I’ve been thinking lately about why, in debates (usually) about highly emotional topics, so many people seem unable to acknowledge even minor wrongdoings or mistakes from “their” side, even when doing so wouldn’t necessarily undermine their broader position.
I’m not here to rehash any particular political event or take sides - I’m more interested in the psychological mechanisms behind this behavior.
For example, it feels like many people bind their identity to a cause so tightly that admitting any fault feels like a betrayal of the whole. I’ve also noticed that criticism toward one side is often immediately interpreted as support for the “other” side, leading to tribal reactions rather than nuanced thinking.
I’d love to hear thoughts on the psychological underpinnings of this. Why do you think it’s so hard for people to “give an inch” even when it wouldn’t really cost them anything in principle?
Oh boy. If you really wanna understand this, there are like 80 episodes of the podcast You Are Not So Smart that look at this from different angles.
There’s not really a single reason. It’s a lot of inter-related ones.
I think we have an ecolutionary predisposition to be very defensive when we feel threatened. Add that to a social environment where we are CONSTANTLY and artificially condititioned to be threatened, considering that emotional intelligence and the ability to articolate and understand your own thoughts (let alone other’s) are virtually never taught if not en passant and indirectly (and often the wrong this are taught) and you have the perfect recipe for the Tower of Babel.
Humankind’s inherent incommunicability of internal thought is paired with an artificial and political cooptation of our survival instincts, the ones we evolved to defend ourselves from the people that a re manipulating us right now. That’s the reason antiauthoritarian thought is often patologized. They name the cure a sickness so that we keep ourselves under the Veil
I think I see what you’re trying to say, and I don’t necessarily disagree with everything, but based entirely on this one comment (which may not be indicative of how you generally communicate) I have to wonder if the communication issues you see stem at least partially from your own over-articulation of thoughts and use of “fluffy” language.
I think this bit highlights what I’m trying to say best:
are virtually never taught if not en passant and indirectly This statement feels like it’s saying the same proposition three times, but if I dig into it it is saying three things, but in a confusing manner. I think it would have been better served by replacing “if not” with something simpler like “or taught” to more easily connect the first idea with the other two in the reader’s mind. I probably would have replaced it all with “are taught incidentally at best,” which I think captures the meaning you are trying to convey in terms that are easier for anyone to understand.
I don’t say this to try to bring you down. I just find beauty in seeing a concept existing in one’s mind, unbounded by the world, given a vessel structured by the words of language not to constrain or limit that idea, but to focus it into something that can be shared and understood with others. The vast majority of the time I see that vessel be too loose without giving proper shape to the idea it wants to convey. Yours is one of the very few internet comments I see that does the opposite, where it feels forced into a shape that’s too rigid. That makes me want to say something, because the mind that does that is a mind I think could learn from stepping back a little, rather than being told to force itself forward.
This is as much me challenging myself to understand what bugged me about your comment as it is a comment on your comment, and for talking about giving shape to thoughts I don’t think I did a super job of it.
I do think that humans are one of the only creatures capable of overcoming the difficulty in communication between minds because we are one of the only creatures capable of complex language to do that stuff I said earlier. But it is a skill that is difficult and requires a lot of time and effort to learn or teach. I do think communication is highly valued, or at least a lot of frustration espoused about a lack of communication, but modern society does make it difficult to work up the effort and acquire the resources to develop that skill.
You have to do the heavy lifting, not them IMO.
For example the why should we help lazy people?!! I wonder what should we actuallydo with them then? Like you’re too lazy to work should we let them die because of their “stupidness” and errors they made?
Never changed anyone’s mind right away but you get to talk about the underlying reasons why they hate “lazy” people, and it’s often something (shocker) that has nothing to do with “lazy” people.
For example.
I’m not convinced ‘lazy’ people exist. Everyone I’ve ever known to be lazy is either ADHD, depressed, or anxious. It’s a symptom of an unhealthy mind, not an inherent trait anyone possesses.
Totally!
I just used the classic “lazy beggar don’t want to work” rightwing trope here.
This is my experience as well. Anecdotally, at least. Lately I’ve been slowly putting together a community of friends, and my anxiety and depression have been dropping like crazy. Between that and the self-esteem boost I’ve been getting from finally starting hrt, I’m actually starting to feel competent enough to tackle things like getting a job, moving out (I’m gonna go looking at rental properties with a friend tomorrow), going grocery shopping, things like that.
God, I’ve always wanted to be able to just do something so plain as going grocery shopping for myself.
I can also tell that the anxiety causes a lot of issues with my motivation from the fact that my wonderful mom always throws worst-case scenarios at me whenever I try to become more independent. She’s been throwing the entire warehouse at me lately because I’ve been talking about how I’m moving out with a friend. My excitement has been turning to dread despite my friend’s reassurance that they’ll catch me if I fall; and as a result my motivation and ability to get out of bed has been plummeting.
But… Yeah. Anecdotally, it’s not laziness, it’s being anxious, overwhelmed, overstimmed, depressed, feeling lonely (I mean, what’s the point in doing anything if no one cares?) and so forth.
For sure. From my experience of having kid on spectrum, dealing with it and learning about how to help him (ok, the wife did most of the work there), we came to conclusion that almost all people have either ADHD or autistic traits, some even both. People we know that have ADHD traits are almost all a mess, add some shitty parenting or being prone to addiction and you have a recipe for disaster.
I think it sometimes depends on how much they have internalised their perspective on a topic as a core part of their personality.
If they perceive a disagreement with their perspective as a direct attack on their person, that can lead to subjectively bad outcomes.
There is also the possibility that what you see as a small point is a critical point to them.
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To admit that you’re wrong would be to admit that your view is the weaker one.
Perhaps I’m playing in to the scenario OP is describing but I’d argue that being wrong (let’s assume for this example it’s provably, objectively wrong) isn’t necessarily weakness, sometimes it’s just incorrectness.
i’m possibly drawing a pedantic line between weakness (a potentially valid, but weaker argument) vs incorrectness ( an argument that is provably, objectively incorrect ).
Perhaps i’m just describing the difference between subjective and objective arguments … hmmm, not sure
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Because I am always right obviously
You will realise that many people are too egotistic to back down.
Hmmm. There are a lot more opinions about this than I thought there’d be.
Personally, and without any real evidence? I think it’s just because conceding a point somehow feels as if it compromises your whole position. Like you’re getting scored, and admitting you’re wrong gives the other person a point and undermines your entire argument.
I’m not an expert, but…
even when doing so wouldn’t necessarily undermine their broader position
Conceding one wrong is proof that you, your view or argumentation, is flawed. Conceding just one minor point puts every point’s validity into question.
Even if you can conclude that it’s irrelevant both factually there’s social and emotional aspects to it.
We are driven not only by reason, but in large part by emotion, and our ingrained social psyche.
Even if it is factually irrelevant, conceding is confirming fault, and may cause anxiety about repercussions in terms of social standing (how you are seen by the others) and for your argument as a whole (will you be trusted when something you said was wrong).
What you describe as building identity is building that identity around a set of beliefs and group of people.
Depending on the group and beliefs, two aspects come into play:
Group dynamics of in-group and out-group. Loyalty may be more important than reason. The own group is likely seen as better than the “others”. Others may be seen as inferior or as enemies.
If you acknowledge just one point integral to the groups beliefs, what does that mean for you as a part of that group? Will you lose all your social standing? Will you lose being part of the group?
Somewhat unrelated and related at the same time, because self-identity is also a construct to build stable group associations; building your confidence and self-identity around a set of values, conceding on some of them means losing stability and confidence in yourself, your worth.
The human psyche is still largely driven by genetics developed in ancient times, and the environment.
As a social create, it was critically important to be able to join groups and stay in them, to have strong and stable bonds. This persists today, in our psyche and behaviors.
If you’re genuinely interested, then there are people worrying and talking about this (beyond the expertise of Lemmy). There’s a fantastic podcast I listen to that talks in detail and there author has written a book about how minds change. Here’s a specific episode out of many that you might find interesting, but I would really recommend listening to all:
It depends a lot in which context the “discussion” is taking place.
- at a dinner table it’s more about small talk and performing… “social grooming” as you would observe it in ape societies.
- at official events, people either have a job or an established opinion, they are in a stressful environment that does not actually allow them to make rational evaluations
- in school / academia / media, the particular response and opinion will affect your grade, social standing and future career opportunities
In all of those situations, it should be obvious why the “dominant” position does need to give an inch, for social reasons.
Even in absolutely perfect conditions, calm environments, prepared discussion participants, “objective neutrality” towards the outcome, individuals will have different opinions on importance of topics or methods and will discard “details” or see them as irrefutable counter examples.
Basically, there are lot of (subconscious) things going on that prevent an “objective discussion” from happening. I’m sure you can find specific examples of what could be influencing people in specific circumstances once you look for them.
The backfire effect. Here’s a nice funny comic to explain it. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
People are very reluctant to admit they’re wrong in general. If you then have an emotional connection to the topic, even more so.
One thing I would add to all the good answers here: It stems from a lack of contact with real-world, messy, difficult environments.
Usually people who come into contact with harsh reality a lot in their daily life are pretty humble. They don’t get stuck on one way of looking at things, they don’t refuse to admit obvious good sense arguments. Even if they get to the point that they’re super-qualified, they just kind of have common sense and are approachable. Mostly, not always. I think this is why people kind of fall in love with certain types of environments with a lot of challenge or “win or lose” aspect to them: Business, sports, law, war, esports, mountain climbing, whatever. It’s like you get to prove yourself and all your bullshit against the harsh light of day, and a lot of times what you learn is that some genius theory wasn’t really all that solid once it got exposed to the real world.
But then, a whole lot of first-world modern life isn’t like that. You can just go around your entire life talking about economics or politics and just be wrong as hell and you never get to find out. So it’s easy to be super-confident, and it’s obviously a lot more comfortable to be always right about everything than it is to admit when someone’s maybe successfully poking a hole in your genius.
Hot take: Lack or world-shattering psychedelic experiences.
Regular take: media designed to isolate or at least divide. Plus general trend of less in person daily contact
