The Joy of Being Wrong
Acceptance of our mistakes is the key to growth
Few feelings are more jarring than suddenly realizing you’re absolutely, 100% wrong. Especially when you’ve been insisting for minutes, days, or years that you’re 100% right.
When someone shows us evidence that completely contradicts our opinion, it almost seems to cause physical pain. We tense up, panic, and feel our soul slowly floating away from our body.
At that point, we have a choice. We can:
- Take the loss. Admit we’re wrong, give the other person credit for being right, accept defeat, and begin the process of moving on.
- Dismiss the evidence and become even more vehement in our opinion. Use verbal gymnastics to twist logic so it fits our narrative.
We’d all like to think we always choose the first option. There’s dignity in admitting we’ve made a mistake. However, if our actions were regularly measured, most of us would be surprised at how often we choose option #2.
That doesn’t mean we’re bad people. We just really don’t want to be wrong.
Why is it so hard for us to own up to our mistakes, reverse course, and admit we messed up?
According to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, author of Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, it’s our tendency to mesh our opinions with our identities that keeps us from admitting we’re wrong: “Attachment. That’s what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them. To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach.”
The more attached we are to a belief or opinion, the more difficult it will be to admit we’re wrong. Deeply embedded beliefs become core beliefs, and we associate these beliefs with who we are as human beings. When presented evidence that we are wrong, our brains can’t handle it — to the brain, to admit we’re wrong is like losing a fundamental part of who we are. Even if deep inside we know we’re wrong, we still want to fight it.
We experience cognitive dissonance — defined by Robert J. King of University College Cork in Ireland as the “internal urge to reduce the tension caused by the world backing you into a corner.” Once we’ve become attached to a belief and implanted it deep within our psyches, to have the belief falsified is far too uncomfortable for our brains to comprehend. So we frantically look for a defense that preserves our worldview and revitalizes our deeply-held belief.
It makes sense why some people will argue their opinion until they’re blue in the face while others sit back and wonder how they can blatantly ignore raw evidence — for the former, it’s no longer about what’s true and what’s not. It’s about protecting their very humanity.
Detaching
How can we avoid finding ourselves in this situation?
We need to detach. Detaching means separating our opinions from our identity. When we define ourselves by beliefs, ideas, and ideologies, it’s almost impossible to change our minds.
Grant says, “who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe.” If you have a strong opinion about something, you can ask yourself why — what are the underlying reasons why you find yourself holding such a strong opinion, and why don’t you want to change it?
It’s probably because you value something that’s deeper than the opinion. You may hold values like compassion, fairness, honesty, trustworthiness, or respect. If you discover that one of your beliefs or opinions is wrong, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t mean you’ve lost your values. It just means you now have facts you didn’t have before. Changing your mind doesn’t mean you don’t retain your values.
When we’re wrong, it doesnt mean we’re not intelligent, important, or trustworthy. We shouldn’t attach our opinions, ideas, or beliefs to our sense of competence.
Another way to get better at admitting mistakes is to remember that we need to make them in order to grow. According to studies, making mistakes makes you smarter if you can keep from going into shutdown mode when you make one — when you instead become focused on fixing the mistake and solving the problem.
Shutting down and attempting to dismiss the mistake instead of addressing it is correlated with paying more attention to positive feedback. The more someone refuses to admit they’re wrong, the more excited they get when they receive compliments. People like this need constant reassurance and will reject their mistakes instead of learning from them. This is a clear sign that their sense of worthiness and identity are deeply attached to whether they’re right or wrong.
Embrace mistakes
When it comes to forming opinions or beliefs, we benefit from taking neutral views, remaining open to receiving new information, and considering that there may be viable alternatives to our current conclusions.
We also benefit from putting ourselves in positions where we might make a mistake. It’s a chance to learn and grow.
One fear we hold is that when we’re wrong, we’ll look foolish or incompetent in front of others. But according to Grant, “psychologists find that admitting we’re wrong doesn’t make us look less competent. It’s a display of honesty and willingness to learn.”
Think about the people you know who use self-deprecating humor when they mess up or readily admit it when they make a mistake — do you see them as incompetent? Probably not. You probably respect their candor and openness.
Says Grant, “Every time we encounter new information, we have a choice. We can attach our opinions to our identities and stand our ground…or we can operate more like scientists, defining ourselves as people committed to the pursuit of the truth — even if it means proving our own views wrong.”
And that panicked feeling we get when we’re wrong? When we embrace mistakes, it might go away completely. Or at least be a little less intrusive.
