Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) - chapter two

"Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)" by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.

For summaries of Intro and Chapter One, see earlier posts.

CHAPTER TWO: BLIND SPOTS

Summary

This chapter sheds light on the manifestations of 'blind spots' in
our minds. The chapter tells numerous stories around the theme of
"blind spots".

Our brains can sometimes fail to spot or connect things that other
people, not in our situation, easily can. People unintentionally
fail to notice vital events and information that might make them
question their behaviour or their convictions.

For example, a business expert may confidently predict an economic
downturn. He fails to mention that he has a personal commercial
interest in seeing an economic downturn. If an outside observer knew
about the expert's commercial interest, they would be skeptical
about his opinion.

When the economy remains strong, the expert may blame a natural
disaster for causing unprecedented circumstances that cancelled out
his predictions. He would not think that his interests may have
unduly influenced him. The thought may not cross his mind, or if it
did, he would dismiss it. There's a dead zone in his mental
processing: a blind spot.

Brain 'blind spots' are self-serving habits that allow us to justify
our own perceptions and beliefs as being accurate and realistic and
unbiased. What is the other option? That our perceptions and beliefs
are wrong and unreliable? Our brain has to protect us.

In another manifestation of "blind spot", humans always have an
"us", against "them". This is hardwired. As groups, we trust "our"
worldview more than "their" worldview.

In one experiment, [social psychologist] Ross took peace proposals
created by Israeli negotiators, labelled them as Palestinian
proposals, and asked Israeli citizens to judge them. "The Israelis
liked the Palestinian proposal attributed to Israel more than they
liked the Israeli proposal attributed to the Palestinians," he says.

Criticism

The theme of the book is self-justification and chapter two is a
variation on the theme. The chapter does not propose clear-cut
theories or arguments. In fact, for this post, I abandoned my
bullet-points format. The chapter is a series of stories and
narratives that do not have a clear thrust or proposition; the
organisation of the chapter is misleading.

Reading chapters like these is immensely frustrating. There is a lot
of enjoyable detail; but you do question the clarity of thought of
the authors.

That said, the quote below, from the end of the chapter, is a good,
pragmatic one.

Given that everyone has some blind spots, our greatest hope of
self-correction lies in making sure we are not operating in a hall
of mirrors , in which all we see are distorted reflections of our
own desires and convictions. We need a few trusted naysayers in our
lives, critics who are willing to puncture our protective bubble of
self-justification and yank us back to reality if we veer too far
off. This is especially important for people in positions of power.