The Need to be Right (copyright 2005)      

Some of us—political extremists and religious fundamentalists in particular—are downright uptight about the need to be right. Yet even in mundane matters, as when a husband and wife are arguing heatedly whether they spent six days or seven in Boca Raton on their wedding anniversary twenty years ago, the need to be right energizes the fight.

Sometimes more is at stake, as in who’s right and who’s wrong about global warming. However, whether the subject concerns climate disruption or the length of a week in Florida, the same psychological dynamics are at play in the need to be right.

While it appears that the righteous, argumentative, or dogmatic individual is passionately concerned about truth, he or she is interested in something much more personal. And that is the inner comfort and emotional reassurance that he or she feels by allegedly being in the know, ahead of the pack, and on the side of right.

This individual is fighting not for the truth but for the glory of his wisdom, the protection of his self-image, and even for his right to exist. For this reason, irrationality, contradiction, and incivility abound.

Several emotional factors are present in our psyche when the quest for “truth” becomes too strident:

1. We depend on our ego in order to stabilize our self-image and reaffirm our self-deception. Our ego loves to be right in order to secure more validation, but ego is only one member of the family, and making it the host of our inner house is like teenage Tommy controlling the family budget.

2. When we disagree, we proceed on the premise that one of us is right and the other wrong. If I am wrong, you might be right. If you are right, then I might have to submit to your version of reality. Having to submit feels awful. It’s better to resist you, even if you are right. Otherwise, you’ll shove your agenda down my throat and force me, as I watch you gloat, to swallow your reality.

3. Our inner critic loves it when we’re wrong. It sees a change to attack: You fool, why didn’t you know that!? Will you ever get it right? Once again everyone sees how dumb you are! We try to protect ourselves from an attack such as this, and being right or being convinced that we’re right is one of our defenses in this battle with the inner boss.

4. Being right means having the power. That’s how our inner critic operates. Because it’s “right,” we submit to it. Therefore, if I am “right,” others will submit to me. This is how I can circumvent my inner passivity, by embracing an illusion of power.

5. Next and maybe worst is our attempt to protect ourselves from the dreaded nothingness. Rigid belief gives us standing and substance in the universe. It is a foundation on which we can proclaim, “I am right: therefore I exist!” It helps us to gain weight, the leaden weight of righteousness that prevents us from floating away and disappearing into the emotional void of insignificance.

6. Last, being right allows us to exult in separation and superiority. The more I am right, the more I stand separate from and superior to those who are wrong. I’m right about creationism and intelligent design, which means I’m made in God’s image, and thus separate from nature and better than the rest of earth-bound creation to say nothing of Darwinians.