Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) Third Edition: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

why doesn’t an innocent suspect just keep denying guilt? Why doesn’t the target get angry at the interrogator, as the manual says any innocent person would do?

If you are strong enough, wealthy enough, or have had enough experience with the police to know that you are being set up, you will say the four magic words: “I want a lawyer.” But many people believe they don’t need a lawyer if they are innocent.

marriage also forces couples to face themselves, to learn more about themselves and how they behave with an intimate partner than they ever expected (or perhaps wanted) to know.

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterward,”

Marriage, though, is the greatest two-way decision of most people’s lives, and couples are enormously invested in making it work. A moderate amount of postwedding, eyes-half-shut dissonance reduction, in which partners emphasize the positive and overlook the negative, allows things to hum along in harmony.

Each partner focuses on what the other one is doing wrong while justifying his or her own preferences, attitudes, and ways of doing things.

get angry just as unhappy couples do. But happy couples know how to manage their conflicts. If a problem is annoying them, they talk about and fix the problem, let it go, or learn to live with it.

get angry just as unhappy couples do. But happy couples know how to manage their conflicts. If a problem is annoying them, they talk about and fix the problem, let it go, or learn to live with it.3 Unhappy couples are pulled further apart by angry confrontations.

misunderstandings, conflicts, personality differences, and even angry quarrels are not the assassins of love; self-justification is.

Each of them understands the other’s point of view perfectly, but the need for self-justification is preventing them from accepting the other’s position as legitimate.

Frank justifies his unwillingness to discuss difficult or painful topics in the name of his “tolerance” and his ability to “just let things ride.”

Debra got it right when she observed that Frank justifies ignoring her demands to communicate by attributing them to her irrational nature. But she doesn’t see that she is doing the same thing, that she justifies ignoring his wishes not to talk by attributing them to his stubborn nature.

Self-justification is blocking each partner from asking: Could I be wrong? Could I be making a mistake? Could I change?

When we explain our own behavior, self-justification allows us to flatter ourselves: We give ourselves credit for our good actions but let the situation excuse the bad ones.

a couple is arguing from the premise that each is a good person who did something wrong but fixable, or who did something blunder-headed because of momentary situational pressures, there is hope of correction and compromise.

being criticized for who you are rather than for what you did evokes a deep sense of shame and helplessness; it makes a person want to hide, disappear.6 Because the shamed person has nowhere to go to escape the desolate feeling of humiliation,

It is no longer an effort to solve a problem or even to get the other person to modify his or her behavior; it’s just to wound, to insult, to score.

contempt—criticism laced with sarcasm, name calling, and mockery

contempt—criticism laced with sarcasm, name calling, and mockery—is one of the strongest signs that a relationship is in free fall.

one thing that self-justification is designed to protect: our feelings of self-worth, of being loved, of being a good and respected person.