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Mistakes Were Made . . . (But Not By George Bush)
This week's quiz question: What is the psychological difference between Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's admission, "I acknowledge that mistakes were made here," and George Bush's comment in his January address to the nation, "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me"? Everyone knows that public figures resort to this cliché to distance themselves from responsibility for their actions; what else is new?Gonzales joined a long list of practitioners of "mistakes were made," including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Cardinal Edward Egan, and McDonald's, to name a few. But there is a big difference, we suggest, between this responsibility-shirking crowd and George W. Bush. It is the difference between the conscious effort a politician or other public figure makes to convince the public of something he knows is untrue ("I did not have sex with that woman"; "I am not a crook"), and the unconscious process of justifying his actions to himself, persuading himself that he did nothing wrong -- that, in fact, he did a good thing. In the former situation, he is lying and knows he is lying to keep his job or save face. In the latter, he is lying to himself. That is why self-justification is more dangerous than the explicit lie.
We want our politicians, business leaders, physicians, prosecuting attorneys, and love partners to own up to their errors and bad decisions, without weaseling. More important, we want them to correct their mistakes and learn from them. But before they can do that, they have to be aware that they actually did make a mistake or a bad decision. How come we can see their mistakes so clearly and not our own? As decades of studies in cognitive science have demonstrated, the brain is designed with blind spots, psychological as well as optical, and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on us the comforting delusion that we, personally, do not have any. We have no biases, we know why our small immoralities are justified and theirs are not, we know that our beliefs are valid and theirs are full of holes. These hardwired, self-serving habits of thinking are why everyone can see a hypocrite in action except the hypocrite, why husbands and wives can see the partner's stubborn unwillingness to change but not their own, and why the most villainous despots on earth sleep soundly at night.
When the fundamental belief that we are smart, moral, and kind crashes into the accusation that we did something stupid, immoral, or hurtful, we have major cognitive dissonance to resolve. Did I just commit an unethical act? I'm a good person; therefore my action was trivial, didn't hurt anyone, and besides everyone does it. Did I make a decision that proved disastrously wrong? I'm a smart person; therefore that decision has to be right, even if it will take a few decades to prove it. In this way, the brain sees to it that the very need to maintain the belief that we are kind, smart, and moral can keep us stuck in a course of action that is cruel, stupid, or immoral.
Understanding how self-justification works helps to explain the mystery of George Bush. Why can't the man ever admit that any of the specific predictions he and his administration made about Iraq were flat wrong? There were no WMD, there were no happy Iraqis pelting American soldiers with flowers, the "mission" was not "accomplished" in a short time, oil revenues did not subsidize the cost, and no united pro-Western government arose from the Saddam's crushed regime. Indeed, political commentators across the spectrum -- Ben Stein, Andy Rooney, Jonathan Rauch, George Will, and Paul Krugman, to name a few -- have not only called upon Bush to admit he was wrong; they even wrote face-saving speeches for him. In 2005, Jonathan Rauch predicted that Bush would have to withdraw from Iraq or he would lose both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections, and what sane politician would risk that?
A self-justifying one. And that is why Alberto Gonzales is no George Bush. Gonzales may justify his ethical lapses and failure to uphold the Constitution as acts of loyalty to his president, but he undoubtedly knows what he is doing and what he has to do to protect his job. Bush's actions, in contrast, suggest a man whose religious and political ideology has cocooned him in self-justification. He has systematically demoted or fired anyone who had the temerity to disagree with him, a sure sign of a leader unable to hear any information that might create dissonance about his decisions.
After the 2006 midterm elections, with Iraq in chaos, Bush no longer had an external incentive to "stay the course"; he could not run for reelection and the majority of the country wanted an end to the war. If Bush were acting pragmatically, he now had the perfect opportunity to accept the recommendations of his own Iraq Study Group and his top generals, who were telling him the war was unwinnable. But by then Bush had convinced himself that the invasion of Iraq was not a mistake. "I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions," he told a delegation of conservative columnists. The only "mistakes," he told the country in January, had to do with tactics. Ergo, if we are not winning, we need to do what we have been doing, only with more troops and more money.
Self-justification has benefits. It allows people to sleep at night, untroubled by regrets over roads not taken or by memories of embarrassing failures. But for those in positions of power, some sleepless nights are called for. When self-justification blinds them to evidence that a decision was wrong, disaster usually follows.
Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson are social psychologists and authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not By ME): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts (Harcourt). For more information, please visit http://Tavris.socialpsychology.org/ and http://Aronson.socialpsychology.org/.
© 2007 Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
18 Comments so far
Show AllMichael Shermer has a great article in the May issue of Scientific American which basically points up the same argument, albeit more concisely. He quotes John F. Kennedy, who said "This administration intends to be candid about it's errors. For a wise man once said "An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it". We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors...We're not going to have any search for scapegoats...the final responsibilities of any failure are mine, and mine alone." I think that says it all.
A big part of the problem here is that both sides on the Gonzales debate are using the same words to mean different things.
As George Lakoff has oserved, "taking responsibiity" to most politicians (think of Janet Reno and the Branch Davidian massacre not too many years ago) does not mean when mistakes by your own subordinates while acting in your name and following your own directives are made you are just as guilty as are they.
Waht it does means in politician newspeak is that you punish some subordinate(s) beneath you for embarassing you and the adminstration by getting caught and then go merrily along like nothing had ever happened.
I am sure that in 'berto's mind after the resignations of Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling that he, 'berto, had "taken responsibility" and now it was time to "move on".
The correct response is not only to call for his resignation but to explain in doing so that the reason is that 'berto has not taken enough responsibility for what has happened on his watch. If we keep demanding he "take responsibility" he will keep on insisting "I have" and it's like a dog chasing its tail.
I forget, did Kennedy accept the responsibility for the Bay of Pigs fiasco?
Of course Tavris and Aronson are correct in the article in that Mr. Bush sleeps well every night after he reads another few lines of Camus, drinks his milk and goes to bed. This is a man that thinks he is the God's appointed Christian soldier. Twenty years ago he would have been commited but today its been my experience that not many people will argue against the idea. Saying "Jesus" all the time and fundamentalism is chic and in vogue as in the Middle East it's Mohammad and fundamentalism. So I guess Mr. Bush will NEVER be wrong.
Someone (not I) mentioned what admirers and defenders of Mr. Bush cite as his serenity of supreme self-confidence can also be labeled by critics as bone-headed tunnel vision.
Bush uses denial readily because he is an old drunk and they use denial a lot if you know anything about rehab of alcohol then you know that denial is a huge problem. Denial is also a sign of brain damage and Bush was boozing until he was 40 years old and has a few synapses missing - that makes for the use of denial as the only easy option of a half burned brain.
To get back to Gonzales- I am very hopeful that this coming week will be critical to get the man out one way or another: either by resigning or betting fired( unlikely- Bush loves the guy because he rescued him long ago when he got a DWI ticket) and the last method of get5tin rid of him is impeachment.
The scandal with the hospital appearance to sign papers of a sick Ashcroft, that is worse than Watergate!!! Trouble is that it did not hit the major media- I took a survey- my ordinary people have not heard about it.
When I tell them the story, they agree this is beyong the pail.
We need to unite this comming week and really help the Congress seriously proceed with impeachment.
We will be so happy: finally the guy who brought us torture, rendition, took our Habeus Corpus and brought eavesdropping and firing attorney generals who were doing their job and so we finally get to say something about the importance of the jsutice department to uphold the Constitution.
Think how we can celebrate when that Fredo is gone. It will be a good start.
Bush needs to start going to his AA meetings, or else we are going to have to stage an "intervention".
Americans have allowed this zealot (and unelected) president to manipulate our rights by tolerating the senate's acceptance of such unfit and dangerous justices, among many other abuses including countless sellouts including manipulation of science to impede environmental reforms.
Americans have only themselves to blame for this.
While I agree in a general way with some theories concerning human behavior, I'll tell you this: I know when I am lying. I know when I am being a hypocrite. I know when I am stealing, and I know when I'm sleeping with a whore. And one final thing I know: the USA invaded Iraq for no other reason than to control their oil.
"Bush's actions, in contrast, suggest a man whose religious and political ideology has cocooned him in self-justification"
Its not power that corrupts, but autonomy: not having to pay the consequences for your actions. There are many ways a man, or even a society, can be cocooned from these consequences. Take the public debt, for example (PLEASE take it). The debt was incurred by people who claimed the private investment of that money would pay for itself. But public debt is multigenerational, unlike private debt, so if the bet with public dollars didn't pay off, this would be your grandchildrens problem, not yours. It's hard to learn a lesson when the consequences of your actions will be borne by people unborn at the time you made them. Private debt is YOURS, so invest it wisely, or YOU will learn a harsh lesson. Hence, private debt teaches lessons, while public debt is a lesson we keep putting off. Consequences are the harsh taskmasters of authority, its hard to make proper investment decisions with money that comes with no consequences. Hence, alot of tax cut money was spent on monster homes, monster cars, and cruise-ship vacations, whose marginal value, as an investment of public funds, was zero. Thus, the tax cut dividend didn't match the public's initial generosity, and the kids will have to pay the difference. Sucks to be them, I guess. No lesson learned, on either side of that debt bubble.
That's why they call him the "Bubble Boy." He lives in his own parallel universe where he talks to God and Iraq is his own self righteous Jihad. It would be nice if someone sooner or later pops that bubble. We would all need to be warned ahead of time in order to duck and cover.
The article here is describing the inner mechanisms used by sociopaths. How else can your lies involve the US in an invasion, cause the loss of nearly 3,500 American soldier lives, maim tens of thousands of our troops with life time disabilities, kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, cost the US taxpayers trillions of dollars that our grandchildren will be paying off as it is all on the national debt tab, and still be trying to replace stay the course with a reinvented stay the course *surge*?
Why we are not hearing Bush say the equivalent of why he didn't have sex with that war is there is no internal gyroscope concept of right and wrong. Everything is right that Uncle Dick says is right and his corporate sponsors say is right.
Harry Truman never lost a moment of sleep, by his own report, over the annihilation of hundreds of thousands on innocent civilians for the purpose of demonstrating his new bomb. We study his face in the old news clips and try to imagine if this could be true. What kind of person would not go mad from the moral monstrocity of it? Well, yeah, we decide finally. Truman wouldn't.
I'm trying to imagine Dubyuh losing sleep over the possibility that hundreds of thousands of innocent people might have died because of his complicity in an enterprise of ill conceived piracy. There he is, snoring in his dreams of barbeque and Jack Daniels, his face punched into the pillow next to his wretched wife, Saddam's pistol hanging on the wall next to the bathroom door, sugar plums and yesterday's baseball scores dancing through his head, when suddenly Jesus, his favorite author, appears and tells him "George. You're only human, and you're not very smart. Maybe you made a mistake. Maybe you should have had people on the team with degrees in something besides business and political science. Maybe that oil doesn't belong to you. Maybe you killed all those people and trashed America for nothing." He wakes up in a cold sweat, his mind filled with moral doubts and ethical conundrums. The ghosts of the dead glare at him from the darkness, and the crushing weight of ethical responsibility is more than he can bear. Can you picture it?
I can't.
George Bush doesn't have a thought in his head that wasn't put there by his handlers. As for taking responsibility, this is the ultimate in cognative dissonance. It's as if by simply uttering these magical words everything is somehow made right. Instead of being fired everybody just says "oh, that's OK, we know you didn't mean to do anything wrong". Where's OUR responsibility in this scenario?
The gist of this article is interesting but in this particular case I think it's off on the wrong track. Psychological analyses of Bush are popular but they never approach the relevance of his pure motivation of corporate pandering. I get the impression that he's reminded of that on a daily basis by his task-master, Dick Cheney. I can easily picture Dick vetting every pugnacious Bush stance to see that it accords with contracted corporate obligation. In short, you're wasting your time with Bush, analysis or otherwise; he's a front, a red herring.
Yes, people will excuse great error on the part of great people. JFK and the bay of pigs, the man was obviously rapidly programmed from a young age by Joseph Sr. to hate communism. Ironically JFK himself was the Manchurian candidate, not his assassin.
People almost expect great folly and fall from high places. It's the Greek tragedies and we all know them, whether we've studied or not. That's why they're great. But I think people also know that Bush doesn't qualify. As Voxclamantis said, Bush dreams of barbecue and whiskey and that doesn't rank as Shakespeare, even in the Midwest.
Someone far smarter than me once said that George W. Bush would "rather be certain than right."
Ipenek's view on Bush's brain are probably close to the truth - remember the scene in Woodward's book about Cheney pushing for more more tax cuts for the filthy rich while W, ignored by Big Dick, sat there mumbling "haven't we given them their cuts already"? Chimpy's too stupid to recognize the uses his handlers make of him, and too egotistical to question any of it.
Good article. And where we need to look more deeply.
Bush is motivated by the same interests as every single human on the planet, save the rare enlightened ones. And that is self-interest. What happens to be so glaring as his faults is the peek we get into the nature of the highly priveledged. He loses no sleep because he is hard wired to look down upon the hordes of common folk.
Bush reminds me of a woman I know who blames her lighter for getting lost on her desk in the five minutes since she lit the last damn cigarette.
Used to piss me off then, too.
Bush may have delusions but so have the rest of us.
He appologized for Abu Ghraib in front of the King of Jordan, one general said how small he looked and joined the Kerry campaign to the chears of the antiwar movement.
In Fuluja in October 2006, there was a temporary cease fire where the rebels accepted nominal Baghdad authority. Locals cheered what they thought was the end of the war until a Kerry ad complained of terrorists hiding in Fuluja. So Bush demaned al Al Sadr's arrest. Now Sunniis and Shiites would be happy to out each other in exchange for peace.
Like a Greek Tragidy Bush has been assinged the role of ogar.
Ashchrost releases innocent suspects and no one cheered, they then sued the FBI for false arrest, and not we have Gonzalis
Unfortuatly Condoleza Rice won't answer her faxes when I tell her what Bush can do right in the future.
Remember Bush refused a photo Op with Cindy Sheehan because his handelers thought she might convice him. Maybe Bush is a slave in a cage and Cheney and Moonie Press Secretay Tony Snow won't let him talk to anyone reasonable. But most just condemn him not try to reason with him.
RichardKanegis@aol.com, 215-563-2866 22 S 22nd St Apt 305 Phila PA 19103
Wake up everyone al Qaeda is in charge not Bush. Antiwar organizing was going strong before bin Laden on the internet demanded that Iraq's not vote. The enthusiasam of thoses watching and listening to the largest peace domo in England fizled when a newz bullitin talked of terror bombings in Turkey. And then Majority Leader Bill Frist wasn't able to call for detention reform during a grim Congressional report on additional Abu Ghraib photos because a news bulitin on Al Qaeda posting Nick Berg's beeing beheaded cut him off the air.
Anyway after the dollar collapes and the entire world decends into hate, us lucky ones will find some rats and roaches to eat.