It’s easier to just go “I guess I was wrong” but most people are emotionally fucking cowards.
It really seems like this is easier to me too. The older I get the more I realize that this is one of the most difficult things for a ton of people to do and I don’t understand why. Do they genuinely think they are incapable of being wrong? I don’t think there’s anything special about me so why does this seem so hard for almost everyone else?
Some cursory searching shows a variety of causes. Maybe from a young age they were repeatedly taught that being wrong made them bad and stupid and unworthy of love, and that’s deeply wound around their subconscious now.
It’d be just sad if it wasn’t causing incalculable harm to society.
Some people have such a fragile ego, such brittle self-esteem, such a weak “psychological constitution,” that admitting they made a mistake or that they were wrong is fundamentally too threatening for their egos to tolerate. Accepting they were wrong, absorbing that reality, would be so psychologically shattering that their defense mechanisms do something remarkable to avoid doing so—they literally distort their perception of reality to make it (reality) less threatening. Their defense mechanisms protect their fragile ego by changing the very facts in their mind, so they are no longer wrong or culpable.
It really seems like this is easier to me too. The older I get the more I realize that this is one of the most difficult things for a ton of people to do and I don’t understand why. Do they genuinely think they are incapable of being wrong? I don’t think there’s anything special about me so why does this seem so hard for almost everyone else?
Given that this is about emotions, not thoughts, you’re starting off on the wrong direction.
I wonder about this a lot, too!
Some cursory searching shows a variety of causes. Maybe from a young age they were repeatedly taught that being wrong made them bad and stupid and unworthy of love, and that’s deeply wound around their subconscious now.
It’d be just sad if it wasn’t causing incalculable harm to society.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201811/why-some-people-will-never-admit-that-theyre-wrong
:shrug: