The Need to be Right

by Peter Michaelson (copyright 2005)

Some of us—political extremists and religious fundamentalists—are downright uptight about the need to be right. Yet even in mundane matters, as when a husband and wife are arguing heatedly whether they spent six days or seven in Boca Raton on their wedding anniversary twenty years ago, the need to be right energizes the fight.

Sometimes more is at stake, as in who’s right and who’s wrong about global warming. However, whether the subject concerns climate disruption or the length of a week in Florida, the same psychological dynamics are at play in the need to be right.

While it appears that the righteous, argumentative, or dogmatic individual is passionately concerned about truth, he or she is interested in something much more personal. And that is the inner comfort and emotional reassurance that he or she feels by allegedly being in the know, ahead of the pack, and on the side of right.

This individual is fighting not for the truth but for the glory of his wisdom, the protection of his self-image, and even for his right to exist. For this reason, irrationality, contradiction, and incivility abound.

Several emotional factors are present in our psyche when the quest for “truth” becomes too strident:

1. Our ego depends on an illusion, the crowning (or is it the crowing?) of our superiority. We don’t want to destabilize our self-image or challenge our self-deception. Our ego is the stand on which we hang our hat, though we believe it is the pillar that upholds our head. Ego love to be right in order to secure more validation.

2. When we disagree, we proceed on the premise that one of us is right and the other wrong. If I am wrong, you might be right. If you are right, then I might have to submit to your version of reality. Having to submit feels awful. It’s better to resist you, even if you are right. Otherwise, you’ll shove your agenda down my throat and force me, as I watch you gloat, to swallow your reality.

3. Our inner critic loves it when we’re wrong. It sees a change to attack: “You fool, why didn’t you know that!? Will you ever get it right? Once again everyone sees how dumb you are!” We try to protect ourselves from a superego attack such as this, and being right or being convinced that we’re right is one of our defenses in this battle with our sarcastic, mocking inner critic.

4. Last and maybe worst is our attempt to protect ourself from the dreaded nothingness. Rigid belief gives us standing and substance in the universe. It is a foundation on which we can proclaim, “I am right: therefore I exist!” It helps us to gain weight, the leaden weight of righteousness that prevents us from floating away and disappearing into the emotional void of insignificance.

An evolved person doesn’t fear being wrong. Who he is, his very essence, feels right. This right feeling has nothing to do with facts or even knowledge. It is a truth he feels about his own intrinsic value, which he knows is neither more nor less than the value of anyone else. Even when he is wrong, all feels right.