Humans do not want to change their minds

I'm having a rethink about the the title of this post, maybe it should have been "Humans do not want to be told to change their".

In other to protect our ego, we humans resist being told that we are wrong - whether its about our favorite football club or about our religion or about the politicians we choose to support - we feel that our ego is threatened when we are told by others that we are wrong.

Permit me to share with you an excerpt from James Harvey Robinson’s enlightening book 'The Mind in the Making:'

"We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told we are wrong, we resent the imputation and harden our hearts.
We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem which is threatened. . . . The little word “my” is the most important one in human affairs, and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the same force whether it is “my” dinner, “my” dog, and "my" house, or “my” father, “my” country, and “my” God. We not only resent the imputation that our watch is wrong, or our car shabby, but that our conception of the canals of Mars, of the pronunciation of “Epictetus,” of the medicinal value of salicin, or of the date of Sargon I is subject to revision. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do."

I couldn't have said it better than Robbinson. We humans may change our mind by ourselves but will resist being told to do so, in other to defend our self-esteem from being trampled upon, we resort to "reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do".

The lesson:

Never tell anyone outrightly that they are wrong. Isaac Newton said: "Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy."

When people tell us bluntly that we are wrong, we become defensive. Alexander Pope said: "Men must be taught as if you taught them not And things unknown proposed as things forgot."

If you want to prove to people that they are wrong, then follow Dale Cornegie's advice, " If you are going to prove anything, don’t let anybody know it. Do it so subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel that you are doing it."

As Isaac Newton adviced, when we want to make a point that's against what others believe or accept as truth, let's do it with tact, without making an offence.