Monday, May 19, 2014

The Depths of Self-Defense

"I Don't Want to Be Right" (New Yorker)

"...when people feel their sense of self threatened by the outside world, they are strongly motivated to correct the misperception, be it by reasoning away the inconsistency or by modifying their behavior."

This is really close to something I've thought for quite some time: We react to any attack on our self--including any stance we may hold that is considered central to our identity, not just our physical bodies--in literally a self-defensive way. An attack on one's deeply held ideas is seen as dangerous as a physical attack and brings on a similarly motivated protective reaction.

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