"Blue sky on Mars. That's interesting..."

Arnold Schwarzenegger, seven-time Mr. Olympia, former governor of California, and movie actor starred in the 1990 movie Total Recall based upon the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick's short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale".  Apparently there was a remake in 2012 starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, and Jessica Biel, but I don't think it was as successful as the original.  Besides, I never saw the remake.  The original was entertaining and had all of the usual Arnold one-liners.  The concept, however, was particularly interesting.

Basically, the movie takes place in 2084, and the planet Mars has been colonized by the people of Earth.  Schwarzenegger plays construction worker Douglas Quaid, who has recurring dreams about Mars and a mysterious and beautiful woman (who is not his wife).  He ends up visiting a company called Rekall that implants realistic, but false memories to spice up a boring life.  Quaid selects a memory that he is a secret agent working on Mars.  One of Rekall's techs comments, "Blue sky on Mars.  That's interesting."

Before the memory is implanted, he experiences a mental break and starts believing that he really was a secret agent.  Of course, Quaid ends up on Mars and for the rest of the movie, the audience has to separate truth from fiction, real memory from implanted false memory, and reality from fantasy.  The movie ends (of course, Arnold plays the hero and wins in the end) with a scene in which everyone on Mars looks up to see blue sky.  So if the memory was real, why did the tech at Rekall comment about the blue sky before he implanted the memory?  The blue sky on Mars suggests that it was all fantasy, but I guess we will never know for sure.

I've talked a little about the concept known as cognitive dissonance in an earlier post (see "Sour grapes and sunk costs..."), which I think is relevant here.  Cognitive dissonance states that when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with one another, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.  At times, they may go as far as believing the unbelievable, say that they are a secret agent working on the planet Mars.   Remember, the original study by Leon Festinger involved members of a UFO religion in Chicago that believed in an imminent apocalypse - when the apocalypse didn't occur at the designated time (and the UFO's didn't arrive to pick up the church members and whisk them away to safety), the members didn't just abandon their strange beliefs, they actually doubled down and adhered to them even stronger.  

Here's the thing though - cognitive dissonance doesn't just apply to bizarre beliefs.  The social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson wrote an entire book providing everyday examples of cognitive dissonance, entitled Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me).  As a still fictional, but more realistic example, Dan Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness talks about the ending of the movie Casablanca (one of the greatest of all time, and my personal favorite).  Ilsa, Ingrid Bergman's character, wants to stay in Casablanca with Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart) instead of escaping from the Nazis with her husband (the plot details of how we ended up here don't matter, but trust me - watch the movie).  Rick (Bogart) tells her that she would always regret her decision not to leave with her husband, "maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life."  Gilbert suggests that due to cognitive dissonance, regardless of the decision that Ilsa makes, it will always be the right one without any regrets.  She would have found reasons to justify either choice, along with reasons to justify not making the other one.  

Moving away from fiction, Tavris and Aronson mention the story of the 19th century Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweiss.  It's a well-known and oft told story of how Semmelweiss suggested that physicians could drastically decrease the rate of puerperal fever (an infection after childbirth that was associated with almost 100% mortality in the pre-antibiotic era) if physicians would just wash their hands with soap and water.  He even conducted one of the first placebo-controlled clinical studies to justify his case.  For his efforts, he was ridiculed and lambasted by his colleagues, who not only refused to accept that hand-washing could reduce puerperal fever, but also convinced themselves that Semmelweiss was insane (truly).  Semmelweiss was eventually sent to an insane asylum, where he was beaten by guards and ironically died of a gangrenous wound infection.  

Even the statement "mistakes were made" is an example of cognitive dissonance.  In a sense, the speaker is saying, "Someone made a mistake, but it certainly wasn't my mistake."  The choice that Tavris and Aronson made for the title of their book was a brilliant one. 

The lesson here for leaders is that individuals and groups will hold on to their beliefs and perceptions, sometimes to the point of excluding all other possibilities.  If a mistake or negative outcome is involved, the tendency to hold on to these false beliefs and perceptions is even stronger.  I came across a quote from an anonymous author, "It's easy to judge the mistakes of others, but it's difficult to recognize your own mistakes."  We need to learn to be comfortable with making mistakes, because that is how we learn and succeed in the end.  And just as importantly, we, as leaders, need to create a psychologically safe environment so that others feel comfortable making and accepting their mistakes.