Think Again: by Adam Grant
The power of knowing what you don’t know
From the cover:
Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process.
Why should you read this book?
Think Again reveals that we don’t have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It’s an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility, humility, and curiosity over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.
Key Points:
We don’t mind questioning experts and asking them to think again. But when it comes to our own knowledge, we often favor feeling right over being right. As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions:
Preacher mode: when we’re scared our beliefs are in jeopardy, we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals.
Prosecutor mode: when we recognize flaws in other people’s reasoning, we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case.
Politician mode: when we’re seeking to win over an audience, we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents.
We need to switch to the scientist mode.
Scientist mode: real scientists are constantly aware of the limits of their understanding. They doubt what they know, they're curious to learn, and they update their views based on new data.
In order to search for truth, we must run experiments to test hypothesis and discover knowledge. And we do this over and over again.
The purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.
There’s ignorance in arrogance.
Studies have shown the less intelligent we are in a particular domain, the more we seem to overestimate our actual intelligence in that domain. This is referred to the Dunning-Kruger Effect or cognitive bias.
We need a healthy balance of confidence and humility. Once we learn a little about a subject, we tend to become over confident in it. Humility keeps us grounded, recognizing we are flawed and fallible.
Doubt also has benefits. It motivates us to work harder, smarter, and helps us better learners.
It’s good to take pleasure in being wrong. Because this means you’re learning.
We’re so scared of being wrong, we tend to back ourselves into a corner to defend our beliefs. This is natural. Challenged beliefs trigger the amygdala (our primitive lizard brain) which shoots us into fight-or-flight, skipping past rationality. When we’re challenged, it feels like we are being punched in the mind. And so we react.
When we attach ourselves to our beliefs, anything that goes against our beliefs feels like an attack on us. So we have to detach from our beliefs, so we’re more willing to learn. Sometimes this means we have to unlearn what we have learned.
Just because we believe something, doesn’t make it true. A sign of wisdom is to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. It’s a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart.
Desirability bias: reporting on our socially desirable attributes while underreporting on our undesirable attitudes.
We have to put truth over our tribe.
Conflict can be constructive.
We often favor agreeableness to keep the peace. But conflict can push us to knowledge through criticism, skepticism, and having a challenge network that finds our weaknesses and blind spots.
Opposing beliefs often lead to conflict. It’s important to keep the conflict on the ideas and opinions and not on the people.
One way to handle opposing beliefs is to ask what are you trying to accomplish? What is the common goal you’re both trying to support?
How to win debates and influence people:
Think like a scientist.
Don’t be a logic bully.
Debates shouldn’t be a war. You can't force someone to see what you see. Instead debates should be more like a dance. We have to guide the conversation without trying to step on their toes.
Focus on just a few points rather than a lot. Too many points dilute your case. Quality matters and so does the source.
Find common ground. Embrace some of their points. Agree with them to show humility and to be disarming.
Ask questions to shift the power to them. You’re not trying to change their minds, you’re guiding them so they can see it differently.
If they refuse to budge, side-step. Have a discussion about the discussion. Ask why they’re not interested in any of your points.
How to diminish prejudice? Through conversation.
Rivalries exist when we reserve special animosity for a group we see as competing with us for resources or threatening our identities.
Stereotypes are socially sticky because we tend to interact with people who share our views. Which can make us even more extreme. This is called group polarization.
Asking questions can motivate us to rethink our conclusions.
What are the origins of our beliefs? Would we have these stereotypes if we were born in another part of the world? Would we still have the same point of view if we experienced life in the way of our rivalries?
A meta-analysis of over 500 studies with over 250k participants who interacted with members of another group reduced prejudice in 94% of cases. The most effective way to help unhinge the stereotypes is to talk with those people in person.
The right kind of listening motivates people to change.
With a controversial topic, like vaccines, no logical argument or data-driven explanation will shake convictions that vaccines are safe. This is a common problem in persuasion: what doesn’t sway us can make our beliefs stronger.
We can’t motivate someone else to change. We’re better off helping them find their own motivation to change.
Motivational interviewing starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. We don’t know what will motivate someone else to change but we’re eager to find out. The goal isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of their overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities. We’re holding a mirror so they can see themselves clearly. Then empower them to examine their beliefs and behaviors. This can activate a rethinking cycle so they approach their own views more scientifically.
3 Key Techniques:
Asking open-ended questions
Engaging in reflective listening
Affirming the person’s desire and ability to change
Bad techniques:
Scare tactics, yelling, lecturing, belittling, demeaning, shaming
Withholding love, withholding support, withholding respect
Telling them it’s for their own good
Trying to make it seems like it was their idea
Manipulating, dismissing feelings, dismissing ideas,
Passive aggressiveness, not listening to what they have to say
Depolarizing our divided discussions:
In today’s world, the internet has welcomed billions of opinions. And with it, a weapon of misinformation and disinformation. We need to burst the bubbles of our news feeds and shatter echo chambers in our networks.
We hope that if we show people the other side of the issue, they would open their minds and become more informed. But seeing the opinions of others isn’t enough. We see the opposing opinions all the time on social media. But we’re not budging. It actually makes it easier to stick to our guns.
Presenting two extremes isn’t the solution. It’s part of the polarization problem.
This is called binary bias. It’s our human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex problem into two categories.
The antidote to binary bias is complexifying: showcasing the range of perspectives on a given topic. When we turn a topic into a binary issue, nothing happens. But when we present these topics through the many lenses of a prism, people are more likely to think again.
A dose of complexity can disrupt overconfidence cycles and spur rethinking cycles. It gives us more humility about our knowledge and more doubts about our opinions.
It’s important to question knowledge.
Knowledge is always evolving. And truth has always been sheltered.
When it comes to false claims, like the Holocaust never happening, it’s important to teach kids to think like fact-checkers:
Interrogate information instead of simply consuming it
Reject rank and popularity as a proxy for reliability
Understand that the sender of information is often not its source.
When confronted with a complex problem, we often feel confused. We have to embrace confusion, not erase it. Teachers or parents often swoop in when children are confused. They do the thinking for the kids. It’s healthier to teach children to think like scientists.
And with whatever we discover, it’s good to challenge and rethink our own work. Quality means rethinking, reworking, and polishing. Like an artist, musician, or athlete who practices continually. We need to do the same with our brains.
This approach is crucial within teams as well. Whether it’s in our workplace, organizations, or families, it’s good to have psychological safety. Instead of punishing mistakes, psychological safety creates a safe environment so when there are mistakes, we can learn and adjust. This allows for more risk-taking, trust in supervisors and teammates, speaking your mind, and openly sharing your struggles.
We need to also remember to rethink our career goals and life plans.
As kids were often asked what we want to be when we grow up. The reality is, nobody truly knows what they want until they experience life more. Things change. We can’t trap ourselves into an idea. It’s important to rethink our lives often.
Identifying a potential career:
Identify some people you admire within or outside your field, and observe what they actually do at work day by day.
Develop hypotheses about how these paths might align with your own interests, skills, and values.
Test out the different identities by running experiments: do informational interviews, job shadowing, and sample projects to get a taste of the work.
If something doesn’t work out, this doesn’t mean to quit right away. It also doesn’t mean we have to stick with it our entire lives either.
Chasing happiness can chase it away.
When we hunt for happiness, we spend more time evaluating our lives, rather than living them. Meaning is healthier than happiness. And we often find meaning by giving our lives to something bigger than ourselves and within a community.
Passions are often developed, not discovered.
In life, we tend to go through different phases of growth:
Phase 1: I’m not important.
Phase 2: I’m important.
Phase 3: I want to contribute to something important.
We should strive to get to phase three as soon as possible.
Our identities and lives are open systems. We have the freedom to change.
About the Author
Adam Grant is an American popular science author, and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania specializing in organizational psychology.