Mistakes Were Made - Carol Tavris [109]
The need to reduce dissonance is a universal mental mechanism, but that doesn’t mean we are doomed to be controlled by it. Human beings may not be eager to change, but we have the ability to change, and the fact that many of our self-protective delusions and blind spots are built into the way the brain works is no justification for not trying. Is the brain designed to defend our beliefs and convictions? Fine—the brain wants us to stock up on sugar, too, but most of us learn to enjoy vegetables. Is the brain designed to make us flare in anger when we think we are being attacked? Fine—but most of us learn to count to ten and find alternatives to beating the other guy with a cudgel. An appreciation of how dissonance works, in ourselves and others, gives us some ways to override our wiring. And protect us from those who can’t.
Living with Dissonance
Perhaps the greatest lesson of dissonance theory is that we can’t wait around for people to have moral conversions, personality transplants, sudden changes of heart, or new insights that will cause them to sit up straight, admit error, and do the right thing. Most human beings and institutions are going to do everything in their power to reduce dissonance in ways that are favorable to them, that allow them to justify their mistakes and maintain business as usual. They will not be grateful for the evidence that their methods of interrogation have put innocent people in prison for life. They are not going to thank us for pointing out to them why their study of some new drug, into whose development they have poured millions, is fatally flawed. And no matter how deftly or gently we do it, even the people who love us dearly are not doing to be amused when we correct their fondest self-serving memory … with the facts.
The ultimate correction for the tunnel vision that afflicts all of us mortals is more light. Because most of us are not self-correcting and because our blind spots keep us from knowing that we need to be, external procedures must be in place to correct the errors that human beings will inevitably make and to reduce the chances of future ones. In the legal domain, we have seen that mandatory videotaping of all forensic interviews is one obvious and relatively inexpensive corrective to the confirmation bias; any bias or coercion that creeps in can be assessed later by independent observers. But it is not only potential police bias we need to worry about; it is also prosecutorial bias. Unlike physicians, who can be sued for malpractice if they amputate the wrong arm, prosecutors generally have immunity from civil suits and are subject to almost no judicial review. Most of their decisions occur outside of public scrutiny, because fully 95 percent of the cases that the police hand over to a prosecutor’s office never reach a jury. But power without accountability is a recipe for disaster in any arena, and in the criminal justice system that combination permits individuals and even entire departments to do anything for a win, with self-justification to smooth the way. 7 When district attorneys do actively seek to release an inmate found to be innocent (as opposed to grudgingly accepting a court order to do so), it is usually because, like Robert Morgenthau, who reopened the Central Park Jogger case, and the Sacramento district attorneys who prosecuted Richard Tuite, they were not the original prosecutors and have the power to withstand the heat that such a decision often produces. That is why independent commissions must often be empowered to investigate charges of corruption in a department or determine whether to reopen a case. Their members must have no conflicts of interest, no decisions to justify, no cronies to protect, and no dissonance to reduce.8
Few organizations, however, welcome outside supervision and correction. If those in power prefer to maintain their blind spots at all costs, then impartial review boards must improve