I have copied the cover blurb because it is accurate:

"Why do people dodge responsibility when things fall apart? Why the parade of public figures unable to own up when they screw up? Why the endless marital quarrels over who is right? Why can we see hypocrisy in others but not in ourselves? Are we all liars? Or do we really believe the stories we tell?

Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right -- a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong.

Backed by years of research and delivered in lively, energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception -- how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it."

The authors use the phrase "cognitive dissonance" as a single label to describe the many ways of why people squirm away from their responsibility, and sometimes openly refusing, to use reason/moral clarity in thinking through issues/emotions, as well as refusing to acknowledge any self-recognition they may have rashly made a judgement without facts or have chosen to act immorally or to support immorality.

The chapters are:

-Cognitive Dissonance: The Engine of Self-Justification
-Pride and Prejudice....and Other Blind Spots
-Memory, the Self-Justifying Historian
-Good Intentions, Bad Science: The Closed Loop of Clinical Judgement
-Law and Disorder
-Love's Assassin: Self-Justification in a Marriage
-Wounds, Rifts, and Wars
-Letting Go and Owning Up
-Dissonance, Democracy and the Demagogue


The book has an extensive Notes and Index section.