42
" Dissonance theory exploded the self-flattering idea that we humans, being Homo sapiens, process information logically. On the contrary; if new information is consonant with our beliefs, we think it is well founded and useful—“Just what I always said!” But if the new information is dissonant, then we consider it biased or foolish—“What a dumb argument!” So powerful is the need for consonance that when people are forced to look at disconfirming evidence, they will find a way to criticize, distort, or dismiss it so that they can maintain or even strengthen their existing belief. This mental contortion is called the “confirmation bias. "
― Carol Tavris , Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
43
" In good marriages, a confrontation, difference of opinion, clashing habits, and even angry quarrels can bring the couple closer, by helping each partner learn something new and by forcing them to examine their assumptions about their abilities or limitations. It isn’t always easy to do this. Letting go of the self-justifications that cover up our mistakes, that protect our desires to do things just the way we want to, and that minimize the hurts we inflict on those we love can be embarrassing and painful. Without self-justification, we might be left standing emotionally naked, unprotected, in a pool of regrets and losses. "
― Carol Tavris , Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
53
" In the same way, if we have enslaved members of another group, deprived them of decent educations or jobs, kept them from encroaching on our professional turfs, or denied them their human rights, then we invoke stereotypes about them to justify our actions. By persuading ourselves that they are unworthy, unteachable, incompetent, inherently math-challenged, immoral, sinful, stupid, or even subhuman, we avoid feeling guilty or unethical about how we treat them. And we certainly avoid feeling that we are prejudiced. Why, we even like some of those people, as long as they know their place, which, it goes without saying, is not here in our club, our university, our job, our neighborhood. In short, we use stereotypes to justify behavior that would otherwise make us feel bad about the kind of people we are or the kind of country we live in. "
― Carol Tavris , Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
55
" In June 1944, Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, had to make a crucial military decision. He knew the invasion of Normandy would be costly under the best of circumstances, and the circumstances were far from ideal. If the invasion failed, thousands of troops would die in the effort, and the humiliation of defeat would demoralize the Allies and hearten the Axis powers. Nonetheless, Eisenhower was prepared to assume full responsibility for the possibly catastrophic consequences of his decision to go forward. He wrote out a short speech he planned to release if the invasion went wrong. It read, in its entirety: Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and the troops have been withdrawn. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the Air [Force] and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.30 After writing this note, Eisenhower made one small but crucial change. He crossed out the end of the first sentence—“the troops have been withdrawn”—and replaced that passive construction with “and I have withdrawn the troops.” The eloquence of that I echoes down the decades. "
― Carol Tavris , Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
56
" Though many critics have drawn a comparison between Trump’s alternative facts and the propaganda technique that Hitler, in Mein Kampf, called “the big lie” (meaning a lie so huge that no one would believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”), we think historian Zachary Jonathan Jacobson expressed an equally vital concern: “What we should fear today,” he wrote, “is not the Big Lie but the profusion of little ones: an untallied daily cocktail of lies prescribed not to convince of some higher singularity but to confuse, to distract, to muddy, to flood. Today’s falsehood strategy does not give us one idea to organize our thoughts, but thousands of conflicting lies to confuse them. "
― Carol Tavris , Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
59
" Even Donald Trump, with his rants against a long list of groups he dislikes (notably Latinos, Muslims, and disabled people), his promulgation of the “birther” lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and his history of discriminatory treatment of African Americans, felt the need to assure the public via Twitter that “I am the least racist person you have ever met” and that “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” “Justification,” Crandall and Eshelman explain, “undoes suppression, it provides cover, and it protects a sense of egalitarianism and a nonprejudiced self-image.”41 "
― Carol Tavris , Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts