"[M]ost of us find it difficult, if not impossible, to say, 'I was wrong; I made a terrible mistake.' The higher the stakes - emotional, financial, moral - the greater the difficulty" (2). The problem goes even further: "Most people, when directly confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to pierce the mental armor of self-justification" (2). If we are willing to admit error, it is usually someone else's error. In other words we say, "Mistakes were made, but not by me."
We all possess a great capacity to justify ourselves. Self-justification is different than lying: "there is a big difference between what a guilty man says to the public to convince them of something he knows is untrue ('I did not have sex with that woman'; 'I am not a crook'), and the process of persuading himself that he did a good thing. In the former situation, he is lying and knows he is lying to save his own skin. In the latter, he is lying to himself” (4).
This comes through in the stories we tell ourselves: “[M]ost of us, most of the time, are neither telling the whole truth nor intentionally deceiving. We aren’t lying; we are self-justifying. All of us, as we tell our stories, add details and omit inconvenient facts; we give the tale a small, self-enhancing spin” (69). We wrestle with “a ‘totalitarian ego’ that ruthlessly destroys information it doesn’t want to hear and, like all fascist leaders, rewrites history from the standpoint of the victor” (70). “Confabulation, distortion, and plain forgetting are the foot soldiers of memory, and they are summoned to the front lines when the totalitarian ego wants to protect us from the pain and embarrassment of actions we took that are dissonant with our core self-images: ‘I did that?’” (71)
Our memories often fuel our self-justification through unreliable, self-serving recall. "Memories are often pruned and shaped by an ego-enhancing bias that blurs the edges of past events, softens culpability, and distorts what really happened" (6). The process goes like this: "Over time, as the self-serving distortions of memory kick in and we forget or distort past events, we may come to believe our own lies, little by little. We know we did something wrong, but gradually we begin to think it wasn't all our fault, and after all the situation was complex. We start underestimating our own responsibility, whittling away at it until it is a mere shadow of its former hulking self. Before long, we have persuaded ourselves, believing privately what we originally said publicly" (6).
The final stage of self-justification makes us impervious to self-correction. We flatter ourselves by assuming we process information logically without “confirmation bias.” But confirmation bias affects how we hear things: “If the new information is consonant with our beliefs, we think it is well founded and useful: ‘Just what I always said!’ But if the new information is dissonant, then we consider it biased or foolish: ‘What a dumb argument!’ So powerful is the need for consonance that when people are forced to look at disconfirming evidence, they will find a way to criticize, distort, or dismiss it so that they can maintain or even strengthen their existing belief” (18).
Our bias impacts how we view other’s motives: “And when we introspect, looking into our souls and hearts, the need to avoid dissonance assures us that we have only the best and most honorable of motives. We take our own involvement in an issue as a source of accuracy and enlightenment—‘I’ve felt strongly about gun control for years; therefore, I know what I’m talking about’—but we regard such personal feelings on the part of others who hold different views as a source of bias—‘She can’t possibly be impartial about gun control because she’s felt strongly about it for years’ (43).
Most of the time, we are completely unaware of the blind spots in our field of vision, but like good drivers, we must become aware of them in order to drive safely.
The authors provide an interesting chapter on self-justification in marriage. “Successful partners extend to each other the same self-forgiving ways of thinking we extend to ourselves: They forgive each other’s missteps as being due to the situation, but give each other credit for the thoughtful and loving things they do. If one partner does something thoughtless or is in a crabby mood, the other tends to write it off as a result of events that aren’t the partner’s fault” (169). In other words, they give one another the benefit of the doubt. The self-justification that destroys a marriage comes in two forms: “I’m right and you’re wrong” and “Even if I’m wrong, too bad; that’s the way I am” (167). “By the time a couple’s style of argument has escalated into shaming and blaming each other, the very purpose of their quarrels has shifted. 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. That is why shaming leads to fierce, renewed efforts at self-justification, a refusal to compromise, and the most destructive emotion a relationship can evoke: contempt” (171). “Contempt is the final revelation to the partner that ‘I don’t value the ‘who’ that you are’” (172). Once the decision has been made to separate, an unhappy partner restructures his or her story together, reinterpreting the couple’s initial meeting, and their early years, resulting in the pitiless remark, “I never loved you.” “In contrast, the couples who grow together over the years have figured out a way to live with a minimum of self-justification, which is another way of saying that they are able to put empathy for the partner ahead of defending their own territory” (180).
We need to take responsibility for our mistakes, admit that we were wrong, and promise to do better. “If letting go of self-justification and admitting mistakes is so beneficial to the mind and relationships, why aren’t more of us doing it? If we are so grateful to others when they do it, why don’t we do it more often? First, we don’t do it because, as we have seen, most of the time we aren’t even aware that we need to… Second, America is a mistake-phobic culture, one that links mistakes with incompetence and stupidity. So even when people are aware of haying made a mistake, they are often reluctant to admit it, even to themselves, because they take it as evidence that they are a blithering idiot” (221-222). Mistakes do not mean we are stupid, especially if we learn from our mistakes.
The authors also advocate shedding more light on an issue in order to maintain higher levels of personal responsibility and diminish self-justification.
It is interesting that both means of change – confession and enlightenment - involve practices structured into the life of a church community. Christians regularly examine themselves – their motives, goals, pursuits, actions, attitudes – and admit their failures in confession and repentance. We then seek new light from God in order to acknowledge our responsibility and reduce self-justification. Perhaps if we took these practices seriously, we would go a long way toward creating an alternative community of truth, acceptance, and forgiveness.
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