I’ve been working on this title question for over 12 years, but I’ve never taken a stab at putting all the answers I’ve collected in one concise article until now. The goal of this article is to be brief, while also giving a wide-scoped treatment of the question. So here we go!
SCENARIO: Suppose someone is wrong over a matter of fact or logic or morality, and you have got the facts and logic and sourcing together to prove to them all day long that they’re wrong.
QUESTIONS: Why is it so often so very difficult to get people to correct themselves? That is, to say, “OK, I see I was wrong, and I’m changing my position.”? What is it about people that makes this difficult?
The following items, however general or specific they may be, are common causes for people being slow to correct themselves. One or more of these will almost always be in play when someone’s not correcting himself forthrightly. The beginning of the list is more technical in nature, and the latter items are more practical, and are written in everyday language. (I reserve the right to edit this list from time to time as I figure out how better to arrange it, or to describe what goes on in our minds.)
NOTE: All of this assumes that the person is really wrong, and the one correcting him is really right.
General Technical Scenarios
1. Lack of Learning (Ignorance).
The person has not previously learned one or more of the things that are necessary to navigate the correcting discussion you’re trying to have with him. More specifically, it could be one of the following common problems:
1a. Missing Facts.
The person lacks the full set of facts necessary to understand the problem at hand.
1b. Missing Mindware.
The person lacks the specific “Mindware” necessary to solve or understand a problem/issue of this sort. Examples: 1. Suppose it’s an Algebra problem, and he hasn’t yet learned Algebra. 2. Suppose it’s a logic problem, and he hasn’t learned all the applicable logic. (Mindware is a term by David Perkins.)
1c. Missing Moralware. The person lacks an understanding of the best practices of morality. That is, of how people should behave―particularly as it regards other people. (Moralware is my term. Depending on one’s understanding, it may or may not belong as a subset of Mindware.)
1d. Lack of Self-Awareness. The person, for whatever cause(s), is not sufficiently aware of himself and his mental/moral habits and processes.
2. Lack of Motivation/Care. The person, for whatever cause(s) lacks motivation to make the correction you are suggesting. That is, he doesn’t care about it. It could be a general lack of concern about correcting himself, applying itself to this specific case, or it could be that he is generally concerned with self-correction, but that something in this specific case is causing that concern to be suspended. Note that one may indeed care, yet be hindered from engaging for other causes. See #3 below.
3. Lack of Engagement. The person, for whatever cause(s), is not engaging his mind in the business of processing the correction you are offering. This could be for lack of motiviation/care (#2 above), or for other causes. (You can think of #2 as a special cause for the lack of engagement.) The following terms somewhat categorize the lack of engagement from different angles:
3a. Distraction/Hindrance. The person may genuinely care about self-correction, but is being distracted or hindered from processing that correction right now. This could be for any of a number of causes, from being in a hurry to having a headache to being in an emotionally-uncomfortable situation.
3b. Dysrationalia. For whatever the causes, the person is failing to engage his rational thinking faculties, despite having sufficient a IQ (Intelligence Quotient) to understand the issues. (This is Keith Stanovich’s term.)
3c. Dysmoralia. For whatever the causes, the person is failing to engage moral standards he has previously demonstrated himself capable of engaging. (Dysmoralia is my term.)
NOTE: Sometimes it takes people longer than we might expect to engage with us, or to make any apparent progress, in self-correction. Distraction, for example, can lead to this, as can a slower mental processing speed. It’s a very useful habit to take this possibility into account when we are sizing up how engaged the one being corrected seems to be, rather than to assume the person is unwilling to engage (#2). Also, some people are less emotive and expressive than others, and it’s harder to tell by looking at them what mental work they may be doing at the moment.
4. Cognitive Mismanagement. The person is mismanaging the mental work that’s involved in making the correction you are suggesting. This is a wide field, and has been (and is still) the subject of a great amount of study in Cognitive Science and Philosophy. It’s also mentioned with what may be surprising frequency in the Bible and other religious works.
4a. Mental Shortcuts (Heuristics). The person is (probably by habit) cutting corners in his mental work, employing various cognitive hacks that may sometimes be useful, but are not sophisticated enough to work every time. This is a very wide field of study, so let me be very brief by giving just one example of a certain type of shortcut called a cognitive bias: Billy runs a convenience store that’s near an oil field. Many of the oil workers come into his store tracking mud, and Billy gets in the habit of telling himself “All oil workers are messy.” And while idea may be generally useful to Billy in predicting how things go in his story, it’s too unsophisticated to adequately explain the behavior of Ralph and George, two oil workers who conscientiously stomp off and wipe their boots before they enter the story.
4b. Mindware Problems. The person is making errors in Mindware (1b). It may not be that the Mindware is missing (1b), but that he’s distracted during the processing of it. Or it could be that he doesn’t know it well enough to apply it correctly to the situation at hand.
EXAMPLES: 1) The Wason Selection Test is a good example of this, since it tests how well people understand If/Then logic. 2. The Linda Problem highlights how well people understand basic probability problems.
5. Overriding Loyalties/Philosophies. The person has one or more overriding loyalties that trump the self-correction process in this instance. For example, he may be loyal to a certain institution, and is unwilling to admit that one of its teachings or practices are wrong. And it’s important to distinguish that this is not because he’s incapable of reasoning it out, but because he thinks that his particular loyalty is more important than reasoning it out. Or, alternately, he may have an overriding loyalty to his own self-view, and be unwilling to admit that he is in error. (Further examples of this, along with other things, will appear in the practical scenarios below.
6. Overriding Emotions. Similar to #5 above, and also falling under #3a, the person being corrected may be overwhelmed with emotional interference that makes it temporarily impossible for him to conduct the cognitive operations necessary to process the correction you are giving him. Suppose, for example, that you’re correcting him on his grammar, while not knowing that his wife just died. Or suppose you’re expecting a teammate to listen to your coaching about his technique, but he inwardly resents you strongly, and lacks sufficient strength or will to decouple from those feelings in order to heed, process, and implement your correction, where he might take it better from someone else.
Defining the Reality.
In summary, it’s all about discerning what is the reality of the situation. But even here, we must take great care to define the word reality, as different people have different notions of it. So here’s the definition I’m using:
reality ―n. the state of things as they actually exist, as distinguished from one’s thoughts, perceptions, ideas, beliefs, hypotheses, attitudes, decisions, calculations, assumptions, opinions, habits, traditions, expectations, wishes, and feelings about them. (Watch my 90 primer on Reality-Based thinking here.)
Practical Scenarios
This list is designed to be less academic and theoretical than the one above. I have continued the same numbering scheme, so as to avoid confusion when discussing the contents of this page.
WARNING: Great care should be used in diagnosing whether any of these particular scenarios is happening―both for your own sake and that of the one who is not accepting or processing the correction well. It’s easy to misjudge by mere appearance, or to run with one scenario to explain (inadequately) something that’s more complicated than that. It’s a bit like the Wordle game, where, just because you can imagine a 5-letter word that would fit the information you have so far, that doesn’t mean you’ve got the right 5-letter word! Meanwhile, you can torture yourself needlessly by assuming that the person who’s not self-correcting is being like that because, for example, they hate you, when really, it’s mostly because they have a headache right now!
Remember, this whole article assumes that your correction of the other person is itself correct―that it comports to reality, which I have defined above.
7. The person doesn’t care about comporting himself to reality.
7b. The person doesn’t care about it right now because he’s being cognitively and/or morally lazy at present.
8. The person has a different philosophy of what reality is.
8b. The person is using a different definition of reality right now in this specific case.
9. The person doesn’t fully understand your correction. This could be for any of a number of reasons.
10. The person is incorrigible. That is, he considers himself to be above correction.
11. The person may not generally consider himself above to be above correction, but he considers himself above you (or whatever camp or philosophy he associates you with). That is, he doesn’t think it’s your place to correct him, where he might possibly listen to someone else. (This is one reason that the camp mentality is so counterproductive to good thinking―because one convinces himself that there are lots of people out there who are beneath him, and unqualified to correct him as to this or that.)
12. The person thinks you are hopelessly wrong in so many ways that it’s overwhelming, and he won’t even bother to reply forthrightly to your correction.
13. The person has pre-decided that you are most likely wrong in your opinions, so he sees no point in listening to you now.
14. The person is emotionally predisposed to react to you with disdain, hatred, loathing, repulsion, anger, mistrust, etc.
15. The person takes the correction as a personal attack. (See my 2012 article, Understanding Ad Hominem Argumentation. It seems a great many people misunderstand what ad hominem argumentation actually is.)
16. The person takes the correction as an attack against his heritage and/or traditions.
17. The person takes the correction as an attack against his family, friends, clan, camp, organization, “race”, culture, society, or country.
18. The person takes the correction as an attack against his religion or his God or gods.
19. The person was corrected badly, or by bad people in the past, and now (mistakenly) assumes that all correction must be innately bad, and thus, is best avoided.
20. The person is unable to hear what you say, because of intrusive thoughts triggered by something that reminds him of unpleasant experiences in the past.
21. The person is afraid to admit the error, because he knows he’s been in denial about this (and maybe other things), and fears what would happen if he would admit to it.
22. The person is afraid to be wrong because it triggers strong feelings of inadequacy or of self-loathing.
23. The person is afraid to be wrong because it triggers strong memories of previous rejection by those he cared about.
24. The person is afraid to admit to anything because he generally feels like a fraud, and feels like he’ll fall apart if he admits the one thing openly.
25. The person is afraid to admit the one point―though he knows full-well that you’re right―because he can’t decouple this one point from other points on which he knows you disagree. He’s afraid that losing one point means losing the whole battle with you.
25b. Or he expects that you won’t fight fairly, and that if he concedes the one point, you’ll immediately claim victory on all the other points, too.
26. The person knows you’re right, but thinks that there are things that is something about his view that is more important than being right.
27. The person has got his very identity wrapped up in his view, and doesn’t see it as a routine matter of fact and logic, but as a matter of his very existence and/or self-value.
28. The person is afraid of getting in trouble with someone else if he changes his position.
29. The person is reaping some benefit from his present position, and doesn’t want to lose it. Maybe it’s money or power or some other form of gratification. Maybe it’s the esteem of one or more others, or of his camp. Regardless, he values this more than he values being right.
30. The person doesn’t know how to think this thing through correctly. (This is a Mindware problem.)
31. The person is missing relevant facts.
32. The person needs to let go of some inaccurate “facts” he has in mind already. (They compete with the real facts.)
32a. The person is entertaining cognitive dissonance in his mind.
33. The person is prejudiced against you (and the correction you are offering), on account of any of a number of common prejudices, such as might regard what camp(s) you belong to, your skin color, where you live, how much money you have, what sports team you favor, what kind of music you listen to, etc.
34. The person might be generally the guarded sort, and unlikely to relax enough around somebody he doesn’t already see as a close friend. He won’t want to navigate these corrective waters with you.
35. The person may have a motive to protect one or more people, or an institution, from the embarrassment associated with the correction.
37. The person may have been conditioned to see any such correction as a spiritual attack from Satan or some other demonic forces.
38. The person, while being generally willing to be corrected, is avoiding some specific consequences to this particular correction, where he considers them too costly to bear. So, denying the correction, he thinks, spares him the consequences.
39. The person thinks his position is justified, even though he knows it’s not perfect, is justified because it’s “for a good cause”. (There’s a great discussion of this in Dan Ariely’s most useful book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How we lie to everyone―especially ourselves.
40. The person thinks his position, while not perfect, is “good enough”. He will tell himself you’re “just nitpicking”, or that you “just like to argue”, or that your attitude is “legalistic”. (See my 2012 article about how dishonest people often dodge criticism.)
41. The person will think he is entitled to indulge in a flawed position because he (or someone else) has been wronged, and is owed some latitude as a result.
42. The person is not actually processing your correction, but is repeating a common response he has “always heard” (hearsay). He may think this is thinking, but it’s not. He may think it’s a valid response, because he has never really learned to think things through and to formulate a response. Rather, he thinks that repeating what he has always heard is the same thing.
43. The person is too busy (or otherwise distracted) right now to give your correction it the attention, processing, and response it deserves.
Conclusion
I’m stopping this list after item #43 today, though I may well add to it in the future. (I admit to being a bit impatient about getting it published, and I’m also hoping that conversation about it will prompt other items that did not readily come to mind this morning.
Generally, I think it’s important to point out that every one of us in this world has some learning to do, and that we’re certainly got some things wrong. I realized in a big way back in 2011 or 2012 that this certainly applies to me, too.
Not long after I started to wrestle with this realization, I reached the conclusion that I called my Self-Correction Ethic.
Self-correction is now a daily part of my life―and this is not a matter of crisis or emergency; it’s simply what experience has shown me it takes to maintain a well-ordered mind! (And that’s not to say that my mind is as well-ordered as it ought to be, mind you!)
Many people resist these conclusions out of pride, fear, and ignorance. And many will push back in various ways when exposed to information that challenges their existing beliefs, habits, and feelings. The more I study how it all works, the better I get at not taking those bad responses personally―even if that’s exactly how they are intended sometimes.
Understanding these push-back habits also helps keep me from being buffaloed so often by them. Recognizing it early on saves a lot of anguish on my part, I have learned. But mostly, I wanted to share this: I am still vulnerable to playing out nearly every single one of these scenarios on the long list above, and I do not anticipate a day on this Earth when I’m not likely to goof in one of these ways.
I don’t think these bad habits can be overcome in a once-and-for-all fashion, though I do think we can make considerable improvements to our mental habits if we care enough to learn how to deal with these things when they come up. I’m completely convinced that the fundamental beneath it all is the caring.
