Terry Law: Admitting Mistakes is the Most Underestimated Leadership Power

Terry Law(特里法则) was proposed by L. Terry, former general manager of Tennessee Bank in the United States. Its core tenet is: “Admitting a mistake is a person’s greatest source of strength.” Those who face their mistakes head-on will gain something beyond the mistake itself.

Business Management Story: Smith’s “Open Admissibility of Mistakes” Initiative

In March 2026, Smith, CEO of “Gene Frontier,” a U.S. biotechnology company, received shocking news: the “neural repair peptide” project—which R&D Division II had spent a year and nearly 10 million U.S. dollars on—had failed in the final stage of animal testing. This not only meant the loss of a massive investment, but—more critically—the company had just one month earlier committed to a project delivery timeline for its strategic partner based on interim data from R&D Division I. Now, the entire company was gripped by panic. Johnson, the director of R&D Division II, chose to remain silent, while the finance and legal departments had already begun discussing how to cover up the data and whitewash the reports.

Smith immediately halted all “crisis PR” discussions. The next day, he personally convened a meeting of the entire company’s senior management. At the meeting, instead of sitting in the chairperson’s seat as usual, he walked to the center of the conference room and addressed all attendees:

“I hereby announce that the ‘Neural Repair Peptide’ project is officially terminated. I alone take full responsibility for this decision. As CEO, I failed to establish an effective mechanism for reviewing interim decisions, which prevented us from adjusting our course in a timely manner when we saw early warning signs. At the same time, I wish to make a special statement: The spirit of scientific exploration demonstrated by R&D Division II over the past twelve months deserves recognition. Failure is never a disgrace; concealment is.”

He then announced a one-month “Honest Post-Mortem” initiative: an independent investigation team composed of external experts and internal cross-departmental members would be formed to conduct a fully transparent technical review of the project’s failure, and the investigation report would be distributed verbatim to all shareholders and strategic partners.

Initially, the board of directors and the legal department strongly opposed this approach of “airing the company’s dirty laundry.” However, Smith insisted that in the information age, any attempt to cover up the truth would eventually be exposed, and that proactively admitting mistakes was the only way to preserve trust.

When the investigation report was sent to strategic partners, the feedback was unexpectedly positive. Partners stated, “What we value is your scientific integrity and long-term partnership, not a promise that you will never fail.” Even more surprising was that a key scientist from a competitor, after reviewing the report, chose to join the company because he admired its culture of candor.

Three months later, the three recommendations for technical adjustments outlined in the post-mortem report directly led to the creation of an entirely new product pipeline for the company. Smith concluded, “Terry Law teaches us that admitting a mistake is not the end, but the starting point for a fresh beginning. When you have the courage to say the word ‘mistake’ out loud, you reclaim the right to define the story, turning a failure into a cornerstone of trust and a springboard for growth.”

What Is Terry Law?

Terry Law(特里法则) was proposed by L. Terry, former general manager of Tennessee Bank in the United States. Its core tenet is: “Admitting a mistake is a person’s greatest source of strength.” Those who face their mistakes head-on will gain something beyond the mistake itself. Terry Law does not encourage making mistakes; rather, it emphasizes that actively and honestly admitting a mistake after it occurs yields greater long-term benefits—including the preservation of personal credibility, the maintenance of organizational trust, greater efficiency in problem-solving, and opportunities to learn from the mistake—than attempting to cover it up, shift blame, or remain silent.

In the context of organizational behavior, Terry Law reveals the core principles of organizational integrity and crisis leadership. It describes a phenomenon that seems counterintuitive but has been validated by countless real-world examples: when an organization or leader makes a mistake and chooses to admit it honestly rather than cover it up or shift blame, they actually earn more respect, trust, and support. Conversely, the act of covering up mistakes often causes more severe and long-lasting damage than the original mistake itself. This law reminds managers that when facing a mistake, their first reaction should not be how to “get through it,” but rather how to use “accountability” to transform a crisis into an opportunity to build trust and drive organizational progress.

I. Terry Law: A Management Philosophy Born in the Boiler Room

1.1 A Moment of Enlightenment in a Steel Mill

In 1943, inside a steel mill in Pittsburgh, the deafening roar of steam hammers filled the air. Terry Hogan, the newly appointed production manager, noticed a strange phenomenon: whenever equipment malfunctioned, the operators’ first instinct was always to hide the damaged parts. On one occasion, when a rolling mill bearing shattered, a worker actually buried the fragments in a coal pile, causing the entire production line to shut down for three days. After investigating the seventh such incident, Hogan gathered all the workers in the oil-stained break room and made a surprising move—he held up a purchase order he had signed incorrectly: “Last week, I ordered the wrong model of seal, causing everyone to spend three extra hours on emergency repairs.” A murmur rippled through the crowd, and Tom, a veteran technician, then stepped forward to admit that he had broken a pressure gauge. That month, the accident rate plummeted by 40%, and this simple lesson was later recorded in Hogan’s management notebook: “Admitting mistakes stops the bleeding more effectively than covering them up.”

Thirty years later, management scholar Warren Bennis unearthed this case from the archives while researching organizational resilience. In his book Extraordinary Leaders, he formally named it “Terry’s Law,” defining its core principle as follows: admitting mistakes is a prerequisite for correction. This seemingly simple law was validated in psychological laboratories: when subjects were allowed to publicly admit their prediction errors, the accuracy of their subsequent decisions improved by 22%; in contrast, the error rate in the control group—which concealed their mistakes—snowballed.

1.2 The Self-Preservation Instinct Under Cognitive Dissonance

Terry Law targets the most vulnerable point in human nature—cognitive dissonance. When Teslin realized the sensor was installed backwards, his brain instantly split into two battlefields: the rational region lit up warning lights demanding a correction, while the self-esteem region erected defensive fortifications. Social psychologist Festinger proved through experiments that the distress caused by this dissonance is comparable to physical pain. Old Zhang’s experience on the assembly line is a classic example: after scrapping three precision parts, his first instinct was to slip them into the basket of合格 products while the quality inspector was eating lunch.

However, organizations that truly put Terry Law into practice transform mistakes into nourishment. The “Failure Museum” at a certain aerospace research institute displays wreckage worth tens of millions, with each exhibit accompanied by the designer’s reflective notes. New employees take their first orientation class right here. Pointing to a deformed turbine blade, the chief engineer says, “Remember, hidden errors are the most costly.” This culture has kept the institute’s accident rate the lowest in the industry, even though they develop the most cutting-edge models.

1.3 Analysis of Error Handling Principles

Rule name	Author/Background	Core concept	Differences from Terry’s Law	Typical scenario
Terry Law	Hogan (1943), Bennis (1973)	Proactive admission of errors facilitates correction	Emphasizes the value of exposing errors	Workers openly acknowledge equipment operating errors
Murphy’s Law	Air Force engineers (1949)	Anything that can go wrong will go wrong	Predicts errors rather than addresses them	Backup systems inevitably fail when needed
Paine’s Law	Paine Corporation (1960s)	Crisis prevention is better than crisis management	Focuses on preemptive avoidance rather than post-incident response	Fire drills reduce losses from actual fires
The 5 Whys Analysis	Toyota Production System (1950s)	Tracing the root cause of errors	A tool for error correction, not a guideline for attitude	Continuous questioning to identify the true cause of machine downtime
Heinrich’s Law	Insurance analysts (1930s)	Major accidents are preceded by multiple warning signs	Focusing on the transition from quantitative to qualitative changes in errors	Frequent minor incidents foreshadow major disasters

These principles interact within the factory workshop. When Teslin’s apprentice failed to secure a fixture, causing a workpiece to fly out (Murphy’s Law), the team used the 5 Whys method to discover that the root cause was a lack of training (the third “why” revealed the true cause), while the workshop supervisor proactively took responsibility according to Terry’s Principle: “There was a flaw in my inspection system.” At that moment, Heinrich’s Law was sounding the alarm—this was already the third clamping device accident this month. The comprehensive response plan was ultimately incorporated into the framework of Paine’s Law: installing infrared safety devices on every machine tool to nip the crisis in the bud.

II. The Wisdom of Admitting Mistakes in Everyday Life According to Terry Law

2.1 The Art of Cutting Losses in Market Economics

At 4:00 a.m. in the wholesale market, Old Zhou’s vegetable stall was surrounded by angry restaurant owners. The fifty crates of tomatoes he’d purchased had all rotted due to a break in the cold chain, and the air was thick with the smell of sour rot. Amid the crowd’s shouts of anger, Old Zhou suddenly jumped onto an empty vegetable crate and shouted, “I’ll cover the full cost of this order! Come back tomorrow to pick up double the amount!” He later explained that this was the “economics of admitting mistakes” he’d learned from Wenzhou merchants: Years ago, when a business consortium misjudged the garlic market and suffered a loss of 10 million, they published a full-page apology in the newspaper—and ended up winning even more orders. Data supports this: Merchants who offer honest refunds and compensation have a customer retention rate of 78%, higher than the industry average of 43%.

Aunt Zhang, who runs a neighborhood fruit shop, understands the power of admitting mistakes even better. Once, she sold Hainan mangoes as Taiwanese mangoes. Upon realizing her mistake, she immediately sent a red envelope announcement in the homeowners’ group chat: “I mixed up Feng Jing and Ma Liang—neighbors who bought mangoes today, please come by to get the price difference refunded.” As a result, sales that month actually rose by 30%. Aunt Wang put it simply: “Shopping at her store gives me peace of mind—I don’t worry about being ripped off.” This kind of trust capital is becoming increasingly valuable in the era of mobile payments—an analysis by a community group-buying platform shows that group leaders who proactively disclose their mistakes have a repurchase rate 2.3 times higher than that of ordinary group leaders.

2.2 The Icebreaker Experiment in Parenting

Butluk once fell into a classic parenting trap. On one occasion, he wrongly accused his son of secretly playing with his phone. When he realized it was a false alarm from the alarm clock, he stubbornly refused to apologize—resulting in his son not speaking to him for an entire week. Later, the homeroom teacher shared the “Three-Minute Apology Method”: as long as the evidence of the mistake is irrefutable, apologizing within the “golden three minutes” is the most effective way to repair the relationship. Skeptical but willing to give it a try, Butluk immediately admitted his mistake after falsely accusing his son of breaking a vase. To his surprise, the boy rushed over, hugged him, and cried, “I thought Dad would never trust me again.”

Research in child psychology reveals the underlying mechanism: when parents model the act of admitting mistakes, their children’s prefrontal cortex activates mirror neurons—a key factor in the development of empathy. A decade-long study by an educational institution found that parents who allow their children to correct their mistakes have children who score 37% higher in workplace leadership as adults. The “apology ritual” currently trending in parent groups formalizes Terry Law—some families have set up a “mistake box,” where they drop in a button each time they admit a mistake, and at the end of the year, use the accumulated buttons to make charity bracelets.

2.3 The Secret to Smooth Neighborly Relations

The soundproofing in older apartment buildings is as poor as if they were made of paper. The sound of mincing meat in the middle of the night from Apartment 602 was driving Professor Wang, who lived downstairs, to the brink of a nervous breakdown. After posting three protest notes to no avail, Professor Wang changed his strategy: he carried a bowl of beef brisket stew he had prepared himself and knocked on the door of Apartment 602: “Please try this dish as an apology—I was too rude when I knocked last time.” From then on, the sound of meat being chopped was heard only in the afternoons. This kind of Eastern wisdom is a common occurrence in community mediation records: when the upstairs neighbor admits that their air conditioner is leaking, the downstairs neighbor is willing to share the repair costs; when a delivery driver admits to delivering the wrong package, the elderly recipient actually gives him an extra tip.

Western community research also corroborates the universality of Terry Law. An experiment conducted by a university in a conflict-prone community found that organizing “apology sessions” where both parties admitted their faults reduced the dispute rate by 62% compared to mere legal education campaigns. The most remarkable case comes from Brooklyn, New York: instead of being fined after being caught for graffiti, teenagers were required to apologize to residents and restore the walls. A follow-up study ten years later showed that these youths’ recidivism rate was 84% lower than that of those sent to juvenile court.

III. The Productivity of Admitting Mistakes in the Workplace Under Terry Law

3.1 The Transparency Revolution in Manufacturing

On the final assembly line of an automobile factory, a yellow-and-black “error log board” hangs at every workstation. As soon as Master Zhao, a veteran technician, wrote “1 seal ring missing” on the board, the production line automatically paused. This would have been unimaginable twenty years ago—back then, it was an open secret that workers used correction tape to alter quality inspection forms. The transformation began with an incident involving a Japanese company’s withdrawal of investment: because the Chinese side had concealed mold wear and tear, a batch of vehicle chassis developed cracks, resulting in compensation payments large enough to build a new workshop.

Now, every fault data point is uploaded to the cloud in real time, and error maps are precise down to each bolt. Once, a new employee asked, “With this level of transparency, aren’t you afraid of losing orders?” The production director opened the supplier system: “Customers can see our 273 mistakes from last month, and they can also see 274 improvement plans.” This transparency has yielded unexpected returns: during an incident involving abnormal noises in a transmission, German experts pinpointed the root cause in three hours using the historical error database, while competitors were still disassembling prototype vehicles. Industry reports show that factories with open error databases actually have customer trust scores 38% higher than traditional factories.

3.2 The Science of Failure in Tech Companies

Morning meetings in the product departments of internet companies resemble a confession ceremony. “I misjudged user needs; the click-through rate for the new interface dropped by 40%.” “The algorithm team apologizes—the new recommendation model resulted in millions of false positives…” In the lower right corner of the meeting room’s projection screen, a number is always displayed: the current “failure tolerance points.” Here, every substantiated failure earns points that can be redeemed for innovation resources. One product manager used points earned from three failures last year to secure a three-month period of unrestricted R&D, during which they created a hit tool.

Even more radical are “failure launch events.” A certain gaming company compiled a list of scrapped projects titled The Catalog of Aborted Projects and livestreamed an in-depth analysis of their design flaws to players. When the lead designer choked up while showing off the art concepts that had been cut, the live chat was flooded with comments like “Salute to the team that dares to admit their mistakes.” When the game entered open beta, it set a new record for pre-registrations, with players stating, “Knowing exactly which pitfalls they’ve stumbled into actually puts us more at ease.” Silicon Valley venture capital firms have already included “failure transparency” in their due diligence checklists; one fund even specializes in investing in serial entrepreneurs who have failed before—data shows that such teams have a 19% higher success rate in their second ventures compared to first-time founders.

3.3 A Blood-Soaked Warning in the Medical Field

At the morning handover meeting in the operating room of a top-tier hospital, the lead surgeon calmly reported: “During yesterday’s laparoscopic surgery, a blood vessel was accidentally injured, so we switched to open surgery to stop the bleeding.” The conference room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, until the department head replied: “We’ll hold a full-staff debriefing this afternoon. Your candor has saved the next patient.” At a time when medical errors are still often covered up, this hospital has implemented a “no-blame reporting” system: proactive reporting of errors goes unpunished, while concealment is severely penalized. In the first year of implementation, the number of near-miss reports surged by nearly 400%, while actual medical errors dropped by 57%.

The most striking case came from the obstetrics department. A midwife accidentally connected a laboring mother’s IV fluid to the wrong line; upon discovery, she immediately stopped the infusion and reported the incident. Not only did the hospital refrain from disciplining her, but it also included her in a process improvement team. Three months later, the “two-color anti-misconnection system” she designed was rolled out hospital-wide, reducing the rate of IV errors to zero. This model is rewriting medical ethics—when a children’s hospital published a decade’s worth of incident reports in a book titled Deadly Details, the first edition sold out in three days. A medical professor wrote in the foreword: “These hard-won lessons are a hundred times more valuable than textbooks.”

IV. Methods for Applying Terry Law in Organizational Behavior

4.1 Establish a “No-Blame” Escalation Channel

Design a safe, non-punitive mechanism that encourages employees to report potential problems or errors immediately upon discovery, rather than concealing them. The core principle is: reward honesty and penalize concealment. For proactive reporting of errors—even if the error resulted in losses—penalties should be reduced or waived.

4.2 Implementing an “Open and Transparent” Post-Failure Review Mechanism

After a project concludes or a setback occurs, organize “no-blame review meetings.” The focus should not be on “who was at fault,” but rather on “what we have learned from this case and how the system can be improved.” Share the review report (including the lessons learned section) openly within the company so that all teams can benefit from it.

4.3 Leaders Should Lead by Example in “Admitting Mistakes”

In their daily work, senior managers should proactively acknowledge their own decision-making errors, knowledge gaps, or judgment errors. When leaders can openly say, “I was wrong,” they set a benchmark for psychological safety across the entire organization, empowering subordinates to candidly face their own mistakes.

4.4 Turning “Crises” into Tools for “Trust-Building”

When an organization faces a negative incident, it should adopt a “defuse the crisis” strategy—immediately and openly communicating the facts, causes, and remedial measures to the public through the highest-ranking executive. This proactive “self-disclosure” is more effective in winning the understanding and trust of the public and customers than having the media or regulatory agencies “expose” the issues.

V. Methods for Applying Terry Law in Human Resource Management

5.1 Recruitment and Selection

Assess candidates’ “accountability” traits: In behavioral interviews, design scenario-based questions to examine how candidates have handled major mistakes in their past work. Asking, “What was the biggest mistake you’ve ever made, and how did you handle it?” can effectively identify talent with a growth mindset and a sense of accountability, rather than those who habitually shift blame.

5.2 Performance Management

Incorporate “Learning and Accountability” into evaluation criteria: In performance evaluations, assess not only the outcome of “no mistakes made,” but also employees’ responsiveness after making mistakes, their willingness to admit them, and their ability to learn from them. Employees who dare to extract valuable lessons from failure should be recognized.

5.3 Training and Development

Conduct “Post-Mortem and Accountability” Workshops: Provide specialized training for new managers and key personnel, covering topics such as cognitive biases (e.g., attribution bias), techniques for difficult conversations, and how to facilitate team post-mortem sessions. This enhances managers’ ability to transform mistakes into opportunities for team learning.

5.4 Cultural Development

Reward “honest failure” and penalize “perfect concealment”: In internal awards programs, establish a “Best Failure Award” or “Most Valuable Lesson Award” to recognize teams that, although unsuccessful, maintained transparency throughout the process and conducted thorough post-mortems. At the same time, implement a “one-strike policy” for verified acts of concealment or buck-passing, and explicitly state in policy that “the baseline of integrity takes precedence over performance metrics.”

VI. The Evolution and Summary of Terry Law

6.1 The Evolution of Terry Law

1. The Distillation of L. Terry’s Management Wisdom

(Mid-to-Late 20th Century)

As a senior banking executive, Terry distilled this principle based on his extensive experience in corporate management and risk control. Its formulation resembles a practical maxim, emphasizing the mindset individuals should adopt when facing mistakes—admitting mistakes is not a sign of weakness, but rather a demonstration of strength. This principle initially gained traction in the field of corporate risk management.

2. Psychology’s In-Depth Explanation of “Attribution and Responsibility”

Social psychological research provides scientific support for Terry Law. The theory of “self-serving attribution bias” suggests that people tend to attribute success to themselves and failure to external factors. The “proactive admission of mistakes” advocated by Terry Law is precisely a way to overcome this instinctive bias. Psychological research also indicates that those who proactively take responsibility are more likely to earn others’ understanding and trust than those who shift blame.

3. Integration into “Accountable Leadership” in Management Theory (Contemporary)

In modern leadership theory, Terry Law has been integrated into the core concepts of “integrity-based leadership” and “servant leadership.” After the failure of the Iran hostage rescue operation, President Jimmy Carter publicly stated, “I take full responsibility,” and his approval rating actually rose by more than 10 percent, becoming a classic case study of Terry Law in the field of leadership. This demonstrates that the courage to take responsibility is a key pathway for leaders to establish authority and trust.

4. The Institutionalization of a “Failure Post-Mortem” Culture in Contemporary Enterprises

In Silicon Valley and modern innovative companies, “fail fast, reflect openly” has become a core cultural value. The popularity of management tools such as “pre-mortems,” “Failure Week,” and “mistake journals” marks the evolution of Terry Law from “individual awareness” to “organizational policy.” Companies no longer merely tolerate failure; through institutionalized design, they actively encourage transparent discussion and learning from failure, transforming it into fuel for organizational innovation.

6.2 Comparison and Contrast

Personnel/Theory	Core focus	Difference comparison	Correlation
L. Terry (Management Axiom)	A philosophical approach to an individual’s mindset toward mistakes	Originating from the risk management practices of banking executives, it focuses on the level of personal character—”Admitting mistakes is a sign of strength.” This is a value-based advocacy that emphasizes individual courage and integrity.	It is the “origin” and “spark” of the entire philosophy. It puts forward a counterintuitive yet powerful perspective: admitting mistakes is not a sign of weakness, but a symbol of strength.
Psychological Attribution Theory	A scientific mechanism for overcoming instinctive biases	From a cognitive science perspective, it explains “why it is difficult to admit mistakes” (self-serving bias) and “why admitting mistakes is effective” (taking responsibility can reset others’ attributions). It transforms Terry Law from a “maxim” into a scientifically grounded “rational strategy.”	It provides a scientific explanation for “why this happens.” It reveals the psychological mechanisms behind Terry Law, enabling managers to not only understand the phenomenon but also grasp its underlying reasons.
Integrity Leadership Theory	The Core Path for Leaders to Build Trust	Focusing on the leadership level, it elevates Terry Law from personal virtue to a management tool. It emphasizes that leaders build a “credit account” through “accountability,” which is the key behavior for earning the trust of followers.	It completes the transition of the law from “personal virtue” to “leadership skill.” It tells managers that this is not a lesson in morality, but an effective path to gaining power.
Modern Culture of Failure Debriefing	An Institutionalized Learning Mechanism at the Organizational Level	This represents the “institutionalization” and “engineering” of Terry Law. It no longer relies on individual “awareness,” but rather, through tools such as “post-mortem meetings” and “error logs,” transforms the candid acknowledgment of mistakes and the conversion of those mistakes into learning into routine organizational processes and cultural DNA.	This is the large-scale implementation of the principle within “complex organizations.” It expands the wisdom of dealing with errors from isolated heroic acts to the immune and evolutionary capabilities of the entire organizational system.

6.3 Correlation Analysis

Understanding Terry Law began with a maxim of practical wisdom from a manager (Terry), was revealed through psychology to uncover its underlying mechanisms (attribution theory), then elevated to a core behavioral code in the field of leadership (integrity-based leadership), and finally evolved in the contemporary era into a systematic learning and resilience framework embedded within organizations (a culture of failure debriefing). This represents a process of continuous deepening, systematization, and institutionalization—evolving from “individual awareness” to “scientific understanding,” then to “leadership strategy,” and finally achieving “engineering-driven implementation within the organization.”

6.4 Summary Metaphor

L. Terry’s management maxim: It is as if a wise general were telling his soldiers, “Retreat is not running away; it is preparing for a better offensive. Admitting failure is not conceding defeat; it is paving the way for ultimate victory.”

Psychological Attribution Theory: It is akin to the human immune system—when a virus (error) invades, actively identifying and exposing the antigen (admitting the error) actually stimulates the production of antibodies (trust and learning); whereas attempting to hide the virus only leads to systemic infection (the collapse of trust).

Integrity Leadership Theory: Like a bank’s credit system, every time a leader proactively takes responsibility, they deposit a substantial sum into the “trust account”; whereas every instance of shifting blame or covering up constitutes a serious “overdraft” of trust.

Modern Culture of Post-Failure Review: It is like upgrading a hospital from a “disease treatment center” to a “preventive medicine center”—no longer waiting until people fall ill to treat them (or until mistakes are made to remedy them), but instead establishing a system of health checkups (a post-failure review mechanism) so that every “minor ailment” (small mistake) becomes a public teaching case that strengthens the immunity of the entire organization.

References

• The chapter on Terry’s Law in Bennis’s Leaders: Strategies for Success
• Experiment on Cognitive Dissonance and False Confessions (Journal of Experimental Psychology)
• Research on Failure Management Systems in the Aerospace Industry (Report by the International Academy of Astronautics)
• Survey on Customer Retention Rates in the Fresh Produce Industry (China Distribution Economy)
• Study on the Relationship Between Parental Apologies and Leadership (Developmental Psychology)
• Tracking the Effectiveness of Community Conflict Mediation (Journal of Community Psychology)
• Benefits of Transparent Management in Manufacturing Enterprises (Harvard Business Review Case Library)
• Statistics on the Success Rate of Second-Time Entrepreneurs After a Previous Failure (Stanford Center for Entrepreneurship)
• Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Medical No-Fault Reporting System (New England Journal of Medicine)
• Research on Error-Sharing Mechanisms in Manufacturing (International Society for Production Engineering)
• L. Terry—Banking management practices in Tennessee; original proponent of Terry’s Law.
• Jimmy Carter—U.S. President; classic case study of crisis communication with his “I take full responsibility” statement.
• Chen Lizhi—Author of the chapter on Terry’s Law in Murphy’s Law.
• Research in social psychology on “attribution theory” and “self-serving bias.”