Rationally Speaking #23 - Carol Tavris on Everybody Making Mistakes, Except Us...
Rationally Speaking Podcast
New York City Skeptics
4.6 • 787 Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2010
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our guest, Carol Tavris discusses her book (co-authored with Elliot Aronson) "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts." In it they describe how our powerful cognitive dissonance engine of self-justification gives us the incredible ability to rationalize events and beliefs so that we always end up being better than average at being right. Also, how we are forced into these rationalizations by our absolute need to somehow square our most dearly held opinions of ourselves with the nasty tendency of some facts to contradict them.
Carol Tavris is a social psychologist who has tought at UCLA. She has written for many publications, including the NY Times and the LA Times. She is the author of a number of books, including "The Mismeasure of Women" and the recently re-released, "Psychobabble and Biobunk."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education. |
| 0:22.6 | For more information, please visit us at NYCCEptics.org. |
| 0:31.6 | Welcome to rationally speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense. |
| 0:41.1 | I am your host, Massimo Piliucci, and with me, as always, is my co-host Julia Galev. |
| 0:46.1 | Julia, what's our topic today? |
| 0:47.9 | Massimo, today we have a guest joining us by phone. |
| 0:50.6 | I'd like to welcome Carol Tavris. |
| 0:53.1 | She's a social psychologist who's taught at UCLA, and also |
| 0:56.9 | an author. She's written for publications, including the New York Times and the LA Times, is the author |
| 1:02.9 | of a recently re-released book called Psychobabble and Biobunk. And also the co-author of another recent volume called |
| 1:12.9 | Mistakes Were Made, But Not by Me, Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and |
| 1:18.8 | Hurtful Acts. |
| 1:19.9 | That's co-authored with Elliot Aronson. |
| 1:22.2 | Carol, welcome. |
| 1:23.4 | Very happy to be with you guys. |
| 1:25.7 | Carol, so here's my first question. |
| 1:28.2 | When I was, I started getting interested in philosophy, one of my favorite philosophers was, and to some extent still is Aristotle. |
| 1:36.5 | Aristotle was famous for having said that the thing that differentiates human beings from any other animal is that we are the rational animal. |
| 1:44.0 | But after reading your book, I have to conclude that we're actually more likely to be |
| 1:49.0 | described as the rationalizing animal. Is that a fair assessment? |
| 1:52.5 | That is exactly right. And in fact, that's the term that Elliot Aronson himself used when he was |
| 1:58.1 | first working with and developing the theory of cognitive dissonance. |
... |
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