Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone · Ginger Campbell, MD

Carol Tavris co-author of "Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts"

August 28, 2020·1 hr 3 min·4 clips

Good people can keep doing bad things to protect the belief that they are good, kind, and competent.

1. Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone episode 175 centers on Carol Tavris and cognitive dissonance. 2. Dr. Carol Tavris appears as guest, and Dr. Ginger Campbell hosts because she wants a clear explanation of cognitive dissonance and the third edition of Mistakes Were Made, But Not by Me. 3. The episode asks what cognitive dissonance explains about beliefs, bad decisions, and current U.S. polarization. 4. Tavris says her family encouraged questioning "received wisdom" and that her mother asked what democracy meant for women and enslaved people in Greece. 5. She names middle school science teacher Jules Crane and says he taught an "inquiring skepticism" that shaped her path into social psychology. 6. Tavris describes social psychology at the University of Michigan as a field that explains "love and hatred to peace and war" and links individual behavior to mass movements. 7. She warns that neuroscience can become reductionist when people assume an MRI image explains love, addiction, or behavior by itself. 8. Tavris says culture shapes nonverbal rules like conversational distance and that culture and brain influence each other in a two-way street. 9. She explains that the third edition updates the book with issues of racism, sexism, Donald Trump, and the Me Too movement. 10. She says the added chapter also addresses self-forgiveness, PTSD, and what it takes to accept mistakes that harmed other people. 11. Tavris gives Sarah Silverman and Louis C.K. as an example of someone saying "I absolutely love this man" and "what he did was reprehensible" at the same time. 12. She says dissonance feels like a "hot potato in the brain" because people want to reduce the discomfort immediately. 13. Tavris says the pressure is strongest when the person has done something "heinous, immoral, or wrong" and still wants to see themselves as good. 14. She uses doctors who resisted switching from radical mastectomy to lumpectomy to show how competent people can cling to harmful practices. 15. Tavris explains the $1 and $20 spool-sorting experiment, where the smaller payment led people to rate the boring task as interesting. 16. She describes the initiation experiment and says embarrassing entry rituals can make a dull group discussion seem more valuable. 17. Tavris tells Elliot Aronson's canoe story in Minnesota as a benign way of reducing dissonance after choosing a house farther from campus. 18. She explains the "pyramid of choice," where an initial decision hardens into justification and makes later reversal harder. 19. The tone stays conversational and analytic, with Ginger Campbell asking for definitions, examples, and updates while Tavris answers in long, structured explanations. 20. Listeners who care about social psychology, politics, and self-justification should find it useful, while people seeking a short entertainment segment may skip it.

As heard by us

A clear look at how choices can reshape belief until self-justification starts to feel like integrity.

Carol Tavris gives cognitive dissonance a clean, practical shape: after people choose, their attitudes often start bending around what they have done.

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Why you'd press play

You will hear how one choice can start recruiting your beliefs to defend what you just did.

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