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

We have all done something that made others angry at us, and we have all been spurred to anger by what others have done to us. We all have, intentionally or unintentionally, hurt another person who will forever regard us as the villain, the betrayer, the scoundrel

We have all done something that made others angry at us, and we have all been spurred to anger by what others have done to us. We all have, intentionally or unintentionally, hurt another person who will forever regard us as the villain, the betrayer, the scoundrel. And we have all felt the sting of being on the receiving end of an act of injustice, nursing a wound that never seems to fully heal.

Feeling like a victim of injustice in one situation does not make us less likely to commit an injustice against someone else, nor does it make us more sympathetic to victims.

Each pair was hooked up to a mechanism that exerted pressure on their index fingers, and the participants were instructed to apply the same force on their partner’s finger that they had just felt. They could not do it fairly, although they tried hard. Every time one partner felt the pressure, he retaliated with considerably greater force, thinking he was giving what he had gotten.

Perpetrators are motivated to reduce their moral culpability; victims are motivated to maximize their moral blamelessness.

most victims reported lasting negative consequences of the rift or quarrel. More than half said it had seriously damaged the relationship. They reported continuing hostility, loss of trust, unresolved negative feelings, or even the end of the former friendship,

“Not only did he do that terrible thing; he doesn’t even understand that it was a terrible thing!”

One reason he doesn’t understand and she can’t admit it is that perpetrators are preoccupied with justifying what they did, but another reason is that they really do not know how the victim feels.

Many victims initially stifle their anger, nursing their wounds and brooding about what to do. They ruminate about their pain or grievances for months, sometimes for years, and sometimes for decades. One man we know told us that after eighteen years of marriage, his wife announced “out of the blue, at breakfast,” that she wanted a divorce. “I tried to find out what I’d done wrong,” he said, “and I told her I wanted to make amends, but there were eighteen years of dust balls under the bed.” That wife brooded for eighteen years;

Many victims are unable to resolve their feelings because they keep picking at the scab on the wound, asking themselves repeatedly, “How could such a bad thing have happened to me, a good person?” This is perhaps the most painful dissonance-arousing question that we confront in our lives.

Perpetrators, whether individuals or nations, write versions of history in which their behavior was justified and provoked by the other side; their behavior was sensible and meaningful; if they made mistakes or went too far, at least everything turned out for the best in the long run; and it’s all in the past now anyway. Victims tend to write accounts of the same history in which they describe the perpetrator’s actions as arbitrary and meaningless, or else intentionally malicious and brutal; in which their own retaliation was impeccably appropriate and morally justified; and in which nothing turned out for the best. In fact, everything turned out for the worst, and we are still irritated about it.

One of the most eternally popular dissonance reducers, practiced by everyone from toddlers to tyrants, is “The other guy started it.”

The problem is, how far back do you want to go to show that the other guy started it?

each time we deliberately inflict pain on another, we know what we are doing. We are doing evil.

the small percentage of people who cannot or will not reduce dissonance this way pay a large psychological price in guilt, anguish, anxiety, nightmares, and sleepless nights,

didn’t reckon with the power of self-justification: “We are good people. Therefore, if we deliberately inflict pain on another, the other must have deserved it. Therefore, we are not doing evil, quite the contrary. We are doing good.” Indeed, the small percentage of people who cannot or will not reduce dissonance this way pay a large psychological price in guilt, anguish, anxiety, nightmares, and sleepless nights,

the power of self-justification: “We are good people. Therefore, if we deliberately inflict pain on another, the other must have deserved it. Therefore, we are not doing evil, quite the contrary. We are doing good.” Indeed, the small percentage of people who cannot or will not reduce dissonance this way pay a large psychological price in guilt, anguish, anxiety, nightmares, and sleepless nights,

The pain of living with horrors you have committed but cannot morally accept is searing, which is why most people will reach for any justification available to assuage the dissonance.

After five more days of arduous travel, the monks arrive at their monastery, and the moment they do, they turn on the elder in a fury. “How could you do that?” they admonish him. “You broke your vows! You not only spoke to that woman, you touched her! You not only touched her, you picked her up!” The elder replies, “I only carried her across the river. You have been carrying her for five days.”

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy,” said Mandela.