Being right, and the idea/feeling of being so convinced of your own ‘rightness’ (or the frustration in dealing with others’ unwavering belief in their own ‘rightness’ and your associated ‘wrongness’) is something I’ve been thinking/discussing quite a bit lately, so I very much enjoyed Kathryn Schulz’s PopTech Talk on Being Wrong…
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/18393719[/vimeo]
I like her key message that given that we can’t trust our own recollections, knowledge, feeling or belief of what’s right, we need to look outside of our self to consciously put our rightness or wrongness to the test.
Some similar ideas (and references to the same research) are covered in this Big Think video about how we are more likely to believe the veracity of intense “flash-bulb memories”—yet these are just as likely as normal memories to be distorted over time.
Sometimes I think that this inability to trust your own memory is scary and uncomfortable and disorienting… but I guess it’s better to be aware of the limitations of memory rather than blindly (and sometimes dangerously) remaining completely and unquestionably convinced of your ‘rightness’.
Kathryn Schulz does a brilliant job at letting people accept that being wrong isn’t as bad as we perceive it to be. On a recent article http://academy.justjobs.com/practice-situational-awareness where we explain the importance of developing and practicing situational awareness, we also included her video. – Erich