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During interactions with people, I've noticed that it seems like certain people have a habit of admitting uncertainty and a willingness to admit error. There doesn't appear to be a clear group that I could bucket them into (like scientists, conservatives, etc.), but these people seem to be a minority.

After thinking about why people might bias against admitting they were wrong, I couldn't come up with a good reason. It would almost seem better for an organism to admit a mistake and learn from others, than stick to something that might actually be wrong.

Is there an innate human bias against admitting you are wrong/uncertain? If so, has any research been done on why?

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It's surely a combination of self-serving bias and avoiding cognitive dissonance. I'm not sure it there's a more specific name for it that has wide acceptance. It's been variously called "certainty bias", "feeling of certainty", "illusion of certainty" etc.

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    $\begingroup$ +1 very good answer, although self-serving bias and certainty bias is not exactly the same concept. The first is about self-esteem, the second is routed in the innate need to have the sense of certainty in a very complex and unpredictable world. Also another related concept is Depressive realism : " depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than do non-depressed individuals ... but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased." $\endgroup$ – DesignerAnalyst Jan 23 '18 at 6:25
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Well, admitting that you are wrong can be extremely uncomfortable. Majority of the time. We, humans, project guilt onto others to maintain viable self-image.

Psychological Projection Wikipedia

You can think about your action/sentence as an independent sub-personality that is loosely connected to you. If you admit that you are wrong you are basically killing a part of yourself, which is, of course, uncomfortable process - it requires a lot of strength to actually do it.

Here is a wonderful quote by Friedrich Nietzsche:

The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.

Also, it is extremely uncomfortable for our psyche to simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.

Cognitive Dissonance Wikipedia

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