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Personal responsibility, the ability to own up to one's mistakes, is a foundational element of character. It's also the only way we can grow and get better. But as anyone with any experience being human well understands, dang, it sure can be hard to do.\n\nMy guest today explains why, and how you can yet rise to meet this important challenge. His name is Elliot Aronson, and he's a social psychologist and the co-author of\xa0Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify\xa0Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Elliot first explains how and why we engage in self-justification to avoid facing our mistakes, and how this process is driven by the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. We then discuss how once you make a decision\xa0in a certain direction, good or bad, you become more entrenched\xa0in your attitude about it and more likely to continue\xa0down that same path, and how this phenomenon\xa0represents what Elliot calls "the pyramid\xa0of choice." We end our conversation with how we can learn to approach the mistakes of others with more generosity, and our own mistakes with more honesty.\n\nGet the show notes at aom.is/mistakes.