THE 'I AM RIGHT' SYNDROME
Unhealthy Mindset
I N a fascinating piece of research published in 2000, the political psychologist James H. Kuklinski and his colleagues conducted a survey to document the deficiencies in political knowledge among American citizens. From a random telephone survey of 1100 Illinois residents they found that few were well informed about the facts of the welfare system: only 3 percent got more than half the questions right. That wasn’t very surprising, but what should be a warning to us all is that: those holding the least accurate beliefs were the ones expressing the highest confidence in those beliefs.
This mind-set can be termed the 'I know I’m right' syndrome, a common human tendency. People don’t know but they are convinced that they know. This is the greatest hindrance to intellectual development.
When you believe that ‘you know’, while in fact you don’t, you are depriving yourself of the greatest source of intellectual development, the spirit of enquiry. Almost all the sciences have been the product of this spirit. First the spirit of enquiry has to be fostered, only then will it lead to research and new discoveries.
In the famous story alluded to Isaac Newton, an apple that fell on him led him to wonder and contemplate on the mysterious universe. Soon he understood that the very same force that made the apple fall toward the ground also keeps the moon from falling toward the earth and the earth from falling toward the sun: gravity
People don’t know but they are convinced that they know. This tendency is the greatest hindrance to intellectual development.
There is an Arabic saying that translates as, 'to say 'I don't know' is one half of knowledge.' This means that when you discover your ignorance about something, you will try to gain knowledge about it. However, if you believe that you know it all, the result will be a life of ignorance.
Acknowledge ignorance and then proceed to discover rather than live in perpetual ignorance with the false belief that 'I know I am right'.
