#130 - Carol Tavris, Ph.D. & Elliot Aronson, Ph.D.: Recognizing and overcoming cognitive dissonance

The Peter Attia Drive

Peter Attia, MD

Health & Fitness, Medicine, Fitness

4.7 • 7.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2020

⏱️ 120 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson are the co-authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), a book which explores the science of cognitive biases and discusses how the human brain is wired for self-justification. In this episode, Carol and Elliot discuss how our desire to reconcile mental conflicts adversely affects many aspects of society. The two give real-world examples to demonstrate the pitfalls in attempts to reduce mental conflict, or dissonance. The examples reveal that no one is immune to dissonance reduction behavior, how intellectual honesty can be trained and lastly, how to think critically in order to avoid engaging in harmful dissonant behaviors.

We discuss:

Carol and Elliot’s respective background, collaboration history, and their decision to write Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) [4:00];
The theory of cognitive dissonance, and real examples of dissonance reduction in action [11:15];
How Elliot advanced the theory of cognitive dissonance [23:00];
The evolutionary reason for dissonance reduction, and cultural differences in what causes cognitive dissonance [30:30];
The great danger of smart, powerful people engaging in dissonance reduction [35:15];
Two case studies of cognitive dissonance in criminal justice [39:30];
The McMartin preschool case study—The danger in making judgements before knowing all the information [43:30];
How ideology distorts science and public opinion [56:30];
How time distorts memories [58:30];
The downside of certainty [1:05:30];
Are we all doomed to cognitive dissonance?—How two people with similar beliefs can diverge [1:09:00];
Cognitive dissonance in the police force [1:21:00];
A toolkit for overcoming cognitive dissonance [1:27:30];
Importance of separating identity from beliefs, thinking critically, & and the difficulty posed by political polarity [1:30:30];
How to impart the lessons from their work into future generations [1:48:00]; and
More.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive Podcast.
0:13.0	I'm your host, Peter Atia.
0:14.8	This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter, all focus on the goal of translating
0:18.7	the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone.
0:22.4	Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've
0:26.6	assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen.
0:29.4	If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more
0:33.2	in-depth content if you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level.
0:37.3	At the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are, or if you want to learn
0:41.0	more now, head over to peteratiamd.com forward slash subscribe.
0:46.3	Now without further delay, here's today's episode.
0:51.1	My guest this week are Carol, Tavriss, and Elliot Aronson.
0:55.0	Carol's name may sound familiar to some of you because she was actually a guest on the
0:57.8	podcast back in early 2017, along with Averum Blooming when she and Averum were on to talk
1:04.7	about hormone replacement therapy.
1:06.6	In this podcast, with Elliot, we talk about something very different, which is a book
1:10.8	that they co-authored in 2007.
1:14.0	Mistakes were made, but not by me.
1:16.6	Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts.
1:21.0	Now, if you've listened to this podcast much, you've probably heard me talk about this
1:25.6	book at least once.
1:26.9	It's certainly one of my favorite books, and one of the books I recommend most to other
	...

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