Mistakes Were Made - Carol Tavris [19]
The conservative columnist William Safire once described the “psychopolitical challenge” that voters face: “how to deal with cognitive dissonance.”29 He began with a story of his own such challenge. During the Clinton administration, Safire recounted, he had criticized Hillary Clinton for trying to conceal the identity of the members of her health-care task force. He wrote a column castigating her efforts at secrecy, which he said were toxic to democracy. No dissonance there; those bad Democrats are always doing bad things. Six years later, however, he found that he was “afflicted” by cognitive dissonance when Vice President Dick Cheney, a fellow conservative Republican whom Safire admires, insisted on keeping the identity of his energy-policy task force a secret. What did Safire do? Because of his awareness of dissonance and how it works, he took a deep breath, hitched up his trousers, and did the tough but virtuous thing: He wrote a column publicly criticizing Cheney’s actions. The irony is that because of his criticism of Cheney, Safire received several laudatory letters from liberals—which, he admitted, produced enormous dissonance. Oh, Lord, he did something those people approved of?
Safire’s ability to recognize his own dissonance, and resolve it by doing the fair thing, is rare. As we will see, his willingness to concede that his own side made a mistake is something that few are prepared to share. Instead, people will bend over backward to reduce dissonance in a way that is favorable to them and their team. The specific ways vary, but our efforts at self-justification are all designed to serve our need to feel good about what we have done, what we believe, and who we are.
Chapter 2
Pride and Prejudice … and Other Blind Spots
And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?
—Matthew 7:3 (New King James version)
WHEN THE PUBLIC LEARNED that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was flying to Louisiana on a government plane to go duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, despite Cheney’s having a pending case before the Supreme Court, there was a flurry of protest at Scalia’s apparent conflict of interest. Scalia himself was indignant at the suggestion that his ability to assess the constitutionality of Cheney’s claim—that the vice president was legally entitled to keep the details of his energy task force secret—would be tainted by the ducks and the perks. In a letter to the Los Angeles Times explaining why he would not recuse himself, Scalia wrote, “I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.”
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Neuropsychologist Stanley Berent and neurologist James Albers were hired by CSX Transportation Inc. and Dow Chemical to investigate railroad workers’ claims that chemical exposure had caused permanent brain damage and other medical problems. More than 600 railroad workers in fifteen states had been diagnosed with a form of brain damage following heavy exposure to chlorinated hydrocarbon solvents. CSX paid more than $170,000 to Berent and Albers’ consulting firm for research that eventually disputed a link between exposure to the company’s industrial solvents and brain damage. While conducting their study, which involved reviewing the workers’ medical files without the workers’ informed consent, the two scientists served as expert witnesses for law firms representing CSX in lawsuits filed by workers. Berent saw nothing improper in his research, which he claimed “yielded important information about solvent exposure.” Berent and Albers were subsequently reprimanded by the federal Office of Human Research Protections for their conflict of interest in this case.1
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When you enter the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, you find yourself in a room of interactive exhibits designed to identify the people you can’t tolerate. The familiar targets are there (blacks, women, Jews, gays), but