Why It's So Hard to Admit You're Wrong | Cognitive Dissonance

Sometimes our behavior and our beliefs just… don’t match. And a lot of times this mismatch can lead to stress. What’s happening in our brains when we’re inconsistent? Can we learn anything from this discomfort?

Hosted by: Hank Green
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[gephc]

Fortunately, I'm wrong all the time, so I've grown accustomed to it.

[Narsandorin]

This should be on the warning label of the internet. !! Cognitive Dissonance may occur !!

[boujee_lemonade]

SciShow, one of the few beacons of sanity amidst disinformation, delusion, and chaos.

[tiaraono]

"The frist step to defeating your own brain, is knowing what its up to." As someone with mental health struggles that is a MOOD.

[afeathereddinosaur]

"I'll admit, you're right." the pain in the ass to do that sometimes is awful, specially that one time the person who's always wrong and never admits is right for once, and you have to accept it to not be the same

[GermyJer]

This needs to be taught in high school

[Jellylamps]

A good example of this is wanting to distance yourself from toxicity and not realizing that you yourself can be toxic too sometimes. You can hate a trait that others have and never realize you have it too. On the other hand if you look out for it you can hold yourself to the same standard you hold of everyone else

[enderwiggins]

Yeah it really sucks when very important people can’t realize they’re wrong

[sthelenskungfu]

I took a year when I was 22 and made it my goal to change my opinion on something every day. This had to be a hard won change. I had to actually learn something that actually changed my understanding of the facts, not just a simple, "You know what, I've decided French isn't a horrible language." Ever since then, I've actually liked when someone can use facts and nuance to change my opinion.

[BitchChill]

I've noticed lately, that's been easier for me to accept that I'm wrong

[SMTM]

There's an easy way to reduce the likelyhood of being wrong.

Be extremely careful with using absolute terms.

I. E., I think it's extremely unlikely that water flows up the hill, but I accept that there might be situations where it makes sense.

This allows you to cheat cognitive dissonance in a lot of situations.

[billmcdonough]

'The first step to defeating your own brain... is knowing what it's up to.'

Hank, are you saying that knowing is half the battle?

[ejhott]

Social scientist putting on spy gear. "What're you doin-" "it's for science!!!"

[megamangos]

"Think of things that are even worse and make your bad company look better by comparison." This idea might be overlooked but is extremely important. It's part of one of my favorite short, but deeply terrifying quotes, "People think they are right, most of the time. And they can justify anything to themselves." And this is one of the strongest ways people justify bad behavior: "Well, at least I'm not as bad as X, " where X could literally be anything and can easily move further away depending on how close you get to it.

[creativedesignation]

If you have trouble admitting you were wrong, try framing it differently. Shift the focus from having been wrong to learning something knew, that way someone who is correcting you is not attacking you and your believes, but teaching you to be better and less wrong in the future.
And remenber that learning doesn't stop when you are no longer in school, it stops when you are no longer alive. Until then you always have the potential to become smarter and better every day.

[Great_Olaf]

I really love playing devil's advocate, even (sometimes especially) with myself, thinking of several sides of an issue and putting myself in the shoes of people who think differently. On the other hand, this rarely causes me to really change my opinions on things, mostly it moderates them somewhat and tends to make me less aggressive in pushing for them, at least in politics (although some political lines of thought require so much mental gymnastics for me to wrap my head around that even when I understand that there are people who hold these beliefs, I have a really hard time sympathizing or understanding them). More academic subjects on the other hand...

[rnelson]

My cognitive dissonance: I don't like the idea of animals suffering but I eat more than my fair share of meat and cheese.

[JohnWehrle]

Like, say, if someone believed (despite a complete lack of evidence) that there was tons of voter fraud in an election when in fact they just didn't like the outcome of the election? (Totally random example.)

[anyawillowfan]

As social media chooses to show us what we want (because that's what keeps our attention), our beliefs are being constantly reinforced way more than before, and is making it ever harder to relate to those around us with different beliefs.

[dcphillips]

The best thing to remember is, everyone's a hypocrite.