The Joy of Being Wrong: An Excerpt from Think Again by Adam Grant
When our son was five, he was excited to learn that his uncle was expecting a child. My wife and I both predicted a boy, and so did our son. A few weeks later, we found out the baby would be a girl. When we broke the news to our son, he burst into tears. “Why are you crying?” I asked. “Is it because you were hoping your new cousin would be a boy?”
“No!” he shouted, pounding his fists on the floor. “Because we were wrong!”
I explained that being wrong isn’t always a bad thing. It can be a delightful discovery that we’ve learned something new.
This realization didn’t come naturally to me. Growing up, I was determined to be right. In second grade I corrected my teacher for misspelling the word lightning as lightening. When trading baseball cards I would rattle off statistics from recent games as proof that the price guide was valuing players inaccurately. My friends found this annoying and started calling me Mr. Facts. It got so bad that one day my best friend announced that he wouldn’t talk to me until I admitted I was wrong.
A few years ago, I presented some research at a conference. On my way out, an elderly gentleman stopped me. “That was wonderful,” he said. “I was wrong.”
It was Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize–winning psychologist. His eyes were twinkling—it looked like he was having fun. When I asked him if he enjoys being wrong, he corrected me. No one enjoys being wrong, he explained. But he genuinely enjoys discovering that he was wrong, because it means he is now less wrong than before.
I recognized the feeling. In college, what first attracted me to social science was reading studies that clashed with my expectations; I couldn’t wait to tell my roommates about all the assumptions I’d been rethinking. In my first independent research project, I tested some predictions of my own, and more than a dozen of my hypotheses turned out to be false. It was a major lesson in humility, but I wasn’t devastated. I felt an immediate rush of excitement. Discovering I was wrong felt joyful because it meant I’d learned something. “Being wrong is the only way I feel sure I’ve learned anything,” Danny told me. “My attachment to my ideas is provisional. There’s no unconditional love for them.”
Attachment. That’s what stops us from admitting we were wrong. We’re too attached to our beliefs. You don’t have to believe everything you think.
Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. Beliefs are what you think is true. Values are what you think is important. You wouldn’t want a doctor whose identity is Professional Lobotomist or a teacher whose identity is Corporal Punisher. You want the doctor whose identity is protecting health and the teacher whose identity is helping students learn.
If you define yourself by your opinions, admitting you were wrong is a threat to your integrity. If you see yourself as a curious person or a lifelong learner, changing your mind is a moment of joy and an opportunity for growth.