Prejudices emerge from the disposition of the human mind to perceive and process information in categories. "Categories" is a nicer, more neutral word than "stereotypes," but it's the same thing. In March 2009, Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, said in a CNBC interview that "[w]e know mistakes were made", referring to controversial bonuses paid to executives of the company after it received taxpayer-funded support via the Troubled Asset Relief Program. [16] One of the psychological insights that has been messing around with my mind lately is the idea that if you ask someone who is studying to become a doctor why one of their fellow students is also becoming a doctor they are likely to say that it is obvious that that person is virtually made to be a doctor. In fact, they are likely to think that virtually everyone else in their course is there because they are almost constitutionally designed to become a doctor. But if you ask the person themselves why they are becoming a doctor they are likely to say that they are in the course more or less by accident. That there have been a network of lines that intersected and by a series of coincidences they have ended up here. And this is not just true of people’s understanding of those around them when it comes to career choices – but virtually everything else they do too. The tendency is for us to greatly over-rate what others do as being a manifestation of their ‘essential nature’ and what we do as being an unpredictable consequence of arbitrary and random forces.

She used a lot of logical fallacies. Her pet metaphor of the "pyramid" is just another version of the slippery slope fallacy. And she heavily relied on either-or logic to support her claims. Speaking in London in April 2002, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger commented on the refused request of a Spanish judge to question Kissinger in an investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the matter of Operation Condor, stating "it is quite possible that mistakes were made." [10] Ultimately, I think that Tavris's conclusions about self-justification are probably correct, but her argument was flawed. There were a number of things that put me off from this book. Here's my list of gripes: The passive voice makes the subject the person or thing acted on or affected by the action represented by the verb. Isherwood, Charles (February 27, 2011). "A Producer, His Telephone and Desperation". The New York Times.But why? Why should mistakes be an expected part of learning? As teachers and parents, don't we need to protect kids from messing up? Scott, Mike (June 9, 2017). "Disney's 'Timmy Failure' movie planning to shoot in Louisiana". The Times-Picayune . Retrieved July 22, 2018. Humorist Bruce McCall, in a 2001 New York Times piece entitled "The Perfect Non-apology Apology", defined the term as referring to "sufficiently artful double talk" designed to enable one to "get what you want by seeming to express regret while actually accepting no blame," and suggested some tongue-in-cheek apologies, such as:

On May 1, 1973, White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler stated "I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein" (referring to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post). He continued, "We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place." The previous day, White House counsel John Dean and Nixon aides John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman had resigned, as the Watergate scandal progressed. [6] It show how self justification work in Iraq war.It started with Iraq had pile of weapon of mass destruction but at the end of event there was no such thing still we try to justified the event with other matter such as stability in Middle East democracy and terrorism etc . The moral of the book is easy to say, and difficult to execute. When you screw up, try saying this: "I made a mistake. I need to understand what went wrong. I don't want to make the same mistake again. In their book, The Straight-A Conspiracy, Harvard College graduates Hunter Maats and Katie O'Brien write that schools can foster safe spaces by helping students see that the red pen isn't the enemy. "When students understand how to deal with errors, red means go," they write. "One way to encourage that attitude is to take the most common mistakes that the class made on a test or quiz and analyze them together. The more open everyone is about the mistakes they've made and how they happened, the less significance any student will place on future errors." Education isn't entirely futile, though. First, if we can educate people before they've formed their opinions on the subject, that will have a dramatic difference. Second, a large-scale, concerted education effort can change some minds. This can lead to changes of the intellectual environment that can persuade others via non-rational means. Smokers in the 1940s didn't understand the link between smoking and lung cancer. Almost every smoker today does understand this link (although they smoke anyway, exercising ample self-justification). But we've managed to convince enough people that the society in the US has changed, and smoking is much less accepted (and as a result much less common).This was by far the best book I have read in quite a few years. Highly recommended. It was so informative and engaging that I think I wore out my welcome reading it out loud to anyone who was nearby. Remeikis, Amy (May 23, 2023). "Politics live: Nationals still oppose referendum bill, Littleproud says, but 'mistakes were made' during settlement of Australia". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved May 23, 2023. Andreeva, Nellie (May 18, 2023). "Disney Removes Dozens Of Series From Disney+ & Hulu, Including 'Big Shot', 'Willow', 'Y' & 'Dollface' ". Deadline . Retrieved May 23, 2023. On May 10, 2013, the Internal Revenue Service, in a statement apologizing for the alleged improper targeting of conservative groups for audits during the 2012 United States presidential election, said that "[m]istakes were made initially, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale." [17]