Knowing You’re Right is Brain Technology

Knowing you are right is a brain technology and survival strategy.

But have you noticed that when you change your mind, you feel right about that, too?

That feeling you get when you are right is deceiving because you can have the same exact feeling when you change your mind 180 degrees. 

When you think about it, with the internet, you can find evidence to support any position, so even finding “facts” to support your rightness doesn’t mean you are correct.

The feeling itself is obviously not an accurate indicator of rightness, since the facts were totally different each time you were “right.”

You can see why we need a brain technology to keep us from spiraling.

The takeaway here is that just because you think and feel you are right, that doesn’t mean that you are. It doesn’t mean that you are wrong either. It just means that you, like me and everyone else, are doing the best you can in the moment with the built-in brain technology that we have and the evidence we choose to believe.

So next time you’re about to argue with someone over who is right about, well, anything, take a deep breath and save yourself the stress-hormone surge.

We all think we’re right. That’s what brains do.