Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson use the classic social-psychology concept of cognitive dissonance to explain why people justify choices that turn out to be wrong, and why the smarter and more invested they are, the harder it is for them to change course. The book walks through case studies drawn from marriages, memory, politics, prosecution, medicine, and war, showing how the same self-protective mechanism operates whether the mistake is a bad diagnosis, a coerced confession, or an invasion. Tavris and Aronson pay particular attention to the way self-justification hardens over time, so that admitting an early misstep becomes progressively costlier and less likely. The tone is analytical rather than moralizing, and the authors are especially good on their own field, tracing how psychotherapy, memory recovery, and eyewitness science have gotten things badly wrong and then defended the errors. A revised edition adds material on political polarization and criminal justice.
What you might want to know about Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Two social psychologists show how cognitive dissonance drives ordinary people, and powerful institutions, to defend even their worst decisions.
Attia has called the book essential reading for anyone who wants to make better decisions, because it maps the mechanism by which even careful thinkers protect their egos at the expense of the truth.
It is written for a general audience but grounded in decades of experimental work, with Aronson being one of the founding figures of cognitive dissonance research.
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) was written by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, published in 2007 by Harcourt.
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) is 292 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.