We humans all think we know more than we really do. That’s why we argue about everything.

Robert Roy Britt

Published in Wise & Well

Nov 16, 2023 (Medium.com)

When I have an argument with someone, I’m almost always right. You probably are, too. I know these things because when researchers asked people to reflect on disagreements they’ve had, 82% of them were confident they were usually right.

I’m no math whiz, but something doesn’t add up there.

“Most of us overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and opinions, often badly, with little consideration of the possibility that we might be wrong,” says Mark Leary, PhD, emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and the guy who led that research.

Leary is totally right about this. He and other researchers have done experiments, over and over, that reveal the incredible overabundance of unwarranted human confidence.

Sure, we can be a rational, thoughtful, creative species. But evolution has equipped us with an overwhelming propensity to think too highly of our own thoughts, which causes us to get into deep mental grooves and stay there. Right, wrong or otherwise, it’s in our nature to become comfortable in what we think we know, commiserating with like-minded individuals, fearful of who and what we don’t understand, subconsciously unwilling to get out of our mental comfort zone, unable to boldly go beyond the convenient ways of seeing and comprehending the world.

This leads to skewed, misinformed viewpoints and tribal thinking that ultimately pits us against one another. Lean to the left, lean to the right, we just want to fight fight fight. Because we are right and they are wrong.

Extreme confidence in our thought processes may have served us well in some ancient, isolated tribal setting. It’s anything but productive in today’s information-soaked society on this increasingly crowded little planet. Would that our brains could evolve to keep up with the realities of modern existence.

I explained this rigidity of thought in a recent article about the human propensity for lying and gullibility, delving into the science of cognitive bias, by which we readily soak up misleading and even outrageous claims that support our worldview while unwittingly ignoring input that runs counter. This naturally creates myopic, vitriolic disputes rooted in what we falsely believe to be objective truths.

Medium reader Ray Wirth offered an insightful comment on the article: “It’s much easier for us to absorb information that fits our beliefs rather than to shift our beliefs based on new information,” Wirth wrote. “Literature, art, travel, biography, and cross-cultural experiences can shift our thinking and make us more open to seeing the world as it is.”

To see the world as it is, not as we want it to be. That’s wisdom, philosophers tell us. But it’s not easy to be wise.

Wisdom demands we slip the surly bonds of belief and seek objective knowledge and true understanding.

It all starts with good thinking.

Good thinking requires a love of knowledge and an eagerness to learn. But one also has to care about reaching accurate conclusions and having the right beliefs, not just conclusions and beliefs that are comforting or convenient. Good thinking, therefore, also requires a strong dose of intellectual humility.

“Being intellectually humble means being open to the possibility you could be wrong about your beliefs,” explains Eranda Jayawickreme, PhD, a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University. “Without acknowledging the possibility that your current beliefs may be mistaken, you literally can’t learn anything new.”

Intellectual humility is not the same as being generally humble or modest. It pertains specifically to how we think about our knowledge and our cognitive processes. It goes beyond open-mindedness, which does not necessarily involve pondering one’s cognitive limitations.

And intellectual humility does not mean lack of conviction. You and I can argue vehemently about something. We can both be firm in our beliefs, hard-headed as hell. Odds are at least one of us is not 100% right.

“While part of being a good thinker involves recognizing one’s possible ignorance, it also requires an eagerness to learn, curiosity about the world, and a commitment to getting it right,” Jayawickreme wrote last month in The Conversation.

“Intellectual humility is rational in the sense that we can’t all be right in most of our disagreements, we are often irrationally overconfident, and the evidence on which our beliefs and viewpoints are based is often rather flimsy,” Leary writes in the Greater Good Magazine.

Problem is, intellectual humility is inversely proportional to the perceived import or weight of an issue. I might admit to my wife I took a wrong turn on the way to the restaurant (though, c’mon, what does Google Maps really know?) but don’t tread on my dearly held cultural beliefs.

“Although acknowledging the limits of one’s insights might be easy in low-stakes situations, people are less likely to exhibit intellectual humility when the stakes are high,” Jayawickreme and colleagues explained last year in the journal Nature Reviews Psychology. “People are unlikely to act in an intellectually humble manner when motivated by strong convictions or when their political, religious or ethical values seem to be challenged.”

Here’s why intellectual humility is so important:

If we don’t care enough to find the truth, if we don’t acknowledge potential flaws in our belief systems, if we don’t seek experiences that challenge what we think we know — if we don’t think good — then we fail to nurture one of the most important human qualities: empathy.

Empathy is poorly understood by many of us. It’s not about donating to the Red Cross or volunteering at the soup kitchen or visiting an old person in a nursing home. Those are acts of compassion. All well and good. But empathy is a more deeply seated skill and sensibility. It helps us feel compassion and act upon it, but it is much more than that. At its core, empathy involves understanding the feelings and viewpoints of another person so we can consider a situation or a conversation or the individual’s very existence from their perspective.

Empathy is hard! Many of us — particularly men — suck at it. Here’s how one expert put it, based on findings from his research:

“There is a common assumption that people stifle feelings of empathy because they could be depressing or costly, such as making donations to charity,” said C. Daryl Cameron, PhD, a professor of psychology at Penn State University. “But we found that people primarily just don’t want to make the mental effort to feel empathy toward others, even when it involves feeling positive emotions.”

Like most human emotions and abilities, empathy arises through both nature and nurture. We can cultivate it. Science shows that good thinking and intellectual humility are worthy starting points.

“Intellectual humility was associated with higher levels of empathy, gratitude, altruism, benevolence, and universalism, and lower levels of power-seeking,” researchers concluded in a 2015 study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology.

And that’s why getting out of our comfort zone is so vital to the human experience. It stretches the mind and opens us to new ways of looking at ourselves and the world, and developing empathy and compassion for people who are not like us, but who are often a lot more like us than we realize, separated mostly by a gulf of circumstance and the mental hamstring of cognitive bias.

Empathy requires taking a good, hard look at ourselves, acknowledging our foibles and flaws. Practiced with intention, it leads to greater tolerance, better listening skills, more respect for others and, in a collective sense, less acrimony and polarization.

Empathy, in turn, is known to be among the foundation blocks of wisdom.

Wisdom is poorly understood by many of us, too. It’s not a product of age or knowledge. It doesn’t come automatically with experience or education. It certainly isn’t guaranteed by intelligence.

“Wisdom is more about acquiring a deeper understanding about meaning in life, of being able to see how and where you fit into the grander scheme of things and how you can be a better person for yourself and for others,” write co-authors Dilip Jeste, MD, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at UC San Diego, and Scott Lafee, in their book Wiser.

Your level of wisdom, Jeste says, is determined by how many of the following characteristics you possess, and to what degree:

• Self-reflection: Understand your own thoughts, motivations, and actions.
• Prosocial behaviors: Maintain positive social connections and act with compassion, empathy, altruism, and a sense of fairness.
• Emotional regulation: Manage negative emotions and stress that can get in the way of decision-making, and lean into positive emotions.
• Acceptance of diverse perspectives: Learn about and accept perspectives and value systems outside your own.
• Decisiveness: Make decisions in a timely manner with comfort.
• Social advising: Give good advice to others.
• Spirituality: Connect with yourself, with nature, or with a transcendent entity such as the soul or God.

(As a great starting point toward building empathy on the path to wisdom, my colleague Kathleen Murphy offers some excellent, specific tactics for engaging in productive conversations with family during the holidays, when relationships can be at their most tense.)

I grew up in a small town that engendered, at least for me, narrow-minded beliefs. It’s shocking how uninformed my views and convictions were as a young adult. I went away to college, but dropped out and moved back to my hometown to work in the family business. It was a wonderful experience. No regrets. But in my late 20s, I quit that great job with a clear and prosperous future and went back to school to pursue the mediocre pay offered by a career in journalism.

That led me to the most mind-expanding year of my life.

I lived and studied in Europe, learning a new language and immersing myself in entirely foreign cultures while traveling throughout the continent and to Russia. The experience radically altered my worldview. I woke up to how little I knew about what I thought I knew. I came back with a much greater appreciation for how alike we all are, despite superficial differences in appearance, education, work, culture or beliefs. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still stubborn in my beliefs, but less so.

If I could wave a wand and improve the lives of young Americans and the destiny of this country, I would have every high school student spend a semester abroad in a distinctly different culture, or otherwise get way out of their comfort zones, geographically, socially and politically. Seeing the world, any little part of it, actually living somewhere else, meeting the people, getting beyond the hotels and the tourist spots and the fancy restaurants to see life as it really is, in all its glory and gloomy reality, is a profoundly life-altering experience.

Short of my fantasy for all, any of us can choose to be more intellectually humble.

We can change the channel or otherwise tune out the drumbeat of narrow-minded, polarized partisan bickering. We can read more history, learn more about other cultures, seek to understand people who disagree with us — not just grasp their argument, but understand where they’re coming from and what led them to the particular set of beliefs. Often we’ll find it’s totally logical, based on their upbringing, education, or other life influences. Does that make them wrong? Does that make us right?

I’ll admit to still being stuck in my ways of thinking as much as the next idiot. I believe certain things not because I’ve been there, done that, not because I’ve walked in those shoes, but simply because I’ve listened to and accepted certain facts and narratives, avoided and ignored others.

I’m human. Most of us are. This is how our brains work.

While my travels and my college education might foster some intellectual humility that affords a bit of wisdom, I’m 100% confident that such an outcome is far from assured.

“On one hand, the more people learn, the more they see how much they do not know and come to realize that knowledge is exceptionally complicated, nuanced, and endless,” Leary, the Duke University professor, points out. “On the other hand, the more people learn, the more justifiably confident they become in the areas in which they develop expertise.”

And if we wish to be a little wiser and improve our human relationships, the only thing we should not have confidence in is confidence itself.

Thanks for your support, which makes my reporting and writing possible. To make your days better, check out my book: Make Sleep Your Superpower. And if you’re a writer, sign up for my Writer’s Guide newsletter.

Written by Robert Roy Britt

·Editor for Wise & Well

Founder/editor of Wise & Well on Medium & the Writer’s Guide at writersguide.substack.com & author of Make Sleep Your Superpower amazon.com/dp/B0BJBYFQCBFollow