The title of the book speaks for itself. The phrase "Mistakes that were made, but not by me" hints that someone from the outside is observing another person and sees all their mistakes. These observers could, for example, be the authors of the book — psychologists, who describe the shortcomings of former politicians, their fellow psychologists, parents, spouses, police officers, detectives, prosecutors, and many others, as these professions and categories of people are mainly discussed in this book. Here, the mistakes of Bush and Trump, which they made in their youth, will be examined. There are also many other, slightly lesser-known names that you may not be familiar with. But in reality, the phrase "mistakes that were made not by me" refers to the fact that it was we (in this case, the characters of the book) who made those mistakes. However, they do not remember this or are inclined not to remember it due to their beliefs, which should form a coherent worldview and avoid contradictions. Additionally, our memory is prone to deceive us and fail us in such situations, where cognitive dissonance arises. In other words, it is more convenient for us to say that the mistake was made by the past version of ourselves, not the present one. This is the meaning behind the book's title.
The book consists of eight chapters, excluding the introduction. The authors have done an excellent job, adding a large number of sources to support all their thoughts. These sources are placed almost after every paragraph, and if desired, you can delve deeper into them. Now, let's take a closer look at each chapter.
Introduction. Crooks, Fools, Villains, and Hypocrites: How They Live with Themselves.
As expected for an introduction, this chapter gives us a brief but detailed overview of the problems that will be addressed in this book. The main issue is self-justification, which is encountered throughout the book. The second problem is the lack of understanding that there is, in fact, a problem. "Understanding is the first step in finding solutions that can lead to change and redemption," say the authors of the book.
Chapter 1. Cognitive Dissonance: The Mechanism of Self-Justification.
As Albert Camus noted, we humans are creatures who spend our entire lives trying to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd. From this statement, it follows that our decisions and life views should not contradict our internal worldview. But what happens when we learn information that does not fit in our heads and completely contradicts what we know and believe? This phenomenon is called cognitive dissonance. Dissonance causes anxiety because believing in two contradictory ideas at once is to flirt with absurdity, so people tend to reject ideas that conflict with their worldview, invent justifications when they are wrong, and search for evidence to confirm their so-called correctness. "I will seek all new evidence to confirm the opinion I already have," said British politician Lord Molson. This is nothing more than a classic example of "confirmation bias," which will be discussed repeatedly in this book.
This is how cognitive dissonance arises — a stable psychological mechanism that creates self-justifications, protects what we are sure of, our self-esteem, and our affiliation with certain groups. Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person encounters two psychologically incompatible cognitive representations (these can be ideas, beliefs, opinions).
This chapter already contains many fascinating examples from different spheres of life. First, there is a mention of the mistake made by Bush Jr. in Iraq, which, of course, he did not acknowledge, and he blamed all the failures on others. Then comes an example of how people who buy lottery tickets and bet on sports events, after making a bet, become even more convinced of their rightness (so if you plan to bet on a team, don't ask the opinion of someone who just made a bet). Next, there is an example about a wild tribe that, from a young age, would knock out their children's front teeth as a rite of passage, but the reason for this and the dissonance they experienced — for fewer spoilers, you can find the answer in the book. Finally, there is a religious dissonance story about a group of people who believed in the end of the world and prepared for it, but when it didn't happen, instead of admitting their mistake, they found comfort in a new justification.
Chapter 2. Pride and Prejudice… and Other "Blind Spots".
The brain is constructed in such a way that it has "blind spots," both optical and psychological, and one of the clever tricks is to create the illusion that we ourselves don't have such "blind spots." In a sense, the theory of dissonance is a theory of "blind spots," explaining how and why people unintentionally blind themselves to important events and information that could challenge their behavior or beliefs. Along with "confirmation bias," other mechanisms form in the brain that allow us to justify our impressions and beliefs, making them appear more accurate, realistic, and impartial.
The point of this chapter is that everyone has blind spots because, as historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle said, "The greatest fault, I must say, is not to recognize any faults." "Blind spots" enhance our vanity and prejudice, and knowing about the existence of blind spots as a fact in general, and possibly our own blind spots in particular, one should not interpret any belief as true.
This chapter also devotes considerable attention to stereotypes and prejudice — how they are created and how to get rid of them. Spoiler: it's incredibly hard to do. As the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, "Trying to convince a biased fanatic is like shining a flashlight straight into their pupil: it contracts, and the eye shuts." Most people are willing to expend a lot of mental energy to preserve their bias rather than give it up and dismiss contrary facts as "exceptions that only prove the rule."
Among the interesting examples in this chapter is the information about members of the Hare Krishna religious group collecting money in airports, or the positive example of how Abraham Lincoln managed to surround himself with the right people, including his opponents.
Chapter 3. Memory: The Historian Who Supplies Self-Justifications.
This chapter marks the beginning of an even greater horror, with all possible errors. Almost every subsequent chapter will delve into a social group or profession where people made massive mistakes, to the extent that it's hard to imagine today. In this chapter, psychologists are put under scrutiny. But more on that later.
So, the chapter is titled "Memory" for a reason. It is fully dedicated to how our memory works. And here arises an important question: what does memory have to do with errors or cognitive dissonance? The answer is quite direct. To reduce dissonance, people are perfectly capable of replacing their memories. As memoirist and publisher William Maxwell said: "What we… confidently call memory… is actually a form of storytelling that constantly occurs in our brains, and during this retelling, the story often changes." It's a powerful thought when you think about it.
There are several things to remember about memory right away. First, how hard it is to believe that vivid, detailed, and emotionally charged memories can actually be false. Second, even if we are absolutely sure of our memories, that doesn't mean they are accurate. And third, errors in our memory conveniently fuel our current views and feelings. In other words, it all aligns — distortions of memory are great at helping us justify ourselves.
Honestly, this chapter reminded me of the movie "Shutter Island" — you read it and are more and more amazed at how strange human memory can behave. It can be erased, rewritten, changed under the pressure of circumstances. Although, I admit, during the reading, I had doubts: could it really be this bad?
So, the chapter begins with a story about a writer who described how he, a Jew, survived the Holocaust. He went into great detail. The problem, however, is that he was neither Jewish nor a concentration camp inmate. Another person claimed to have been abducted by aliens. And the most interesting part — neither of them were crazy. Or rather, maybe some of them had some deviations, but more often than not, it was about a phenomenon called sleep paralysis. In other words, ordinary dreams (especially under certain conditions) can seriously rewrite our memories. And if you add belief in this and cognitive dissonance, it creates a volatile mix.
But the climax of the chapter is not even that. The real essence lies in the fact that even the most terrible events are so deeply etched into memory that they remain fresh for decades. For example, concentration camp survivors can describe in detail what happened to them even many years later. This seems to contradict the idea that memory easily changes. And this is where psychologists come into play.
I mentioned earlier that from this chapter, the authors begin to analyze how entire professional groups made horrifying mistakes. In this chapter, the focus is on psychologists. Remember: memory doesn't easily distort, especially when it comes to serious trauma. But it turns out that psychologists could (and did) implant false memories into people.
For example, the story of Holly Ramone. She studied for a year at university and went to a psychotherapist about depression and bulimia. And here's where the trouble starts: her therapist said that such symptoms usually meant the person had been sexually abused in childhood. Although Holly insisted that nothing like that had happened to her, after some time, under the influence of the therapist and a psychiatrist (who gave her amytal — the so-called "truth serum," which in reality isn’t really truthful), she began to "remember" that her father had sexually abused her from the age of five to sixteen. The word "remember" is in quotes here because, of course, it refers to false memories.
In general, psychologists of that era (the 1990s) seemed to love accusing parents of almost all the problems their patients faced. This was convenient both for psychologists and for the patients themselves: if something went wrong, it wasn't your fault, it was the parents'. A convenient form of self-justification. No matter that you neglected your hobbies and slacked off — "it's still the parents' fault." Remember the book's title — "Mistakes That Were Made (But Not by Me)".
So, the "recovered memory" method used by psychologists back then is now considered pseudoscientific. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people and families suffered from this approach. And as usual, many psychologists never admitted their mistakes.
Chapter 4. Good Intentions, Bad Science: The Vicious Cycle of Clinical Judgments.
In general, this chapter is a logical continuation of the previous one. And if we get more specific, it again addresses the mistakes of psychologists. But now, these mistakes weren't necessarily malicious or selfish, but rather unintentional. Yet, they were still terrifying.
For example, it discusses how thousands of psychiatrists, social workers, and psychotherapists today practice without the proper skepticism or knowledge. They often make decisions "on the fly," following the principle "better to overdo it than to underdo it." And sometimes these decisions destroy people's lives.
One such case was Kelly Michaels, a kindergarten teacher who was accused of 115 episodes of sexual harassment and sentenced to 47 years in prison. Five years later, she was released when it was discovered that the children's testimony had been influenced by the psychologists who interviewed them. Researchers showed that children under the age of five often can't differentiate between what actually happened to them and what adults told them. In other words, children could be absolutely sure something happened, even though it was just a story that had been implanted in them.
Another example was when different psychologists, analyzing the same data about a girl, came to completely opposite conclusions. Some insisted the girl had been abused and needed to be immediately separated from her father. Others said the father was innocent, and the girl should be placed under his care. So, the same information — but totally contradictory conclusions.
Chapter 5. Law and Disorder.
Moving on. Now, the authors of the book delve into the mistakes made by police officers, detectives, and prosecutors in the United States during the late 1990s. One phrase uttered by a prosecutor to Borchardt speaks volumes about their confidence: "Innocent people are never accused. Don't worry about it, that never happens… It's physically impossible." Since this is even described in the book, I think you understand how many wrongful convictions there were at that time.
If in the case of psychologists the root cause of the trouble was the "Recovered Memory" method, in this chapter, the main problem becomes the "Confirmation Bias," which I briefly mentioned earlier. In short, it’s the tendency to ignore evidence that suggests innocence and, conversely, to relentlessly search for evidence supporting guilt. And, returning to cognitive dissonance, they immediately dismiss any facts that contradict their version. One strange example is the investigation of a young woman's murder in the US. Many pieces of evidence pointed to a young man as the suspect. However, it was later discovered that the woman had been raped, and the sperm found didn’t match the suspect’s DNA. Instead of admitting the mistake and searching for the real culprit, the prosecutors invented a new theory: the woman had consensual sex with someone else, but this young man was the one who killed her.
A second example involves teenagers who were accused just because they looked suspicious, came from poor neighborhoods, and had troubled families. But they were innocent. Only 13 years later, a repeat offender named Matias Reyes, who was already serving time for three rapes, robbery, and murder, confessed that he had committed the crime for which those boys were serving time. He gave details no one else knew except the real killer, and DNA evidence confirmed it matched the samples found on the victim’s clothing.
As the authors point out, self-justifications not only send innocent people to prison but also prevent them from getting out.
Another issue raised by the authors is the illegal methods used to obtain confessions. For example, the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division created a special gang unit, and dozens of officers were found guilty of illegal arrests, false testimonies, and fabricating charges against innocent people. Nearly 100 convictions were overturned because they relied on illegal methods. In New York, a 1989 investigation found that the Suffolk County Police had fabricated a series of cases — they beat suspects, wiretapped phones, and lost or falsified evidence.
Chapter 6. The "Killer" of Love: Self-Justifications in Marriage.
As you might have guessed, this chapter is about relationships. More specifically, it addresses arguments in relationships and self-justifications. The main point of this chapter is to show how deeply self-justifications can destroy relationships — and often, not in a positive way.
The feelings of the spouses are mentioned, who typically don’t drift apart immediately, but rather gradually. Each partner focuses on what the other is doing wrong while finding excuses for their own actions and opinions. One of the interesting and typical cases is described between a couple — Deborah and Frank, who, after returning from a meeting with friends, had another argument over a minor misunderstanding. And the conflict was made worse precisely by mutual self-justifications.
Thus, according to the authors, misunderstandings, conflicts, differences in character, and even harsh arguments by themselves do not "kill" love. The main killers are self-justifications. This is because each spouse tries to deal with the inner dissonance after conflicts and begins to interpret their partner's behavior in their own favor.
Chapter 7. Wounds, Breaks, and Wars.
At the beginning of this chapter, the authors describe the military-political conflict between Iran and the United States in the late 1970s, when the former Shah of Iran fled to Egypt, and the Carter administration reluctantly allowed the Shah to briefly come to the United States for cancer treatment. In response, the Iranian government expressed dissatisfaction, and on November 4, several hundred Iranian students seized the main building of the U.S. Embassy, taking most of the Americans inside hostage — 52 of whom remained prisoners for the following 444 days. The students insisted on the return of the Shah to Iran. Their goal was to put the Shah on trial and return billions of dollars they claimed had been stolen from the Iranian people. This crisis can be called the "September 9" of its time.
Most Iranians choose the response that justifies their hatred of America, and most Americans choose the response that justifies their hatred of Iran. As the authors describe, one reason for this wall of division is that we always feel our own pain more acutely than the pain we inflict on others, even if the intensity of the suffering is actually the same.
The greater the pain we inflict on others, the greater the need to justify our actions in order to preserve our self-respect and consider ourselves good people. People with high opinions of themselves, when they harm others, need to convince themselves that the person they harmed is an extremely unattractive subject. Since such wonderful people as I don’t harm the innocent, it means that the person must have deserved all the harm I inflicted on them. As demonstrated by David Glass’s experiment: the higher the self-esteem of the offenders, the more they tarnish the victims.
As a result, the authors conclude: put together offenders with high self-esteem and helpless victims — and you have a recipe for escalating cruelty. And this recipe is not just for villains, sadists, or psychopaths. Ordinary people, who have children, loved ones, listen to good music, enjoy fine food, sex, and like to gossip like everyone else, can and often do this as well.
The authors also highlight the topic of torture and its various forms. Usually, everyone claims that "our torture" is never as brutal as "their torture." They discuss when, in the opinion of those who use torture, it is considered appropriate, and where the line of acceptability is drawn.
Moreover, the authors delve into historical details and describe the first Crusade in 1095, when Christians captured Jerusalem, which belonged to Muslims, and ruthlessly slaughtered almost all of its population. Of course, this had its own backstory. And that one had an even earlier one. Thus, the authors ask the logical question: who started first, and how did this conflict escalate to such proportions.
Chapter 8. Liberation and a Bold Admission.
This final chapter is dedicated to how conflicts, particularly internal cognitive dissonances, should be resolved and reminds us how self-justification fits into this process.
The catastrophe of the Columbia shuttle, Kennedy's Cuban fiasco in 1961, and other examples are discussed in this chapter, as well as the reactions of leaders to these crises. Some admitted their guilt, others did not. Some did it sincerely, while others avoided responsibility and looked for someone to blame.
If admitting mistakes is so beneficial, why don't we do it? Firstly, because we often don't realize that it is necessary. Self-justifications kick in automatically and subconsciously. Secondly, because many cultures have ingrained (through societal upbringing) a reluctance to admit mistakes. According to the authors, the U.S. is a culture that suffers from a fear of mistakes, where missteps are associated with incompetence and stupidity. Therefore, even when people realize their mistake, they often don't want to admit it, even to themselves, seeing such an admission as proof of their own worthlessness. To support this theory, the authors refer to studies by colleagues who compared students from the U.S. and Asia and concluded that the weakest Japanese class outperformed the strongest American one. This study took a decade, and the conclusion was simple — it all comes down to how different cultures respond to mistakes. "In our culture, you have to pay a high price for a mistake," says Stigler, "while in Japan, it's not like that."
After understanding how self-justifications work — in family, memory, psychotherapy, law, prejudices, conflicts, and wars — the authors highlight two lessons from the theory of dissonance. The first: the ability to reduce dissonance helps us defend our beliefs, confidence, decisions, self-respect, and well-being. The second: this same ability can lead to trouble. People choose a self-destructive course to confirm the correctness of their previous decisions. They begin to treat those they have already harmed even more harshly, convincing themselves that the victims deserve it. Understanding the mechanism of dissonance gives us ways to deal with these processes and protects us from those who haven't learned how to manage them.
As the authors write, the best remedy against the narrowing of the field of vision, which everyone is susceptible to, is more light. Since most of us don’t correct our own mistakes, and "blind spots" prevent us from understanding that we need to do so, external procedures and factors are necessary.
In criminal investigations, disease treatments, corruption revelations, and other fields, independent commissions are often used. Of course, it's important to remember that even such commissions can be biased or incompetent. But if we assume their competence and independence, we can hope for the minimization of mistakes. However, this is not possible in all fields and professions. And power without control and accountability, according to the authors, is a reliable recipe for disaster in any area.
If we don’t have the opportunity to turn to independent commissions, we can learn to create a buffer — a space between our emotions and actions — and think about whether it’s really worth holding on to views that contradict the facts. Understanding that we are in a state of dissonance can help make clear, smart decisions, without allowing automatic defensive mechanisms to resolve internal conflicts in a way that is convenient for us but ineffective.
