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

**Peter Attia, MD** (0:11)
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My guests this week are Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Carol's name may sound familiar to some of you because she was actually a guest on the podcast back in early 2017, along with Avram Blooming when she and Avram were on to talk about hormone replacement therapy. In this podcast with Elliot, we talk about something very different, which is a book that they co-authored in 2007, Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me, Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts. Now, if you've listened to this podcast much, you've probably heard me talk about this book at least once. It's certainly one of my favorite books and one of the books I recommend most to other people.
It's important to understand the background of Carol and Elliot to understand how they came together to do this. So Carol received her PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan. She's a fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences. She's received numerous awards for her efforts to promote gender equality, science and skepticism. And that's something that Carol and I bonded over early.
Elliot received his PhD from Stanford in the late 1950s. And it was during his time at Stanford in the 1950s that he trained with the great Leon Festinger, the father of the theory of cognitive dissonance. He went on to teach at Harvard University, the University of Minnesota, University of Texas and UC Santa Cruz and eventually back at Stanford. Elliot is the only psychologist to have won the American Psychological Association's highest awards in all three major academic categories for distinguished service in writing in 1973, distinguished teaching in 1980 and distinguished research in 1999 And in 2002, he was listed among the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. In this episode, we talk about how Carol and Elliot began to work together on this project, what prompted them to ultimately write the book. And we talk a little bit about how cognitive dissonance shows up in many aspects of our lives, not just in science, but also in politics, in criminal justice, how it has shown up historically and perhaps most importantly, how we can train ourselves to not be victims of some of the worst aspects of cognitive dissonance and dissonant behavior. And instead, how we can use our understanding of why our minds naturally try to reduce the pain of cognitive dissonance to actually hack it a little bit and try to instead be as intellectually honest as possible. By the end of this episode, you'll understand that there's really no one who is immune from this. Whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a DA, a mental health worker, a scientist, we all suffer from the pain of cognitive dissonance. And really, the question is, what do we do with that discomfort? Are we able to sit in it or do we succumb to it? I found this to be a fascinating discussion and I hope you do as well. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.
Carol and Elliot, thank you so much for making the time to do this. And the backstory to this is pretty funny. So if you'll both bear with me along with the listeners, I want to explain it.
I read Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me for the first of many times circa 2012, maybe 2013 It was love at first sight. And the first thing I did was Google you guys. And somehow I came across Carol's phone number, or maybe it was an email, but I think it was actually a phone number. And I called and I actually got a hold of Carol. And I don't know if you thought I was a psycho, Carol. You probably did, but you were too kind. But I somehow cajoled you into coming down to San Diego for dinner, which you did.
And we had this amazing evening of talking about cognitive dissonance. And it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.