Why do most people refuse to accept that they are wrong
I have come across a lot’s of people like these. like 99% of them. Sometimes it makes me think twice if what i am saying is wrong? What’s wrong with them. Is it so hard to swallow your pride and acknowledge that the other person is speaking facts? When they come to know they are wrong they proceed to insult/make fun of others to save their ass. Just why?
Sometimes you have to cut your losses and leave a conversation. If it’s some rando on the internet, just walk away and try not to care what they think.
With people you know and respect, you’re gonna have to hunker down for the long haul. Remember, if you come off like a jerk, they’re going to be less likely to accept your argument. Be respectful of their position but ask probing questions. Let them see for themselves that they’re wrong.
if you come off like a jerk, they’re going to be less likely to accept your argument
Very true. Lots of people attempt to package two messages together:
You’re wrong about this
You’re worthless
Quite frankly, people should reject the second message, and people who try to package the first with the second should expect listeners to reject the whole package.
Honestly it’s probably better for people to reject that whole package of messages than to accept it, even if it means being wrong, because at least they won’t be taking that toxicity into their soul.
Someone who goes around trying to convey those messages together, to be accepted as a package, is themselves doing it wrong.
Because most people, when they’re showing someone else that they’re wrong, choose to twist the knife about it. Onlookers add in jeers and snark, making the experience of admitting one was wrong into an unnecessarily-painful shaming event.
People don’t want to admit they’re wrong, because our culture punishes people who admit they were wrong.
In the cases when a person speaks to me as if I am someone capable of admitting I’m wrong, when they treat it like it’s no big deal I just happen to be wrong, I have no trouble admitting it.
For me what works is to show me without much emotion. Like pointing out to someone they’ve got a leaf in their hair or something. If someone comes at me, with proof that I’m wrong, in the manner of a helpful friend pointing out something I can’t see from my vantage point, it really doesn’t hurt.
But when people are calling me evil, stupid, toxic, etc, I just want to dig in my heels. I might see that I’m wrong, and at that point stop arguing my point, but I won’t actually come out and acknowledge it.
Best thing my daddy taught me; no matter how confident you are, you could always be wrong. Brains are just unreliable sometimes. Sky is blue? Could be wrong. You’re N years old? Probably… but you could be wrong.
Accepting this allows one to improve. Best we can do is recognize this, and try our best to minimize how often we’re wrong.
This has allowed me to withhold confidence in many situations. Not in deference, but in thoughtful acceptance that I truly might be wrong.
That really warms my heart to hear. I’m trying to be one of the good dads.
Just today my 9 year old and I had a conversation about how I’m always the first to step up and admit when I make a mistake, and communicate what I did or will do to fix it, where I have colleagues who will try to hide their mistakes and front like they never ever make them. Going so far as lying to clients, bosses, and coworkers all the way.
The problem with this is the quiet nihilism baked into it, which is the same reason so many people believe that widely supported science could be wrong.
In the absolute sense, it is true. Though things like “the sky is blue” is more about linguistics, but for a layperson it’s kind of inconsequential either way. While there is a small possibility that scientific consensus could be wrong, there is orders of magnitude bigger chance that unwarranted skepticism is dangerous. Reality does exist, regardless of how much epistemology you choose to wave away.
I don’t think so, and he and I have discussed this in epistemological terms several times over the years. “Sky is blue” example was probably bad as would have been “earth is round” etc. The point isn’t that anything can be wrong, though strictly speaking, I guess it can. What we mean is precisely that our minds have the ability to mislead us and powerfully so. But part of the drive to minimize that is to understand the value of consensus in both scientific communities and wider communities.
To have the best ratio of things about which were correct vs incorrect, being confident in things like the outcome of refereed science is helpful.
I encounter that all the time especially on public forums like this. This is a quote from an article I found about it online: According to psychologist, speaker and author Guy Winch, most people who consistently refuse to admit they're wrong do so because they have incredibly fragile egos. They clam up and insist they're right, demonstrating what experts term "psychological rigidity", as a defense mechanism.
Also I think that telling someone they are wrong comes across as a criticism about their intellect and they respond defensively by instinct. And, another reason is because people don't want to believe anything that contradicts their preferred view of the world. So if you "correct" someone they tend to act like you're attacking them or as too stupid to know what "truth" is.
It's really a telling distinction because today, most people behave in this defensive way. You don't see many people willing to concede or say, "wow that's a different point of view than I have considered, maybe it requires me to spend some thought on why I feel the way I do." Which is the real value of differing opinions; they help us re-assess and redefine the reasons why we feel the way we do.
It cant help that especially online it seems incredibly rare for someone to point out that you are wrong politely, gently and informatively. Who wants to admit they are wrong to someone who informs you via “OMG you dumb fuck…”
That's also true. How can you not be defensive when someone's reply starts with, "listen here you stupid dumbfuck....." Of course that kind of name calling is going to result in a verbal fight. I don't know why we can't just say, "OK I disagree but here's why, and I hope you'll appreciate my feedback." Do we have to resort to calling each other juvenile names? A person isn't stupid just because they have a controversial point of view.
Insecurity. People are afraid of being perceived as weak and don’t have the emotional maturity to work through it. They can’t see that it’s a sign of confidence and strength to be able to do so.
In my experience, with most people, his typically goes away as they get older. You eventually hit a point where people’s impressions of you dont matter anymore and it becomes much easier to freely admit you’re wrong.
Of course, there are people that never grow out of it, and that is often read as confidence. There is a reason that “fake it until you make it” works.
I am 18 currently and I have pretty much stopped caring about what others think of me. It just feels as if wasting any more energy speaking to them would be useless. But when I don’t defend myself people start verbally abusing me etc. I just don’t know what to do in situations like these
When I was 18, I started hangin out with a different crowd. ADULTS (of any age). If I was wrong, they’d explain why nicely. And vice versa. Learned a lot.
I read somewhere a while back that it's supposedly an evolutionary thing. In a social competition for resource allocation, confidently arguing your position regardless of its correctness is more beneficial than admitting you may be wrong.
It's probably exacerbated by the internet, where the relative anonymity and psychological disconnection further reduces any benefits to admitting to an error.
This is actually a tricky one. Lying (and I’m going to fold the projection of false confidence in with that one because I’m talking about deception, intentional or otherwise, not a moral concept) is only effective if others believe you.
Humans, as the most highly social of the primates and ranking among the most highly social animals on earth, have adapted to believe each other, because this helps with trust, coordination, shared identity, learning, and so on. However, it also creates a vulnerability to manipulation by dishonest actors. Again, I’m not talking about a moral dimension here. There are species in which mating is initiated with the gift of a nuptial present (eg a dead bug) from the male to the female. Sometimes the male will give a fake present (already desiccated insect, eg) to trick the female, and sometimes it works. Deception and detection are an arms race, and it’s believed by many to be one of the drivers that lead to the development of human intelligence, where our information processing capacity developed alongside our increasing social complexity.
The problem is that when lying becomes the default, then the beneficial effects of communication cease. It’s like when you stop playing games with a kid that just cheats every time, or stop buying from a store that just rips people off. It’s a strategy that only works if few enough people play it. There’s tons of caveats and additional variables, but that’s the baseline. So why do we still see so much of it?
The first component of course is confirmation bias. If 90% of our interactions are trustworthy, the ones that stick out will be the deceptions, and the biggest deceptions will get the most notice. The second is that the deceptions as a whole have not been impactful enough, over time, to overcome the advantages of trust, either in biological time or in social evolutionary time. You will notice that more trust is given to in-group rather than out-group members, and a number of researchers think that has to do with larger social adaptations, such as collective punishment of deceivers - sending someone to jail for writing bad checks, say, is easier if they’re part of your community as opposed to a tourist from another country. We can also see cultural differences in levels of trust accorded in-group and out-group persons, but that’s getting into a lot of detail.
The third major operator is the concept of the self. This is a subject where we are just being able to start making scientific headway - understanding where the concept of a self comes from in terms of neurobiology and evolutionary dynamics - but this is still very much a new science layered on top of ancient philosophy. In the concept of the self there is a component of what I’m going to calll the physical integrity of the structure. People find being wrong painful - there are social situations that activate the same parts of the physical brain as physical pain and distress do. This is especially true of those ideas are seen as being held by other group members, because you now have the group structural integrity on top of the one in idea-space. That’s where you get people willing to literally die on the hill of Trump winning in 2020. For the evolutionary construction and nature of the self I’d recommend Sapolsky and Metzinger - it’s too new and too complex to get into here. If you want to just summarize it in your mind, call this component ego defense.
I think that’s most of what’s going on, at least as we understand it so far.
Interesting. I was thinking more of gray area stuff than outright lying, like playing up the importance of facts that support one's position and downplaying those that don't.
On the other side of the coin - why do so many people give others shit for being wrong, especially in areas where right or wrong has no real consequences?
Because people tie their egos to their opinions and beliefs. They see an attack on those as an attack on their person.
We are all like this to certain extents. For example, I am a firm believer of the right of the individual to make their own choices, and believe that attempts to remove a person's right to make choices morally abhorrent.
It’s a basic psychological need to be able to trust that your brain can be right. A lot of psychological problems can result if you don’t trust your own brain to be able to solve problems and cope with new information.
Some people don’t learn the value of accepting mistakes/failure as part of learning. As a result, they will associate being wrong with weakening the trust they have in their brain. They don’t want to believe that their brain may not come up with answers for the problems and changes they face in life. So they will deny that their brain is incorrect.
It’s an ugly insecurity, but it’s totally understandable from an evolutionary perspective. We need to be able to trust our brains to navigate life’s challenges. People need to be taught that it’s okay to make mistakes, and that admitting when you are wrong is an opportunity for personal growth.
Can you elaborate on what you mean psych problems when you don't trust your brain?
I have memory issues and so when I'm doing something more complex than muscle memory I write it down. So I don't trust myself on specific memory tasks, like phone numbers.
I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t explain the exact theory, but basically my understanding is that self-confidence and self-esteem are linked to the concept of self-efficacy, which means the trust that your mind will be able to cope with the challenges presented to it. Low self-esteem and self-confidence are linked to all kinds of insecurities and challenges functioning.
Disclaimer: I recently began working on my own low self-confidence with my therapist and she pointed me to a book, the contents of which I’m mostly regurgitating here. The book is “The Six Pillars of Self-esteem” by Nathaniel Branden.
I have struggled against this for a long time. I tend to be a pretty prideful person and the urge to shift blame when I fuck up and deflect when faced with being wrong is something that has I have to actively work to correct. The difference for me came when I was younger in dealing with my parents: My dad was far from perfect and there were plenty of times he was in the wrong, but always made sure to sit down with me and apologize if he fucked up. My mom, for the most part, was better at avoiding being in the wrong in the first place, but when she was, I never once got her to apologize or admit her mistake. Of the two, I was hurt far more by the latter, and make it a point to be willing to admit my shortcomings.
The most difficult part after I identified it as an issue is to not let my willingness to apologize/admit my mistake become a carte blanche for continuing the behavior. If I fuck up, apologizing only means something if I work on the mistake. If I am wrong about somethimg, I should learn about both the thing and where my misconceptions came from.
For a lot of people, realizing it is an issue is difficult, because you first have to let go of the pride by acknowledging it. Shame isn't a good motivator, as it makes most people double down on pride.
Out of curiosity, are you conscious of denying your mistake initially, or is it just an impulsive response? After denying it, do you immediately realize you’re lying and just stick with it? No judgment, I’m just asking because someone I care about often does this and I’m just trying to understand it.
Sometimes, mainly when it is stuff that isn't rooted in true or false. If I am factually wrong, it isn't usually concious and I tend realize my mistake after the fact. If I am in the wrong in an emotional/moral way, I tend to realize my mistake while I am still emotionally charged, so I am not always ready to acknowledge it or effectively communicate my apology, though I still try to either admit fault or tell the other person I'd like to discuss it after I have calmed down.
Either way, I usually allow some amount of time for self reflection, which I think is better for me. It allows me to formulate my reasoning for apologizing/admitting my mistake, calm down, and let go of the ego. I have found that even if there is a long pause, the other person almost always will take the follow up discussion with kindness and respect, and appreciates the emotional/intellectual honesty and vulnerability. Nobody has ever rubbed it in my face. Which helps encourage the practice going forward.
It also, in general, facilitates better real-time admission of incorrectness to practice in this way.
Online it can become a competitive thing. They still want to “win” the argument even if the light comes on and they realize they have incorrect or incomplete information and the other side has made better arguments with better evidence. I suspect most people fall into this trap at some point in online forums. I definitely have. Guilty as charged.
And not to excuse this behavior, but part of it comes from poor sportsmanship and lack of grace from damned near everyone vis a vis Twitter/X/Facebook/reddit. People who “win” a competition like this are quick to gloat on how they “owned” the other person. Worse than this, trying to be reasonable and open-minded in these spaces often comes across as weakness.
There is a small movement of folks who call for radical empathy. This is where you do your level best to make a good faith effort to fully understand and see the merits of the other side’s arguments even if you don’t agree. That way lies learning and growth.
I don’t see admitting that I’m wrong as a weakness, and I’m not afraid to be the first to make a “concession”. I had a very few arguments on reddit turn into something positive (to the surprise of both parties) because I admitted I had made an incorrect assumption, my reasoning was flawed, or whatever. That made it “okay” for the other individual to admit they had made a mistake, too. Importantly, I didn’t use that as an opportunity to judge, criticize, or attack them. From there, we had a real conversation. It didn’t happen often, but it was great when it did!
Of course, most of the time people made cheap insults or just ignored me, but I was okay with that, too. Sure, it was disappointing, but the whole conversation was right there for anyone who wanted to read it. At least I wasn’t the one who looked like a petty asshole.
I’ve often had the same question as OP. I’ve read and understood the replies in this thread, and some of them are very good. I understand the points being made, but I still don’t get it, ya know? Everybody is wrong sometimes. There’s absolutely no shame in it, and it’s completely unrealistic to pretend that you never are. Plus, by keeping an open mind, being wrong is a fantastic way to learn!
I agree with you that it shouldn’t come across as weakness, and to a mature person it is sign of strength. I should have phrased it better, but my intention was to say that in these online forums many of the ‘spectators’ (who up and down vote, and/or pile on) seem to read nuanced arguments and open-minded thinking as being “weak”.
In other words, there’s often too many points scored for having an aggressive style, nasty sarcasm, insults, etc.
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