The book Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), the authors Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, include different real-life scenarios where people make dreadful mistakes, but instead of admitting that they are mistaken, they decide to self-justify. Self-justification makes them believe that nothing was done wrong and that the people around them are those to blame. We find it difficult to admit that we’ve committed a fallacy, so instead we cover up our tracks and begin to protect our “innocent” images. It relieves us to feel magnificent about ourselves after feeling some tension.
It is human nature to try to be independent and choose for ourselves the path that we crave to go down, but we also have the service of others to try and lead us down the correct one. All we have to do is decide whether we would like to listen to that advice or not. In the introduction, we learn that some of the world’s leaders are the prime example of people that make mistakes by listening to themselves only. When panic hits, the people turn to their leaders to hear what they have to say about what they have to say.
…show more content…
Every person does at least once in their lives. The people that study the mind like psychologists and majors even understand they have done it as well. When dissonance becomes unbearable with pain and guilt, we feel as if we owe it to ourselves to remove the pain as quickly as possible. When we are in danger of our reputations being put on the line, that is when matters attain the best of us and we turn to this form of deception to calm things down a bit. Our internal “pyramid of choice” can either make or break us. If we desire to do good from the beginning then we can avoid having to feel guilty. If we embrace the other way around, then we have to go through the process of lying and deceiving others, including ourselves and that is not always the way that we wish things would turn out for