Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

Why is it so hard for people to admit they were wrong, to apologize, to give up an outdated belief or way of doing things?

It’s no surprise that people lie to others to cover up misdeeds, crimes, blunders and bad behavior. But the kind of “self-justification” we write about is not the same as lying to other people when we know we screwed up, to avoid paying the price. We’re talking about an unconscious, hardwired mechanism that allows us to lie to ourselves, that blinds us even to the possibility we screwed up. It comes into play following just about every decision we make or important action we take.

The mechanism is “cognitive dissonance”: the uncomfortable sensation we feel when an important belief, memory, or decision clashes with evidence that it might be wrong. If you smoke, and you know smoking is dangerous, you’re in dissonance, and you have to resolve it – either by quitting or by justifying your smoking (“it keeps me thin”).

But the most painful dissonance occurs when our self-concepts are challenged: when we, who see ourselves as smart, ethical, and kind, are confronted with evidence that we did something foolish, immoral, or cruel. We could reduce dissonance by admitting it: “I realize I hurt you”; “I stole from my own sister”; “we were wrong to think that Iraq had WMD.”

Yet it is easier simply to deny the evidence and justify what we did. “Sure I took my sister’s bracelet from mom’s estate, but I deserved that bracelet after everything mom gave her all those years.” We usually do not feel consciously that we are “justifying”; we feel merely that we are right – because of the brain’s need to preserve a coherent belief system and protect our view of ourselves.

Self-justification lets us sleep at night without tormenting ourselves about bad decisions, or roads not taken, or embarrassing mistakes. In fact, the people who can’t reduce dissonance often suffer precisely because they keep beating themselves up over things that can’t be undone. But if we blind ourselves to the possibility that the decision wasn’t the best, that we made a serious professional mistake, that the road we didn’t take might have been better, then we can’t change direction when we need to.

Dissonance is hard-wired, but what we do about our mistakes is not. Almost anyone can learn to let go and ‘fess up, and it usually turns out not to be as hard as we imagine. We need to separate the two dissonant realizations, and understand that “I was wrong” does not mean “I am hopelessly stupid.” Saying “I made a mistake; I’m sorry” goes a long way toward defusing anger and setting the stage for reconciliation and problem solving.

Setting down the need to pass the buck and blame others, accepting our own role in our own life story, can be liberating. It allows us to come to terms, make amends, build bridges, and improve our lives.

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