Editor's letter: When the mind plays tricks on itself

last updated 8 January 2015

When Jerry Sandusky was charged with sexual abuse last November, I received several anguished emails from Penn State loyalists. Our cover that week depicted one of the abuse victims with his head hung in sorrow, as he stood, alone and ignored, in the shadow of Joe Paterno’s famous statue. “I know Joe, and he will be vindicated,” the most impassioned of the loyalists wrote. Paterno, he said, was a great man, and would never have ignored—let alone covered up—evidence that Sandusky was a pedophile. Now we know Joe Pa did just that (see Controversy of the week), and his statue will probably soon be hauled away. But let’s not smugly conclude that only the Penn State community could be so blind—that hubris and self-delusion are confined to Paterno’s Happy Valley. The same, boundless capacity for denial lies within every one of us.

Social psychologists have various terms for the tricks the mind plays on itself: cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, motivated reasoning. Human beings are not, at our cores, rational creatures. We’re tribal and emotional, and fiercely defend our deeply held beliefs; we look for evidence and arguments that confirm what we already think, while ignoring or rejecting that which does not. It takes enormous effort—and self-awareness—to view the world without narrow blinders. “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” George Orwell once said. So let’s not be too hard on the people who were so certain Joe Paterno was a saint. Instead, let’s ask ourselves: What’s in front of my own nose that I am refusing to see? What delusions am I protecting, and at what cost?