Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

Second reading. My first was in 2007, before I was on Goodreads. I remember thinking then, boy are we fucked; nine years later an orange cockroach made it into the White House and this book helped me understand why. Also why the vast majority of those who supported the cockroach still do and can never be cured. This book helped me understand antimaskers, antivaxxers, and the mind-boggling hypocrisy of many so-called “christians.” It helps me understand so much about people.

More importantly, this book has helped me understand myself. In the years since I first read it, knowing this material has helped me think better when faced with moral questions. Act better. Be better. It's much harder to self-justify yourself when you're aware that you're doing it.

This third edition (2019) has relevant timely updates, mostly in the examples but also one addition on resolving one's inner conflicts. I consider that a welcome and important addition. (There's also a whole chapter on the cockroach. I skimmed it and find it unnecessary. Maybe it was cathartic for them to write it.)

How I wish everyone would read this book and take it to heart. Because if we don't learn this, boy are we fucked.

Before reading this book, I had been aware of the ideas of cognitive dissonance and self-justification, having encountered them in some day-to-day personal interactions, mostly related to money. (“X is good, and I want it, but I don't want to spend so much money on X... therefore, X is no good and I don't want it!”)

This book studies dissonance in larger real-world situations where the stakes are much higher. Through examples about corrupt politicians, false memories, police interrogations, and others, we see how powerful a force cognitive dissonance can be. The more wrong you are about something, the harder you'll try to convince yourself that you're not wrong. This leads to decisions that can harm many people.

This was an enlightening read, but disturbing at the same time. I came away from it with a hopeless feeling. There don't seem to be any solutions for the problem other than people realizing and admitting to their mistakes, but if self-justification is so ingrained in our minds, how would this actually happen? I don't know.

Short review: This is one of the most fascinating books I have read in a while. A popularly focused leadership/psychology book that has some real practical suggestions as well as a lot of negative examples. I wrote one of the longest reviews I have ever written on my blog because I was captured by the idea that not only do we often self-justify our actions in spite of the fact that it usually makes us look worse in the long term, but we really can make changes to our behavior. Really recommend this book to anyone with any sort of leadership position. Learning how to really look at a situation and not just prejudge it and learning how to admit mistakes and learn from them are probably two of the most important leadership traits any leader can learn. Both are discussed extensively in this book.

Full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/mistakes-were-made-but-not-by-me-why-we-justify-foolish-beliefs-bad-decisions-and-hurtful-acts/

This was an absolutely nuts read. Very revealing of human nature and of the difficulties in being truly honest with our own intentions - the power of the ‘ego' is undeniable, as are the benefits from breaking away from it. Really great case studies that are heavily supported by scientific evidence.

Instead of looking for evidence to confirm my beliefs, assumptions and observations, framing life through a pseudo scientific lens - formalising the process of challenging these things I take to be true to find holes and errors that may be my own!

Prioritising empathy, not only in understanding another's point of view but being open to and allowing space for the possibility that they may be correct...lots of lessons for life and relationships.

Did not finish the book. Picked it up because I wanted to increase my argumentation skills and diminish misunderstandings.

The author argues that we act in order to decrease our own cognitive dissonance (for example; I have given a gift to that person - i would not give gifts to people I dont like (this would create a dissonance) - therefore I must like this person (a strategy Benjamin Franklin used to get an political opponent to like him)). To diminish this cognitive dissonance we come up with all kinds of argumentation why we do what we do, or self-justification.
This is explained in the first chapters and the book continues on with loads of examples and how cognitive dissonance and self-justification manifests themselves.
I did not find the book interesting enough to continue after that.