She has devoted her career to writing and lecturing about the contributions of psychological science to the beliefs and practices that guide people's lives, and to criticizing "psychobabble," "biobunk," and pseudoscience.

She grew up in Los Angeles, California, with her parents, Sam and Dorothy Tavris, secular Jews who promoted and practiced critical thinking and equality for women.

[2] Tavris majored in comparative literature and sociology at Brandeis University, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

Brandeis faculty in her field were enamored with Freud during her college years, and her senior thesis was a "Freudian analysis of Hamlet and Don Quixote."

Together, the two of them taught one of the first courses in women's studies at San Diego State University, and out of that teaching collaboration, they wrote The Longest War: Sex Differences in Perspective, an interdisciplinary approach to the age-old question of why gender inequality exists.

It "was the first to explicitly and systematically integrate principles of critical thinking" into the introductory psychology course, along with mainstreaming research on gender and culture, with the goal of making the field more inclusive.

"[9] Given a choice between accepting information that we don't want to hear and justifying outdated beliefs or hurtful acts, most people choose self-justification.

"[10] Mistakes Were Made explains how cognitive dissonance applies in all domains of life, including presidents who start a war and then cannot end it, prosecutors who cannot accept that they put innocent people in prison, therapists who adopt the latest fad and cannot let it go when it proves unhelpful or harmful, quarreling couples who cannot understand the other person's point of view, and all the rest of us who find it difficult or impossible to give up a belief shown to be dated or wrong.

Tavris's book draws on research in many disciplines to explode myths about "male and female" brains (a perennial issue), alleged gender differences in "natural" abilities, the social creation of "PMS,” and other popular beliefs.

[11] Tavris identifies as an equality feminist (in contrast to the strains of feminism that have promoted notions of female superiority or inherent differences in psychology and abilities).

In this goal, she maintains, skepticism – a willingness to question received wisdom, to demand good evidence, to be willing to hold even our own ideological beliefs up to scrutiny – is an essential ally.

[13] She has testified as an expert witness in several court cases where evidence against a defendant was based on pseudoscientific, unvalidated psychological ideas, and she has been an advisor for the National Center for Reason and Justice, an advocacy group devoted to fighting false allegations and wrongful convictions.

[14] On August 21, 2010, Tavris was a special guest at the 10th Anniversary Gala by the Independent Investigations Group and received an award for contributions to skepticism and science.