STEVEN JONES
ALIBI
Was playing bridge with church group
Was walking the dog
Was home alone watching TV
PREVIOUS RECORD
Speeding, 80 mph
None
Spent six months in jail for burglary in 2002
POSSESSIONS WHEN APPREHENDED
$35, deck of cards
Leash, cigarettes, golden retriever, $6 in loose change
$400 in cash, screwdriver, gum
ACTION WHEN APPREHENDED
Complied with officer
Verbally abused officer
Complied with officer
OCCUPATION
Accountant
Real estate agent
Unemployed
You might have noticed that one suspect, Steven Jones, lacked an alibi, had a previous criminal record, and had $400 in cash and a screwdriver on him when the police arrested him. He was also the only unemployed suspect. Everything points to him. He also happens to be the only Black suspect.
A fascinating study put participants in the position of investigators and asked them to consider these three potential perpetrators. Participants took a pen and drew a circle around Steven Jones’s picture, then handed it in. But that wasn’t the end of the experiment. Leaving the room, participants learned that another person in the study had previously completed the same task. Participants received a manila folder containing this other person’s response. Opening the folder, participants found a handwritten note from this person stating, “I refuse to make a choice here—this task is obviously biased. I find it offensive to make a Black man the obvious suspect. I refuse to play this game.” Pretty bold move, right? This other person had accused the researchers of being racist!
How do you suppose participants responded upon encountering this act of moral rebellion? You might have expected them to applaud the rebel who called out the racism, but they didn’t. They loathed them, perceiving them as self-righteous, defensive, stubborn, judgmental, and easily offended. Watching the rebel take a stand they hadn’t considered or had feared taking, the other “detectives” in the study declared they didn’t want to be friends with the rebel, didn’t want them as a roommate, and didn’t want to work on a project with them.
We engage poorly with rebels not simply because their ideas unsettle us or we assume we know everything, but because we resent these individuals for making us painfully aware of our own limitations. If you worked at the Research Institute on Addictions when Dr. William Fals-Stewart engaged in fraud, you might have rejected Cheryl and her evidence because she exposed your failure to spot a criminal. As a highly educated person who spent every workday with Dr. Fals-Stewart, you might have felt embarrassed and ashamed that Cheryl could spot a problem that you failed to notice. So you might have denigrated Cheryl as a strategy to protect yourself from self-criticism.
Recognizing this dynamic leads us to another strategy we can use to become more receptive to non-conformist ideas, what we might call “deliberate humility” or reminding ourselves of our own failings and limitations. Deliberate humility might seem counterintuitive: if we fear self-criticism, why would we make a point of criticizing ourselves? The answer is that when we “own” the sense of intellectual and moral inferiority we feel when confronted by principled insubordinates, we can deem them as a hallmark of strength and feel better about ourselves. We become less inclined to cling to some notion of self-perfection only to have it dashed to pieces by a principled insubordinate. This leaves us more willing to fight for the underdog instead of resisting or cowering in silence. Deliberate humility also helps by making us wiser, since wisdom arises from understanding the limitations of our own knowledge, respecting others’ viewpoints, remaining open and receptive to criticism, and communicating our ideas respectfully. Reminded of how much intellectual humility serves to boost our wisdom, we become more tolerant of people who differ in ideology, ideas, and manners.
Practicing deliberate humility can make us more open to divergent ideas. Choose a moment when you showed a lack of humility and modesty. This could be a time when you couldn’t stop thinking about your good qualities or good deeds, or when someone shared an idea and you ignored them or shot them down. You could have spent more time as a skilled interrupter, asking questions, collecting information, and learning something—but you didn’t. Now re-create this event in your mind as vividly as possible. Consider how you felt and reacted to the event in the days that followed. List the emotions you felt, bringing in the emotion-labeling skill from chapter 6. Scrutinize this event from the vantage point of another person watching video footage of it. How would they see it? What might you have done differently? Finally, consider how you might change your behavior going forward based on recollections of this event. This sort of contemplation and self-questioning really works. Multiple studies have found that people who underwent such a thought process emerged humbler, more forgiving, more patient, and less critical of themselves and others.
In studies conducted at six different universities, scientists discovered that during a disagreement, intellectually humble people showed more interest in the opposition’s view, treated the opposition with more respect and dignity, and reflected more on the accuracy of their own position, all of which helped them acquire more knowledge. The next time you find yourself around someone challenging the status quo, tell yourself that they know something you don’t, and make it your mission to find out what that is. Remember, you’re supposed to update your belief system as you encounter new information. That’s how you grow! How sad would it be if ten years from now you still harbored the same old beliefs. Unless you’re seeking out new information in a spirit of humility, you’re merely proselytizing, not showing real curiosity.
THE BIG IDEA
Society needs fewer street preachers and more intellectually humble thinkers who can bridge social and intellectual divides. Courageously resist simple falsehoods and instead make it your practice to explore complex truths fully and honestly.
EXPERIMENT BETTER
When it comes to improving society, non-conformists don’t bear sole responsibility for convincing us of their truths. The rest of us must receive and assess their contributions with equanimity, so that we can accept ideas and solutions that improve on what already exists. But as we’ve seen in this chapter, engaging productively with rebels isn’t simply a matter of wanting to hear them out. We need to overcome the emotional and mental baggage we carry around that causes us to recoil from new and unusual ideas before we’ve had a chance to evaluate them rationally.
Let’s remember what’s at stake. Whistleblowers, political activists, artists, scientists, and others who dare to “think differently” are agents of social improvement. We need the Cheryls of this world to identify immorality, injustice, inefficiency, irrationality, and malfeasance in our systems where it exists. We need them to shout, “This isn’t right!” and “We can do better!” We also need them to show us what “better” could be by envisioning new solutions we haven’t thought of yet.
Societies today are in flux, transforming more quickly than ever. Whether on account of pandemics, technological change, generational change, or other factors, many of us are abandoning decades-old habits and practices almost overnight. When even the most vaunted experts can’t predict what will come next, we’re left to experiment with how best to feed ourselves, work, educate our kids, take care of our elderly parents, and so on. These experiments work best when we have multiple alternative ideas at our disposal. We’ll only get them if we open our minds by cultivating a mixture of perspective-taking, curiosity, and intellectual humility.
It’s not just individuals who must learn to become more welcoming and responsive to non-conformists, but groups of people. A great deal of social improvement occurs in schools, businesses, communities, teams, and neighborhoods. Yet entrenched social conventions prevent us from considering unfamiliar and potentially threatening ideas. Let’s consider how we might change the norms and cultures that arise in groups to render them more welcoming of the rebels in their midst, and more capable of benefitting from their unique insight.
RECIPE STEPS
1. To interact more productively with insubordinates, practice self-distancing. People who self-distance experience greater equanimity in emotionally intense situations. By using self-distancing, you become less defensive when exposed to the ideas of people who hold opposing ideological beliefs.
2. Cultivate curiosity. When you encounter an opposing or unfamiliar viewpoint, begin from a place of healthy skepticism about your own beliefs. Redirect your attention to what others offer. Talk less and ask more follow-up questions.
3. To become more receptive of non-conformist ideas, practice “deliberate humility.” When we admit and “own” our fallibility, we feel greater appreciation for the value of principled insubordinates and offer them greater respect. When intellectually humble, we are more willing to fight for the underdog instead of resisting or cowering in silence.
CHAPTER 9
