Why Certain People Will Never Admit They Were Wrong

Thank you Doc! Great article. I am in the unfortunate enduring position of having to engage with someone who is consumed with this flaw. I struggle in orienting how I can best interact with this person. It's an uneasy place to be.

Who would that be???

What's the science here? "Stupidity is insistently", my Grandmother used to say. Or "It's the whole tragic in the world that stupidity is so energetic and intelligence is so shy", like Rousseau put it.

First of all, this article was so well written using the examples, it made it possible for me to read to the end ... because I saw myself in there and it was triggering.
Coming from a dysfunctional and abusive home, my sense of self was seriously fragmented and I was not able to stand any form of criticism. Owning up to even a small mistake meant that my mother was right and I was the unnecessary burden wasting the oxygen ..., and so I never did. I was always (painfully) right and in control, making up excuses or blaming someone else instead of apologizing and finding out how to clean up any mess I happened to make. It took years of healing and growth to understand that making mistakes was OK and I did not have to be the embodiment of perfection to deserve to breath the air.
Owning my mistakes became a concrete demonstration of compassion and unconditional love for myself.

My brother hasn't worked in 9 years and still lives at home. He is 47 years old. He makes constant excuses as to why he can't find a job. He blamed President Obama for extending unemployment for 2 years as the reason why he stayed home so long after he stopped working at his last job which he said he could no longer work at due to the fumes at the construction site he worked on affecting his breathing. My mother also makes excuses for him one minute and then she is criticizing him 5 minutes later.
When I have a conversation with my brother he will frequently say, "I was right," after he makes some claim about something. I have told him over and over that it is okay to be wrong. I fear there is no hope for him our father died when my brother was 13 and it damaged him psychologically. He has never lived on his own and even when he has worked he took too many days off. I feel he is beyond help. When my mother passes on I fear he will go off the deep end. I partially blame my mother for being codependent with him. He is also a recovering opioid addict in treatment for 20 years on replacement medication.
I don't know what to do to help this man, I am afraid he will end up homeless or dead. He lives in the rental apartment of my mother's house but pays no rent and she supports him on her social security and a small pension that my father left. He barely leaves the house. Since they live in a progressive blue state Medicaid pays for his medication regimine. He says he will "lose his benefits" if he gets a job. He also says he can't get a job now because he has a 9 year gap of no work history on his resume. I told him to go and drive for uber or something but I am really at a loss as to tell him what to do. I feel if he really wanted to work he would get a job as the unemployment rate is only 3.7%. He actually feels he shouldn't have to work and thinks there should be "universal basic income," free health care, etc. to support him. He is a very lazy person.
My husband is a workaholic and is totally disgusted with this situation.
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This is so enlightening! The stubbornness in these kinds of people has befuddled me, but I understand that it is actually a sign of how fragile they really are. They are to be pitied.

Great post. I wish this was common sense. People who feel worthless and powerless dig their heels in further when they can sense that the person attempting to get them to admit fault are taking some kind of pleasure in it, which only makes them resist harder. Cat and mouse. Drop the rope.
My mother lies the way the rest of us breathe. It's endearing and almost funny now but wasn't as cute when I was trying to rely on her when I was 12. Really mum? Other kids hitchhike? I feel like that's not true. Can I just have a ride? (No such luck.)
What I've discovered in my adult life, both through relationship repair with family and in my work in human service is if you bring compassion to every conversation it creates a natural space for truth to show up. If the person holding the defense can trust that you're not out to get them, whether their lie was very big or very small, they'll be more forthcoming. I'm not saying throw accountability and consequences out the window, but maybe put down the pitchfork. I think my mother admits things form the past now because I'm an independent adult who lives far away and wants or needs nothing from her, except her devil dog recipe. They only taste good when she makes them. I've tried. It's just not the same.
There is a place for our anger. Which is why god invented therapists. Anger is a healthy, appropriate response to the spectrum of lying. But confronting someone who already feels worthless with all our angry facts is only going to prolong the conflict. This applies to families, criminal justice, politics, schools, your grumpy neighbor.
I don't always feel like being nice. Sometimes I resent being the bigger person, having to model emotional intelligence to other grown people, but the alternative is fighting and I don't like fighting. So I choose love. Sometimes I choose a nap first.
There's a way to hold someone accountable that helps restore a sense of personal worth or power, as opposed to shaming or humiliating them. Compassion. Maturity. Understanding.
Which brings me back to my original hope; if all this were common knowledge and people grew up knowing how to meet fear and insecurity with understanding we'd have a more peaceful, resilient world.
Cue the doves.

Mr. Winch states makes the assertion that these people who can’t admit they were wrong when having made a mistake, do so, not out of choice, but out of feeling compelled to do so. What about when it isn’t a mistake? What do you call it when you have someone in your life who does something intentionally and then can’t admit to it? I believe the psychological term for this is gaslighting, now that I think about it, but I’d be interested to know if Mr. Winch would say they are still acting not out of choice.

I've been trying to stop a hypnotherapy begun without my knowledge or consent, continued over my objections, in blatant violation of the perp hypnotherapist's ethics code.

I guess that the perp hypnotherapist is a perfect example of psychological rigidity.

Please help this mentally fragile hypnotherapist see that it is wrong, rather spectacularly so, and stop its unethical behavior.

Thanks for this explanation. I'm guessing the same holds true for those who must always "toot their own horn." I have a relative who does this, along with never admitting mistakes or weaknesses, and rarely showing interest in anyone else's life. I find all of these behaviors extremely annoying. How do you suggest we handle such behavior? It's very difficult because I wouldn't be angry with anyone if they just admitted doing something and apologized, but to blame someone else or make ridiculous excuses does make me angry.

Hi, I had to read your interesting article because I live with someone I feel has a huge problem with this but it is a bit different. My son has ADHD and add, I have tried to reach him that mistakes are not shameful but how we often learn most. Thing is he is still very rigid and does not seem able to take responsibility. I have been told before that he will not lie but will fantasise. If he tells himself something happened a certain way he believes it, though rarely I've thought there has been a wobble where he almost cracked through. Be great to be able to help him with this as I think it brings problems he doesn't need and sometimes to others who know different, so is important. I should add though that he is high functioning and very intelligent. Do people on the autistic spectrum have really fragile egos when their egos are certainly less evident than their peers?

This article sounds like the behavior of every Trump supporter when faced with actual facts that contradict what the toddler-in-chief says.

Great piece!

This whole article just describes Trump. End of.

I'm noticing more and more that White supremacists have this problem. They refuse to admit they are racist even when they CLEARLY are. Some of them are now even claiming racism as a VIRTUE. Anything to keep from admitting they're wrong. One Twitter user even goes so far as to claim those who disagree with her White supremacy and Trump worship cannot substantiate their arguments against her when they disagree with her and resort to name calling instead. Although I do not agree with insulting others or fighting hate with hate, I cannot agree with her that SHE is never wrong about Trump or about her skewered and limited views on race relations. It's really quite pathetic. I don't argue with fools. From a distance no one would be able to tell me from them.

This is an interesting perspective. I suppose on some level I recognize the weakness in the person who cannot and will not admit he or she is wrong notwithstanding evidence—overwhelming evidence—to the contrary. I do not even like using the word "evidence" here because it implies some wiggle room for doubt or that they could be right, as remote as that might be.

They are lying and will not give an admission. That is what we are dealing with here. So I posit a question to you: What is distinguishable between a "fragile ego" and a "pathological liar"? At what point do we call this a disease or even "evil" for as Paul Gerhardt once said, " When a man lies, he murders some part of the world."

So what is the distinction?

Thank you for the article, as it does resonate.

There IS a difference between a fragile ego and a large ego.

I have noted this behavior as a pathology typically as part of something more profound, say a "Cluster B" Personality Disorder. As such, when I see the behavior, I just disengage. Until the person realizes there is a problem and wants to address it, there really is nothing anyone else can do but mange any interactions. In my experience, most who exhibit this behavior do not want to acknowledge or address it.

It's been a growing problem in my marriage for some time now. In my case, wife resorts to trying to accuse me of being the one who's wrong but unable to admit to it. I didn’t recognise it in the beginning. When I won an argument she still insisted I apologise for the distress she felt from her mistake (like getting someone gets mad at you for something that happened in a dream they had).

Now, she tries her best to make me believe I'm the one who can't admit I'm wrong. When a disagreement happens she tries to get me to doubt reality while insisting I apologise for the wrong she said I committed. Ironically, I'm the one who is constantly being accused of lying, telling an alternate version of events and living in my own reality where I can't admit I'm wrong while she is the one to always admit when she's wrong. If I bring up a past situation, instead of saying she doesn't remember, she outright accuses me of making the entire thing up.

We're on a fast track to divorce right now and I've even suggested we take some of our issues to a third party (pastor/counselor) but she adamantly refuses.

Well, if none of you at Psychology Today have pulled the plug on unethical crowdsourced covert hypnotherapy and admitted that they were wrong not to do so immediately, you can count yourself and your fellow PT scribes among the people who can't admit they're wrong when they're very, very wrong, Winch.