When You’re Wrong

When was the last time you were wrong about something? For me, it was this morning when I misread a text, and responded with what must have seemed like lunatic ravings. I make a lot of mistakes and frequently find myself back-tracking and correcting myself. Just a few months ago I argued with my sister about an old family photo in which I confidently identified myself.?It was hard to explain my belief (even to myself) when my mother contradicted me.?Her exact words were “I have no idea who that child is”.

Human beings hate being wrong. As a result, when evidence contradicts our beliefs, we will go to great lengths to wriggle out of fessing up to our errors. One way we do that is by dismissing evidence we dislike.?Most of us are now familiar with?confirmation bias ?– a psychological blind spot we use to avoid confronting our own mistaken beliefs. But, no less than Daniel Kahneman, who first described it (with his collaborator, Amos Tversky), says that even knowing a great deal about cognitive bias?will not?help to avoid their presence. They are inevitable. Well, that stinks.

We all find it tempting to double down on our own beliefs, proving we are right –even when confronted with counter-evidence. But that creates stagnation, stifles learning, and for many of us, causes arguments and frustration. Given that tendency, is there any hope for refining our reflexes to allow learning and growing throughout our lives? Yes. Instead of trying to become unbiased, we could try to inoculate ourselves against our dislike of being wrong.

The first principle human psychology and biology is self-preservation. That includes both physical preservation and the preservation of our self-image –or, in Freudian terms, our egos. Our self-images include those beliefs we have about the world and about ourselves. Being wrong calls those into question, violating the urge to preserve our self-image.

When we believe something and are confronted by evidence that it’s untrue, we experience?cognitive dissonance ?– discomfort at a conflict between evidence and belief. There are important reasons why we evolved to be like that.?In prehistoric times, being wrong could be life-threatening.?If you suspected the coast was clear and you were wrong, your mistake might turn you into lunch for a saber tooth tiger. So, being right and having an accurate view of the world was truly critical for our ancestors. Our psychology is still wired up to avoid tigers –despite the lack of tigers in modern life.

In prehistoric times, like we’re both low and high stakes instances of potentially being wrong. Wrongness about whether a tiger is about to pounce on you has the highest stakes. Your life hangs in the balance. But being wrong about where you saw that lovely papaya tree, while not no stakes, is not life-threatening. So, our reactions to being wrong are wired for the high-stakes events.?

In our modern day personal lives we also experience moments of high and low stakes over our own certainty. Imagine you believe your bank balance to be $1000. You recently looked at a statement, always balance your checkbook, and track your debit card purchases.

If you then go to the grocery store and the card reader tells you there are insufficient funds for your purchase, you will be shocked, and sure that the bank is mistaken, or that you have been robbed. You will experience significant cognitive dissonance, and probably rush from the grocery store to the bank to sort out?their?mistake.

Now, imagine you are asked by an ESP researcher to guess the card he is holding. You guess a five of hearts. He reveals a queen of spades. You shrug your shoulders. You had no expectation that you would know the card. Low stakes, low cognitive dissonance.

Since we are predisposed to resist discovering our wrongness, how can we learn to be more flexible in those moments and short-circuit our Neanderthal wiring?

Reframe:?We always have the power to reframe our experience—all experience. The way to do that is to craft a context in which the thing that causes us discomfort or fear is no longer problematic. Being wrong is only upsetting because we operate in a context in which being right is important. But that’s an optional standard.?

We can invent??a context for embracing wrongness.?When we are wrong, we feel like we, our person-hood, is under attack. But we can create a new way of framing wrongness. Maybe it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn something new.

Do that often enough and the discovery of being wrong will sting less. To cultivate that kind of mindset requires a new way of being, or a rule for yourself. Maybe you conceive of yourself as a learner, someone on a quest. Or, as a practical scientist, always seeking contradictions to your beliefs.?Make it a game in which discovery of wrongness is a win.

Reframing is a skill. Like most skills it takes refining and practice. But practicing this power is easy. Unless you are oddly infallible there are innumerable opportunities to reframe your experience. And more specifically, most of us are frequently wrong about things trivial and important. Use both the low and high stakes moments of wrongness to practice your new frame.

When you mistake an appointment for 3 PM instead of 2, or forget to get the milk, or misremember the postman’s name; these are all opportunities to practice a frame in which being wrong brings joy—or epiphany; maybe every time you discover you’re wrong you express gratitude for the new knowledge.?

There is no “correct” context for anything. There are only contexts that empower you or disempower you; that forward your commitments or obstruct them. That’s the extraordinary gift of reframing. You choose the context. [Click to tweet this thought.]

Start by asking yourself what kind of person you are committed to being. And how would that kind of person view being wrong about something? With that reflection, you are well-positioned to start creating. Use your reframing skill and invent a new context for being wrong. Then practice using it.

Reframing is a critical tool in the coach’s toolbox. You can massively amplify your team’s brilliance by giving them the ongoing gift of Beyond Better Coaching-as-a-Service. Schedule a call with me to chat about it. ?