Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

by Adam Grant

  In high school: Tenelle Porter et al., “Intellectual Humility Predicts Mastery Behaviors When Learning,” Learning and Individual Differences 80 (2020): 101888.

  contributing more to their teams: Bradley P. Owens, Michael D. Johnson, and Terence R. Mitchell, “Expressed Humility in Organizations: Implications for Performance, Teams, and Leadership,” Organization Science 24 (2013): 1517–38.

  more attention to how strong evidence is: Mark R. Leary et al., “Cognitive and Interpersonal Features of Intellectual Humility,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 43 (2017): 793–813.

  more time reading material that contradicts: Samantha A. Deffler, Mark R. Leary, and Rick H. Hoyle, “Knowing What You Know: Intellectual Humility and Judgments of Recognition Memory,” Personality and Individual Differences 96 (2016): 255–59.

  most effective leaders score high in both: Bradley P. Owens, Angela S. Wallace, and David A. Waldman, “Leader Narcissism and Follower Outcomes: The Counterbalancing Effect of Leader Humility,” Journal of Applied Psychology 100 (2015): 1203–13; Hongyu Zhang et al., “CEO Humility, Narcissism and Firm Innovation: A Paradox Perspective on CEO Traits,” Leadership Quarterly 28 (2017): 585–604.

  Halla Tómasdóttir was polling: Personal interview with Halla Tómasdóttir, February 27, 2019.

  more than half the people you know have felt like impostors: Jaruwan Sakulku, “The Impostor Phenomenon,” International Journal of Behavioral Science 6 (2011): 75–97.

  common among women and marginalized groups: Dena M. Bravata et al., “Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: A Systematic Review,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 35 (2020): 1252–75.

  the more often they felt like impostors: Basima Tewfik, “Workplace Impostor Thoughts: Theoretical Conceptualization, Construct Measurement, and Relationships with Work-Related Outcomes,” Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations (2019): 3603.

  I’ve found that confidence can: Adam M. Grant and Amy Wrzesniewski, “I Won’t Let You Down . . . or Will I? Core Self-Evaluations, Other-Orientation, Anticipated Guilt and Gratitude, and Job Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology 95 (2010): 108–21.

  we have something to prove: See Christine L. Porath and Thomas S. Bateman, “Self-Regulation: From Goal Orientation to Job Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology 91 (2006): 185–92; Samir Nurmohamed, “The Underdog Effect: When Low Expectations Increase Performance,” Academy of Management Journal (July 26, 2020), doi.org/10.5465/amj.2017.0181.

  make us better learners: See Albert Bandura and Edwin A. Locke, “Negative Self-Efficacy and Goal Effects Revisited,” Journal of Applied Psychology 88 (2003): 87–99.

  “Learning requires the humility”: Elizabeth J. Krumrei-Mancuso et al., “Links between Intellectual Humility and Acquiring Knowledge,” Journal of Positive Psychology 15 (2020): 155–70.

  seek out second opinions: Danielle V. Tussing, “Hesitant at the Helm: The Effectiveness-Emergence Paradox of Reluctance to Lead” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2018).

  the result of progress: Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey,” American Psychologist 57 (2002): 705–17; M. Travis Maynard et al., “Modeling Time-Lagged Psychological Empowerment-Performance Relationships,” Journal of Applied Psychology 99 (2014): 1244–53; Dana H. Lindsley, Daniel J. Brass, and James B. Thomas, “Efficacy-Performance Spirals: A Multilevel Perspective,” Academy of Management Review 20 (1995): 645–78.

  Chapter 3. The Joy of Being Wrong

  “I have a degree”: Frasier, season 2, episode 12, “Roz in the Doghouse,” January 3, 1995, NBC.

  a wildly unethical study: Henry A. Murray, “Studies of Stressful Interpersonal Disputations,” American Psychologist 18 (1963): 28–36.

  “Some may have found the experience”: Richard G. Adams, “Unabomber,” The Atlantic, September 2000, “Letters,” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/09/letters/378379.

  events as “highly agreeable”: Alston Chase, A Mind for Murder: The Education of the Unabomber and the Origins of Modern Terrorism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).

  What makes an idea interesting: Murray S. Davis, “That’s Interesting!: Toward a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology,” Philosophy of Social Science 1 (1971): 309–44.

  moon might originally have formed: Sarah T. Stewart, “Where Did the Moon Come From? A New Theory,” TED Talks, February 2019, www.ted.com/talks/sarah_t_stewart_where_did_the_moon_come_from_a_new_theory.

  narwhal’s tusk is actually a tooth: Lesley Evans Ogden, “The Tusks of Narwhals Are Actually Teeth That Are Inside-Out,” BBC, October 26, 2015, www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151026-the-tusks-of-narwhals-are-actually-teeth-that-are-inside-out.

  miniature dictator living inside our heads: Anthony G. Greenwald, “The Totalitarian Ego: Fabrication and Revision of Personal History,” American Psychologist 35 (1980): 603–18.

  “You must not fool yourself”: Richard P. Feynman, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), and “Cargo Cult Science,” Caltech Commencement, 1974, calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm.

  “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences”: “Text of Unabomber Manifesto,” New York Times, May 26, 1996, archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/unabom-manifesto-1.html.

  when our core beliefs are challenged: Jonas T. Kaplan, Sarah I. Gimbel, and Sam Harris, “Neural Correlates of Maintaining One’s Political Beliefs in the Face of Counterevidence,” Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 39589.

  trigger the amygdala, the primitive “lizard brain”: Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998); Joseph Cesario, David J. Johnson, and Heather L. Eisthen, “Your Brain Is Not an Onion with a Tiny Reptile Inside,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 29 (2020): 255–60.

  “Presented with someone else’s argument”: Elizabeth Kolbert, “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds,” New Yorker, February 27, 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds.

  First, our wrong opinions: Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think (New York: Penguin, 2011).

  I gave a speech: ideas42 Behavioral Summit, New York, NY, October 13, 2016.

  He told me afterward: Personal interview with Daniel Kahneman, June 13, 2019.

  Even positive changes: Corey Lee M. Keyes, “Subjective Change and Its Consequences for Emotional Well-Being,” Motivation and Emotion 24 (2000): 67–84.

  evolving your identity: Anthony L. Burrow et al., “Derailment: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Adjustment Correlates of Perceived Change in Self and Direction,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 118 (2020): 584–601.

  you can tell a coherent story: Michael J. Chandler et al., “Personal Persistence, Identity Development, and Suicide: A Study of Native and Non-Native North American Adolescents,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 68 (2003): 1–138.

  when people felt detached: Kaylin Ratner et al., “Depression and Derailment: A Cyclical Model of Mental Illness and Perceived Identity Change,” Clinical Psychological Science 7 (2019): 735–53.

  “If you don’t look back”: Personal interview with Ray Dalio, October 11, 2017; “How to Love Criticism,” WorkLife with Adam Grant, February 28, 2018.

  meet Jean-Pierre Beugoms: Personal interviews with Jean-Pierre Beugoms, June 26 and July 22, 2019.

  only 6 percent: Nate Silver, “How I Acted Like a Pundit and Screwed Up on Donald Trump,” FiveThirtyEight, May 18, 2016, fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump.

  Trump had a 68 percent chance: Andrew Sabisky, “Just-World Bias Has Twisted Media Coverage of
the Donald Trump Campaign,” International Business Times, March 9, 2016, www.ibtimes.co.uk/just-world-bias-has-twisted-media-coverage-donald-trump-campaign-1547151.

  It’s possible to change: Daryl R. Van Tongeren et al., “Religious Residue: Cross-Cultural Evidence That Religious Psychology and Behavior Persist Following Deidentification,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (March 12, 2020).

  “Mastery at manipulating the media”: Jean-Pierre Beugoms, “Who Will Win the Republican Party Nomination for the U.S. Presidential Election?,” Good Judgment Open, November 18, 2015, www.gjopen.com/comments/44283.

  forecasting skill is less: Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Random House, 2015); Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

  grit and ambition: Uriel Haran, Ilana Ritov, and Barbara A. Mellers, “The Role of Actively Open-Minded Thinking in Information Acquisition, Accuracy, and Calibration,” Judgment and Decision Making 8 (2013): 188–201.

  The single most important driver: Barbara Mellers et al., “The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis: Drivers of Prediction Accuracy in World Politics,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 21 (2015): 1–14.

  The superforecasters updated their predictions: Barbara Mellers et al., “Identifying and Cultivating Superforecasters as a Method of Improving Probabilistic Predictions,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 10 (2015): 267–81.

  “Although small amounts of evidence”: Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

  They saw their opinions: Keith E. Stanovich and Richard F. West, “Reasoning Independently of Prior Belief and Individual Differences in Actively Open-Minded Thinking,” Journal of Educational Psychology 89 (1997): 342–57.

  “It’s not a lie”: Seinfeld, season 6, episode 16, “The Beard,” February 9, 1995, NBC.

  world’s top forecasters is Kjirste Morrell: Personal interview with Kjirste Morrell, May 21, 2019.

  identifying even a single reason why: Asher Koriat, Sarah Lichtenstein, and Baruch Fischhoff, “Reasons for Confidence,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 6 (1980): 107–18.

  the more frequently we make fun of ourselves: “Self-Defeating Humor Promotes Psychological Well-Being, Study Reveals,” ScienceDaily, February 8, 2018, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180208104225.htm.

  “People who are right a lot”: Mark Sullivan, “Jeff Bezos at re:MARS,” Fast Company, June 6, 2019, www.fastcompany.com/90360687/jeff-bezos-business-advice-5-tips-from-amazons-remars?_ga=2.101831750.679949067.1593530400-358702464.1558396776.

  When men make self-deprecating jokes: Jonathan B. Evans et al., “Gender and the Evaluation of Humor at Work,” Journal of Applied Psychology 104 (2019): 1077–87.

  British physicist Andrew Lyne: John Noble Wilford, “Astronomer Retracts His Discovery of Planet,” New York Times, January 16, 1992, www.nytimes.com/1992/01/16/us/astronomer-retracts-his-discovery-of-planet.html.

  “the most honorable thing I’ve ever seen”: Michael D. Lemonick, “When Scientists Screw Up,” Slate, October 15, 2012, slate.com/technology/2012/10/scientists-make-mistakes-how-astronomers-and-biologists-correct-the-record-when-theyve-screwed-up.html.

  admitting we were wrong: Adam K. Fetterman and Kai Sassenberg, “The Reputational Consequences of Failed Replications and Wrongness Admission Among Scientists,” PLoS ONE 10 (2015): e0143723.

  display of honesty: Adam K. Fetterman et al., “On the Willingness to Admit Wrongness: Validation of a New Measure and an Exploration of Its Correlates,” Personality and Individual Differences 138 (2019): 193–202.

  “whose fault it is”: Will Smith, “Fault vs Responsibility,” YouTube, January 31, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=USsqkd-E9ag.

  “It was a highly unpleasant experience”: Chase, A Mind for Murder.

  unsettled by the content or the structure: See James Q. Wilson, “In Search of Madness,” New York Times, January 15, 1998, www.nytimes.com/1998/01/15/opinion/in-search-of-madness.html.

  Chapter 4. The Good Fight Club

  “Arguments are extremely vulgar”: Oscar Wilde, “The Remarkable Rocket,” in The Happy Prince and Other Stories, ed. L. Carr (London: Heritage Illustrated Publishing, 1888/2014).

  Wilbur and Orville Wright: David McCullough, The Wright Brothers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015); Tom D. Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003); James Tobin, To Conquer the Air (New York: Free Press, 2003); Peter L. Jakab and Rick Young, eds., The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2000); Fred Howard, Wilbur and Orville: A Biography of the Wright Brothers (New York: Ballantine, 1988).

  Tina Fey and Amy Poehler: Jesse David Fox, “The History of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Best Friendship,” Vulture, December 15, 2015, www.vulture.com/2013/01/history-of-tina-and-amys-best-friendship.html.

  Paul McCartney was teaching: Michael Gallucci, “The Day John Lennon Met Paul McCartney,” Ultimate Classic Rock, July 6, 2015, ultimateclassicrock.com/john-lennon-meets-paul-mccartney.

  Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream: Rosanna Greenstreet, “How We Met: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield,” Independent, May 28, 1995, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/how-we-met-ben-cohen-and-jerry-greenfield-1621559.html.

  what Etty calls relationship conflict: Karen A. Jehn, “A Multimethod Examination of the Benefits and Detriments of Intragroup Conflict,” Administrative Science Quarterly 40 (1995): 256–82.

  I hate your stinking guts: Penelope Spheeris et al., The Little Rascals, directed by Penelope Spheeris, Universal Pictures, 1994.

  you warthog-faced buffoon: William Goldman, The Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner, 20th Century Fox, 1987.

  You bob for apples in the toilet: David Mickey Evans and Robert Gunter, The Sandlot, directed by David Mickey Evans, 20th Century Fox, 1993.

  more than a hundred studies: Frank R. C. de Wit, Lindred L. Greer, and Karen A. Jehn, “The Paradox of Intragroup Conflict: A Meta-analysis,” Journal of Applied Psychology 97 (2012): 360–90.

  more original ideas in Chinese technology companies: Jiing-Lih Farh, Cynthia Lee, and Crystal I. C. Farh, “Task Conflict and Creativity: A Question of How Much and When,” Journal of Applied Psychology 95 (2010): 1173–80.

  innovate more in Dutch delivery services: Carsten K. W. De Dreu, “When Too Little or Too Much Hurts: Evidence for a Curvilinear Relationship between Task Conflict and Innovation in Teams,” Journal of Management 32 (2006): 83–107.

  make better decisions in American hospitals: Robert S. Dooley and Gerald E. Fryxell, “Attaining Decision Quality and Commitment from Dissent: The Moderating Effects of Loyalty and Competence in Strategic Decision-Making Teams,” Academy of Management Journal 42 (1999): 389–402.

  “The absence of conflict”: Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Jean L. Kahwajy, and L. J. Bourgeois III, “How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight,” Harvard Business Review, July–August 1997, 77–85.

  Kids whose parents clash constructively: Kathleen McCoy, E. Mark Cummings, and Patrick T. Davies, “Constructive and Destructive Marital Conflict, Emotional Security and Children’s Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 50 (2009): 270–79.

  architects were more likely: Donald W. Mackinnon, “Personality and the Realization of Creative Potential,” American Psychologist 20 (1965): 273–81.

  “tense but secure”: Paula Olszewski, Marilynn Kulieke, and Thomas Buescher, “The Influence of the Family Environment on the Development of Talent: A Literature Review,” Journal for the Education of the Gifted 11 (1987): 6–28.

  “The creative person-to-be”: Robert S. Albert, ed., Genius & Eminence (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1992).

  It’s called agreeableness:
Lauri A. Jensen-Campbell, Jennifer M. Knack, and Haylie L. Gomez, “The Psychology of Nice People,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4 (2010): 1042–56; Robert R. McCrae and Antonio Terraciano, “National Character and Personality,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 15 (2006): 156–61.

  analysis of over 40 million tweets: Bryor Snefjella, Daniel Schmidtke, and Victor Kuperman, “National Character Stereotypes Mirror Language Use: A Study of Canadian and American Tweets,” PLoS ONE 13 (2018): e0206188.

  to become engineers and lawyers: Henk T. van der Molen, Henk G. Schmidt, and Gerard Kruisman, “Personality Characteristics of Engineers,” European Journal of Engineering Education 32 (2007): 495–501; Gidi Rubinstein, “The Big Five among Male and Female Students of Different Faculties,” Personality and Individual Differences 38 (2005): 1495–503.

  If you’re highly disagreeable: Stéphane Côté and D. S. Moskowitz, “On the Dynamic Covariation between Interpersonal Behavior and Affect: Prediction from Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Agreeableness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (1998): 1032–46.

  When I studied Pixar: Personal interviews with Brad Bird, November 8, 2018, and April 28, 2020; Nicole Grindle, October 19, 2018, and March 17, 2020; and John Walker, November 21, 2018, and March 24, 2020; “The Creative Power of Misfits,” WorkLife with Adam Grant, March 5, 2019; Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton, and Allen P. Webb, “Innovation Lessons from Pixar: An Interview with Oscar-Winning Director Brad Bird,” McKinsey Quarterly, April 1, 2008, www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/innovation-lessons-from-pixar-an-interview-with-oscar-winning-director-brad-bird; The Making of “The Incredibles,” directed by Rick Butler, Pixar, 2005; Alec Bojalad, “The Incredibles 2: Brad Bird on Family, Blu-Ray Extras, and More,” Den of Geek, October 24, 2018, www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-incredibles-2-brad-bird-on-family-blu-ray-extras-and-more.

  disagreeable people speak up more frequently: Jeffery A. LePine and Linn Van Dyne, “Voice and Cooperative Behavior as Contrasting Forms of Contextual Performance: Evidence of Differential Relationships with Big Five Personality Characteristics and Cognitive Ability,” Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (2001): 326–36.