Book Titles

As fallible human beings, all of us share the impulse to justify ourselves and avoid taking responsibility for actions that turn out to be harmful, immoral, or stupid.

The higher the stakes – emotional, financial, moral – the greater the difficulty.

To err is human, but humans then have a choice between covering up for fessing up. The choice we make is critical to what we do next.

So powerful is the need for consonance that when people are forced to look at disconfirming evidence, they will find a way to criticize, distort, or dismiss it so that they can maintain or even strengthen their existing belief.

The confirmation bias is especially glaring in matters of political observation; we see only the positive attributes of our side and the negative attributes of theirs.

…reading information that goes against your point of view can make you all the more convinced you are right.

Once we are invested in a belief and have justified its wisdom, changing our minds is literally hard work.

The more costly a decision in terms of time, money, effort, or inconvenience and the more irrevocable its consequences, the greater the dissonance and the greater the need to reduce it…

Rather than cutting their losses, most people will throw good money after bad in hopes of recouping those losses and justifying their original decision.

…decades of experimental research have found… when people vent their feelings aggressively, they often feel worse, pump up their blood pressure, and make themselves even angrier.