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Book Report: "Mistakes Were Made"

Monday, March 22, 2010 Filed in: Self defense

"Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)." By Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.

I learned of this book when Dr. Tavris appeared on the "For Good Reason" podcast with D.J. Grothe.

(Quick aside: if you want to hear one of the better interviewers around, listen to D.J.'s show. He formerly hosted the critically acclaimed "Point Of Inquiry" podcast, where he built a reputation for his ability to intelligently discuss all sides of an argument regardless of his own position. His shows are as good as podcasting gets.)

Dr. Tavris is an expert on cognitive dissonance - the inability of the mind to hold two conflicting pieces of information without resolving the conflict in some way. (I've talked about dissonance before, as it relates to commonly promoted safety rules.) Dissonance theory, as I learned, has a profound effect on how we make decisions and how we come to hold certain beliefs. Dissonance occurs when evidence contradicts firmly held conviction. The subconscious, in an effort to resolve the conflict between what it believes and what it sees, will go to astonishing lengths.

One way the mind resolves conflict is to devalue the incoming evidence by belittling its source. This is what we see in so many forum fights over shooting gurus. If what one instructor teaches is in opposition to another instructor, supporters often react by attacking the source: "he's a convicted criminal." "He's never been anywhere." "He wrote a porno script!" "He's a womanizer." "He drinks too much." All in an effort to avoid examining what we believe, lest it be proven to be wrong.

Human beings are incredibly reluctant to change their beliefs. Dissonance in action shows in the statements of crime victims: "I couldn't believe it was happening to me!" Dissonance theory explains this easily, and what is going through the subconscious looks more like this: "I'm a smart and successful person; being smart and successful means that I would never live in a slum where crime is rampant. If crime happens here, it must mean that I'm not smart or successful, so this attack isn't really happening!" The danger to effective self defense preparations should be obvious.

The chapter dealing with memory is probably the most interesting of the whole book. Dissonance is so powerful that it can cause people to remember events differently than they actually happened - sometimes, the exact opposite of the real event. Ever wonder why witnesses to something often have conflicting views of what happened? It's not because their physical sight was different; it's because what they saw is modified unconsciously by their prejudices.

This has implications for survivor interviews when they’re used to support a specific type of training. Is the subject’s subconscious desire to justify their pre-existing knowledge, or to support their self image, influencing their memories? Unless we have objective observational evidence, such as a videotape, we don't know. The lesson is clear: we must be very cautious when making decisions based on singular events, unless we know for a fact what actually transpired.

This self-delusion isn't something humans set out to do; no one does it consciously. This is a mechanism that the subconscious uses to reconcile what we believe with what we see, and it’s transparent to us. People who perceive past events as being the opposite of what actually happened aren't lying. They honestly believe their version of what happened, because their subconscious has told them the new version is correct. (The book chronicles the astonishing detail that the subconscious is able to construct to support its version of reality. It's an eye-opener, believe me!)

Mistakes Were Made is less a textbook than it is a collection of stories with explanations. The book is heavily geared toward a self-help audience (hence the cover blurb "Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts"), but the research behind it is solid. Tavris and Aronson are well regarded in the field of psychology, and their ability to explain difficult concepts in clear language goes a long way to helping us understand this powerful facet of our minds. While this knowledge won't make us immune, it will help us recognize that what we believe isn't always correct.

If you'd like to get a feel of the subject matter, listen to the aforementioned interview with Dr. Tavris. Mistakes Were Made is a good way for non-scientists to get a grasp of what our minds actually do with conflicting information. Recommended reading, but only if you're ready to face the idea that your mind may not always be telling you the truth!

 -=[ Grant ]=-

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Thoughts on self defense training, Part 6: response "systems".

Monday, October 26, 2009 Filed in: Self defense, Techniques & Training

Last week I mentioned that I'm not a fan of the Cooper Color Codes of Awareness. In fact, I think they're downright silly. Why? Because they serve no purpose, which makes them a distraction from learning something that might actually be useful.

The Cooper Color Code system was popularized by Jeff Cooper, the founder of Gunsite. The four Codes are, as Cooper explained them, "a means of setting one’s mind into the proper condition when exercising lethal violence." They describe "a mental state which enables you to take a difficult psychological step."

Let's start with his explanation: "into the proper condition." Who is to say what the proper mental condition is when facing a threat to one's life? Having talked to a few survivors, and having read the accounts of many more, one's mental state can vary tremendously: some are angry, some scared, some confused. To arrogantly proclaim that there is one mental condition with which to confront an attacker is quite presumptuous, particularly when all of those I've mentioned (and probably more I've not encountered) were sufficient to handle each incident.

I submit to you that the "difficult psychological step", which is the decision/willingness to use lethal force, is made before the attack occurs. In fact, it's one of the first decisions one makes when starting into the armed lifestyle. The sequence for most people looks something like this:

1) You first acknowledge that your life has value to you, and such value is greater than that of the person attacking you.
2) Because of that, you decide that you are willing to use lethal force to protect your own life, and the life of your loved ones.
3) You learn to recognize a threat (stimulus) in such a way that you have time to defend (respond.)
4) You train to perform the proper defense (response) to the threat (stimulus.)

Cooper says that the Codes are "a means of setting one’s mind." This says that they're intended as a guide or a system to achieve a specific result. This requires that one judge any input (the stimulus or threat) against the system (the colored 'conditions'), then adopt the indicated response. Who is really going to do that? "Ooops, I can't go into Condition Red yet, because the situational parameters aren't all in accordance!" Silly, no? Silly, yes!

It also assumes that one is in complete control of one's physiological state. The problem with this line of thinking is that the response activity isn't digital or discrete. It is a continuous spectrum, with many things (including adrenal response and activation of the sympathetic nervous system) completely out of the individual's control. What happens when one component is in one condition, and another is at a different one? Nothing, of course, but a system requires that they must be reconciled - otherwise, of what use is the system?

The Codes are completely arbitrary combinations and ignore the fact that fights are idiosyncratic things, as are the responses of the defenders. The state of mind of the person holding the initiative (say, as a soldier or a law enforcement officer) is quite different than that of the person forced into a reactive response to an attack. Particularly for the latter, the states are quite irrelevant; the only thing that matters is the appropriate response to a specific stimulus at a particular time.

The Codes do nothing in the way of guiding those responses. Cooper himself said that they were not intended to do so, but again: if they are not a guide, of what use are they? If what he says is true, why are there specific response recommendations for each condition - down to whether or not your gun is in its holster? The system, at least according to the originator's own description, is self contradicting.

When faced with a threat a human being performs both instinctive and intuitive actions, the specific combination of which will vary depending on the situation. To try to constrain a person's responses to an arbitrary combination (whether one admits to doing so or not) is the equivalent of forcing everyone to wear size 14 boots regardless of their foot size.

It seems to me that instead of memorizing a bunch of colors, then obsessing about what color you are "in", it is better to spend your mental currency on training appropriate stimulus/response combinations. The Codes sound tacticool as all get-out, but that's about all they do. They serve no real or actual purpose, and in my opinion only obfuscate the situation.

-=[ Grant ]=-

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