John Maynard Keynes* once said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” It doesn’t take an expert to recognize that this this approach does not seem to be a popular one today. On that note, Rudy Ruiz has published an article on CNN.com to the effect that Americans are unwilling even to consider changing their minds about important issues because they’re afraid of being labeled a wishy-washy “flip-flopper.”
I think this is a complete misread of the situation on Ruiz’s part.
At the highest political level, there is a measure of truth to a fear of changing one’s mind, but at that level the “flip-flopper” accusation isn’t about weakness, it’s an accusation of dishonesty. So many politicians are willing to do seemingly whatever it takes to get elected that a change of views on an important issue is immediately looked at with suspicion—the concern is that the politician has changed not because he/she actually thinks that side is better but solely for political gain. So the knee-jerk reaction to that is to stand firm on the side one has chosen—better to be obstinate (and sometimes wrong) than to gain the reputation as a slimy panderer.
At the level of the populace, however, these factors simply do not hold. People resist changing their minds not because they’re afraid of being thought weak but because factors like cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias tend to reinforce their views rather than challenge them. Confirmation bias is especially powerful in the digital age, where sources of information are so plentiful that it is easy to filter out opposing views and only consume information that confirms one’s own views. Ruiz is right in pointing to the liberal contempt for FOX News and conservative avoidance of MSNBC as examples of just such filtering mechanisms.
Where Ruiz is wrong is in his prescription: again, the problem is not thinking that changing one’s mind “isn’t okay.” The problem is not what people think others will think about them if they change their minds (frankly, it’s often a badge of honor; think about how many times you’ve heard someone say, “you know, I used to think that, but now…”). No, the biggest factor keeping people from open-mindedness is indeed fear—but it’s not fear of what others will think. Instead, it’s a more simple thing: the simple fear of being wrong. This is part of what makes cognitive dissonance so powerful—we are terrified of building our lives on something that is untrue, and the more we’ve invested in an idea (or ideal), the more “sunk cost” we have to lose if it’s wrong. It has little to do with what others will think and everything to do with how we function as human beings.
So, the grand question is whether this psychological block can be conquered. I would suggest that the answer is resoundingly in the affirmative, but it requires a concerted emphasis in the process of education to demonstrate this. One of the greatest credits I can pay to my father is that he taught me at a very early age how important it is to recognize and admit when one is wrong. He taught me that it’s far less important to always be right than to always seek and acknowledge the truth, that a commitment to the truth, no matter the personal cost, is a greater badge of honor than always being right. It’s a more honorable thing to recognize when one is wrong than just about anything else in life—and one of the perks is that if one promptly recognizes one’s wrongs and switches sides, one is wrong a whole lot less often.
Unfortunately, we are very poorly educated as a culture. People aren’t trained at any level of education to think rationally and make choices on the basis of information and reason rather than indoctrination or emotion. Truly lasting change would require a wholesale change in our education system, top-to-bottom, and it would take a return to teaching the existence of rightness/wrongness (that is, “truth”) rather than emphasizing subjectivity. Unless people can agree that some answers are indeed “correct” and that some answers are better than others, debate is impossible, because it all boils down to “I prefer my perspective over yours,” rather than the ability to sit down and talk reasonably. In this sense, I would assert that all too often the end result of an emphasis on subjectivity is not a greater recognition of the “other,” but an increase in selfishness and a higher value on one’s own views.
*This is in no way excuses Keynes from being responsible for the Keynesian school of economics, which has been responsible for absolutely disastrous fiscal policies.*
