Konnikova's I Don't Want to Be Right

In Maria Konnikova's article, "I Don't Want to Be Right", she discusses how people should get a message across to others without calling into question one's integrity, similar to the points that Mooney made in his article. The idea of self-affirmation refers to when people feel their sense of self threatened by the outside world and that they are strongly motivated to correct the misperception, whether it's by reasoning away the inconsistency or by modifying their behavior. The theory of self-affirmation fights different types of prejudices that are presented to us and even suggests that you should either write down or say aloud positive moments from your past that reaffirm your sense of self and are related to the threat in question. When people feel like they are threatened, this can be a great building block in putting someone in an even state of mind because usually when you're threatened, they're more likely to speak up. There's been debate as to whether this is the right thing to do, but nonetheless, people will correct something that's misinterpreted when they feel threatened. Konnikova also talks about how beliefs can be very difficult to change in people because beliefs tend to be what people stand by the most. When you look at facts, those are instances where people won't necessarily feel threatened because facts are plain and simple. They're things that can rarely be debated, which is why people don't really change their minds. People usually have to be emotionally invested for specific things for people to speak up about certain topics.