Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

In 1959, psychologist Henry Murray ran a “wildly unethical” experiment to study how people navigate difficult interactions. Student participants were given one month to write out their personal philosophy of life. They were told that they would then be paired with another student, given the chance to read one another’s philosophies, then be filmed debating them. However, Murray in fact paired each undergraduate student with a law student whose sole aim was to aggressively assault their partner’s worldviews. They were then asked to come back in order to review the film and discuss the experience. As expected, many found the experience horrifying, but others found it interesting and even fun.

Grant decided to figure out why some people “enjoy the experience of having their beliefs eviscerated—and how [the rest of us can] learn to do the same” (57). His goal, he writes, is not to be wrong more often, but rather to realize that we’re wrong more often than we believe, and that by denying this, we damage ourselves.

Sociologist Murray Davis argued that ideas survive in our minds because they challenge our weakly held beliefs, not necessarily because they’re true. However, Grant notes that when our core beliefs are challenged, we ignore or forcefully reject those ideas. In Murray’s study, the student with the strongest negative reaction to attacks on his beliefs, e.g., had a deep-seated conviction that technology is ruining society. He eventually became an academic, and many years later, those beliefs had intensified, not softened—he eventually became the domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber. Grant argues that when our core beliefs are threatened, we activate an overconfidence cycle to convince ourselves that those beliefs are correct.

Grant recounts his experience with psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who approached him following a talk at a conference because he was happy to discover that Grant’s research suggests that one of his assumptions might be wrong. Grant sat with him to find out how he can take joy in being wrong; Kahneman told him that “he refuses to let his beliefs become part of his identity” (62). Grant concludes that in order to enjoy being wrong, we need to detach ourselves from our ideas.

Grant believes that there are two important kinds of detachment. The first is the ability to detach our present self from our past self. He acknowledges that this can feel unsettling at first, but he argues that we tend to be less depressed when we’re able to detach our present from our past. The second is separating our opinions from our identity. Grant argues instead that who we are should be what we value, not what we believe—i.e., our core principles, not necessarily our practices.

Another person who enjoys being wrong is military historian Jean-Pierre Beugoms. In 2015, Beugoms stunned his Good Judgment Open competitors by predicting that Donald Trump, who at the time wasn’t considered to be a serious candidate, would win the 2016 Republican presidential primary election. Grant argues that Beugoms’ advantages are that he thinks like a scientist and that, as an outsider in the polling and forecasting world, he has no stake in traditional methods and approaches. As a result, he paid closer attention to aspects that were overlooked by other competitors. In contrast with Beugoms, many others were unable to separate their election hopes from their forecasts.

Phil Tetlock, who studies forecasting success, has found that the most important indicator of a forecaster’s success is how often they update their beliefs. Grant notes that the question is how much rethinking is necessary; in looking at the Good Judgement competition, Grant suggests that the best forecasters update their predictions four or more times per question. He notes that this is a remarkably low bar, and yet it is still one that many of us don’t reach. In fact, research suggests that finding just one reason why we might be wrong can be enough for us to change our minds.

Grant argues that great scientists and super-forecasters are so comfortable being wrong because, paradoxically, they are so terrified of being wrong. They’re so determined to be right that they are highly motivated to ignore their own biases. Whenever Beugoms makes a prediction, he also lists what would have to happen for it to be false; by doing so, he is able to track how his thinking has evolved. Grant also points out that being wrong shouldn’t be as embarrassing as we often think it will be—in fact, research shows that people are generally viewed more positively if they admit they’re wrong than if they stick to their beliefs in the face of new evidence.

When we think about good working groups, Grant writes, we tend to assume that such groups experience little conflict. However, he writes that when we think about conflict, we tend to think about what psychologist Karen Jehn calls relationship conflict: “personal, emotional clashes that are filled […] with friction [and] animosity” (78). In addition to relationship conflict, though, we can also have task conflict about ideas and opinions. In his own research, Grant has found that high-performing groups tend to experience task conflict, but not relationship conflict, whereas low-performing groups often experience relationship conflict right from the start and spend so much time overcoming it that the project ultimately suffers (78-79).

Grant argues that relationship conflict is detrimental to group success precisely because it is personal and emotional, which, he has already argued, gets in the way of our ability to rethink our ideas: “we become self-righteous preachers of our own views, spiteful prosecutors of the other side, or single-minded politicians who dismiss opinions that don’t come from our side” (80). However, many of us do not develop the ability to productively disagree; in fact, many of us are raised in environments that avoid or hide conflict. In contrast, research suggests that highly creative professionals tend to come from friction-filled, rather than friction-free, homes (80).

Grant contrasts agreeable people with disagreeable ones, i.e., people who are energized by conflict. He claims that while disagreeable people often get a bad rap, his research suggests that disagreeableness can also be productive. For example, when director Brad Bird pitched his vision for The Incredibles to Pixar, he was told it would be impossible. So, he picked the most disagreeable people at Pixar for his team in order to build a challenge network, “a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses” (83). The film was a wild success.

Grant notes that certain conditions need to be in place for challenge networks to work. For one, people need to feel committed and supported; for another, misfits still need to have strong bonds with their colleagues. At Pixar, Bird ensured that his team of misfits knew that he had picked them because he believed in their ideas. In many organizations and fields, conflict networks are now built into the company strategy; in academia, for example, the peer review process is a version of a conflict network.

While conflict can be helpful, Grant acknowledges that it can have risks, as well; “people who lack power or status” may be less willing to challenge the views of those above them. At Pixar, they managed this by developing a secondary network so that those with less status had an avenue for voicing dissent. Grant points out, though, that disagreement among people like Bird “is intellectual, not emotional […] vigorous and feisty rather than combative or aggressive” (88). Grant sees in this a way to reconcile two competing impulses he’s long felt: he sees now that one can enjoy a debate and still value social harmony, as it’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable.

Despite this, Grant finds that task conflict has the potential to spill over into relationship conflict. His frame for this chapter is the story of the Wright brothers. Although they were the sons of a preacher, their home library was filled with books of dissenting religious thought, and although they were lifelong professional partners, they fought constantly. Their hardest problem in getting an airplane to fly was designing a propeller, an argument that lasted for months, culminating in a particularly bad argument one particular evening.

However, the next morning, they picked up the discussion much more calmly—their mechanic claimed that in their arguments, they got hot, but never mad at one another. Grant suggests that “framing a dispute as a debate rather than as disagreement” helps make conflict feel less personal (91). The Wright brothers grew up in a home where disagreement was encouraged; with others, though, who were not as predisposed to disagreement, they often had to change their approach.

Regarding the propeller, the brothers realized they had been too focused on why they felt their position was correct. Grant suggests that focusing on how rather than why activates a rethinking cycle, making us more open to other options. When the Wright brothers returned to the shop that morning, they each began arguing against their own ideas, eventually realizing that they were both wrong—and then they developed the theory which ultimately proved to be correct at Kitty Hawk.