There are a lot of stories in the news these days on sexual abuse by police officers, military personnel, and other groups of males, including coaches.

There is also an apparent belief that all we have to do is get people to change their behaviour and things will improve. In the spirit of Dickens, "bah, humbug!" This is not going to work until we change how people think, then we can expect a change in behaviour, and not before.

So, how do we change how people think? I have been teaching how to do that at the Canadian Police College, here in Ottawa, for some 35 years. It is not easy to do, but the goal is to get police officers to think tactically and strategically and critically rather than to simply respond instinctively.

But the real problem preventing change in anybody's thinking, be it the police, the military, NASA, politicians, or doctors, is that people have deep and profound attachments to their beliefs, which they will not abandon without a struggle, and, worse, they are not even aware that they are deceiving themselves. These are not examples of wilful deceit, but rather of belief supplanting rational and critical thought.

The sexual abuser who believes that women want to be raped is guilty of wrongful belief, unsubstantiated by any factual evidence, as is the cardinal or archbishop who believes all priests are necessarily innocent, and so on.

Profound self-deception is obviously very difficult to change, but cognitive psychology has made tremendous strides in recent years, showing us that it can be done. With a great deal of intellectual effort, the insights of the cognitive revolution in psychology can be applied to human behaviour.

I will close with an anecdote about a police woman who was asked by her daughter for a favour, not money as was usually the case, but to have her mother write an exam on the computer for her while she was away on holidays. The woman agreed, and in recounting this story, boasted she was quite proud of herself having achieved a B-plus, and had helped her daughter. She saw nothing wrong with her behaviour. That is an example of unaware self-deception.

Richard R. BÉlec,

PhD, Ottawa