Refusing To Admit You Are Wrong Isn’t What Makes You Tough or Smart

An intelligent mind is a curious one

Americans, and American men, in particular, have been taught that it’s weak to admit that you are wrong. After all, the dominance hierarchy of patriarchy says, “You must be in control at all times, and always keep the upper hand!” This means that even if someone demonstrates to you incontrovertibly that your position is misinformed or even flat out wrong, you can’t concede — ever! That would be accepting a lower rung on the dominance hierarchy, and we can’t have that!

Instead, it seems to be preferable to launch into mental gymnastics or to begin introducing other elements that are only marginally related to the equation in the hopes that the person you are debating won’t notice. If that doesn’t work, you can just start calling the other person names as a deflection. This is how mature, reasonable and intelligent people end up spending so much of their time saying, “Don’t put words in my mouth,” or “That isn’t really the point here.”

Rather than making them look confident, these intractable men really just come off as too insecure to acknowledge that perhaps they had the wrong end of the stick. They don’t appear tough or smart by holding on in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary — they just look like a stubborn child trying to have an adult conversation. Someone should clue them in to this.

There is some research that indicates men with very high levels of testosterone are more apt to be over-confident and believe they are correct even when they are not, but I think there’s more to it than that. I’ve had very civil discussions with non-American men who had no real problem with saying things like, “You’ve made a good point,” or “I hadn’t thought of it from that perspective before.” I’ve sometimes gotten into discussions with women I didn’t agree with, but they typically either simply leave the conversation or make some type of concessionary statement if their position is convincingly challenged. Not all American men are that intractable, but a lot of them are.

The real disservice of this “I’m never wrong” culture is that not only does it not actually make the person holding firm look smart or informed but it also doesn’t allow them to have exposure to anything new. Curiosity is a key component of intelligence. By holding fast, they not only don’t appear smart, but they kill off any chance to actually become more knowledgable.

First, individuals with higher CQ (curiosity quotient) are generally more tolerant of ambiguity. This nuanced, sophisticated, subtle thinking style defines the very essence of complexity. Second, CQ leads to higher levels of intellectual investment and knowledge acquisition over time, especially in formal domains of education, such as science and art (note: this is of course different from IQ’s measurement of raw intellectual horsepower). Knowledge and expertise, much like experience, translate complex situations into familiar ones, so CQ is the ultimate tool to produce simple solutions for complex problems.

Again and again, Albert Einstein referred to the practice of always wondering about things (as distinct from always being sure about things) as a holy curiosity. Nikola Tesla said that “if we want to know the secrets of the universe, we should focus on the non-physical aspects rather than physical ones, that will speed up the inventions.” By this, he was referring to energy, frequency, and vibration. These are areas of science that we know less about than the physical world, but if we are curious about them, new understandings of the universe will emerge. A scientist is, by nature, a curious person — wanting to know what makes things tick, and a good scientist is open to learning what’s really taking place and not just in proving their own theory of what’s happening.

It is a great marker of both intelligence and confidence to say, “I didn’t actually realize that before. I’ve learned something new!” Even, “you’ve made a good point” is a sign of a CQ and the desire to exchange ideas and information without the inherent need to dominate all the time. I know which kind of person I’d rather talk to and I also know which kind I quite often get in a difference of opinion. It’s yet another way that patriarchy hasn’t done any of us any favors.