Embrace the joy of being wrong.
Adam Grant
The meaning of the quote
Adam Grant had just finished a talk on his research about givers and takers when he spotted Daniel Kahneman in the audience. As Grant walked off the stage, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist stopped him with a twinkle in his eye.
“That was wonderful. I was wrong.”
Grant was stunned. After a talk, most people either say they were right all along or explain why the speaker got it wrong. Kahneman looked happy to have lost the argument.
When Grant later sat down with him and asked why, Kahneman said nobody enjoys being wrong in the moment, but he loves having been wrong, because it means he is now less wrong than before. Finding a mistake was the only proof he had that he’d learned something.
Grant built a chapter of his book Think Again around this reaction, and the quote comes from that book. Being wrong stings, so most of us defend old opinions as if they were part of our body. Grant’s advice, borrowed from Kahneman, is to treat your ideas as guesses you’re testing rather than pieces of who you are. A guess that turns out wrong leaves you smarter than you were 5 minutes earlier.
Think about a multiple-choice test. You circle an answer, then doubt creeps in, and you remember being told to trust your gut. In the podcast Hidden Brain, Grant points out that most students who switch their first answer improve their scores. Even people who know this are reluctant to switch, because changing a right answer to a wrong one hurts more than sticking with a wrong one.
That fear keeps us stuck with whatever we already believe. Kahneman told Grant that without finding his own mistakes, he’d be living in a world run by confirmation bias, only hearing what agreed with him.
Action steps
The joy won’t show up the first time you admit a mistake. It grows with practice, so start small.
- Say “I was wrong” about something small this week. A movie fact, a shortcut home or a word you mispronounced will do. Nothing bad happens, and the next admission gets easier.
- Ask what you could do better. After a game, a presentation or an essay, skip “How did I do?” and ask “What could I do better?” Grant asks this every time he walks off a stage, and if people say “nothing,” he keeps pushing until they give him something.
- Keep a list of times you changed your mind. Each time new facts change an opinion, write down what you used to think, what you think now and what changed it. After a few months, the list becomes the same proof of learning that Kahneman looks for.
The sooner you find out you’re wrong, the sooner you get to be right.
About the author
At 12, Adam Grant got into an argument with his best friend on the phone during a commercial break in Seinfeld. His friend had good proof, Grant refused to give in, and the friend hung up. When Grant called back, his friend said he wouldn’t talk to him until Grant admitted he was wrong. Grant knew his friend was right and still struggled to say it.
That stubborn kid grew up to be a nervous teacher. In the podcast The Tim Ferriss Show, Grant described his first lectures as a grad student at the University of Michigan. Students wrote that he was the most nervous professor they’d ever seen and that he sweated so much they stopped listening.
He thought about quitting. Instead, he did what had worked when he took up springboard diving as a teenager and was awful at it, a sport where he later became an All-American. He did more reps, volunteering to give guest lectures in other people’s classes and handing out his own feedback form asking how he could improve.
When he taught his first full course, he went further. He typed up every complaint from his students and emailed it to the whole class. His advisor warned him he’d start a mutiny, but Grant spent a full class session going through the criticism with his students and asking them how to fix it.
In 2009, Grant joined the Wharton School, where he became its youngest tenured professor at 28. Students then voted him Wharton’s top-rated professor 7 years in a row.
In Think Again, published in 2021, he tells the story of Kahneman’s twinkling eyes, and it’s where you’ll find this quote alongside his other tools for changing your mind.
Resources
- Think Again (Book)
- How to Open Your Mind (Podcast)
- Your Ideas Are Not Your Identity (Article)
- The surprising habits of original thinkers (YouTube)
- How to overcome confirmation bias in daily life (Article)
- The mind is like a parachute (Article)
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