance theory emerge: First, the ability to reduce dissonance helps us in countless ways, preserving our beliefs, confidence, decisions, self-esteem, and well-being. Second, this ability can get us into big trouble. People will pursue self-destructive courses of action to protect the wisdom of their initial decisions. They will treat people they have hurt even more harshly, because they convince themselves that their victims deserve it. They will cling to outdated and sometimes harmful procedures in their work. They will support torturers and tyrants who are on the right side—that is, theirs. People who are insecure in their religious beliefs may