About errors, mistakes and self-deception

It turns out that strong self-deception is misleading

by Michael Shermer

The war in Iraq has been going on for more than four years. It has cost the lives of more than 3,000 Americans and since the day it broke, it has a price tag of 200 million dollars per day, or 73 billion dollars per year. This is a considerable financial investment. It is therefore no wonder that the majority of members of Congress, from both parties, they and President George W. Bush, believe that we should "stay the course" and not just "cut and run." And as Bush explained in a speech he gave on July 4, 2006 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina: "I do not intend to allow the sacrifice of 2,527 soldiers killed in Iraq to be a false sacrifice by leaving before our mission is completed."

We all make such irrational claims about decisions we've made throughout our lives: we cling to losing stocks, unprofitable investments, failed businesses, and unsuccessful relationships. If we were reasonable we would simply calculate the chances of success from this moment on and then decide if the investment justifies the expected profit. But we are not logical - not in love, not in war, not in business - and economists call this special lack of logic the "illusion of sunk cost".

The psychology behind this illusion and other cognitive illusions is brilliantly explained by psychologist Carol Travis and psychology professor Elliot Aronson from the University of California at Santa Cruz in their book "Mistakes Were Made (But Not Mine)" (Harcourt Publishing, 2007). Travis and Aronson focus on what they call self-justification "which allows people to convince themselves that what they did was the best thing they could have done." The passive form of the title "mistakes were made" shows the process of reasoning after the fact in action. "It is likely that mistakes were made in the administrations in which I served," Henry Kissinger admitted when talking about Vietnam, Cambodia and South America.

The engine that activates self-justification is cognitive dissonance: "a tension created whenever a person holds two perceptions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent," Travis and Aronson explain. "The dissonance creates mental discomfort: from mild suffering to severe torment. People don't rest until they find a way to relieve it." This process of easing dissonance is what accelerates self-justification.

A wrongful death sentence is an extreme cause of cognitive dissonance. Since 1992, the Innocence Project has acquitted a total of 192 people, of which 14 were sentenced to death. "If we were to reexamine prison sentences with the same attention we give to death sentences," says University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Gross, "we would benefit from 28,500 non-death sentences given in the last 15 years..." What are the self-justifications that facilitate This dissonance? "You get into the system and you become very cynical," explains legal journalist Rob Worden of Northwestern University. "People lie to you all the time. Then you develop a theory for yourself about the crime, and this leads to a phenomenon called 'tunnel vision'. Years later overwhelming evidence appears that the man is innocent. And you sit there and think: 'Wait a minute, either this convincing evidence is wrong, or I was wrong - and it's impossible for me to be wrong, because I'm a good person.' It's a psychological phenomenon that I've come across again and again."

And what happens in those rare cases when someone says "I was wrong"? Surprisingly, he is forgiven and respect for him increases. Imagine what would have happened if George W. Bush had given this speech:

This administration intends to be honest about its mistakes. As a wise man once said, "A mistake doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." We intend to take full responsibility for our mistakes... we are not preparing to look for a scapegoat... the final responsibility for any failure is mine, and mine alone.

Support for Bush will skyrocket, and the respect he will receive as a leader who thinks he is ready to change his mind in the face of new evidence will soar. This is exactly what happened to President John F. Kennedy after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba after saying those very words.

Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) his new book is "Why Darwin Matters".