The less someone actually understands about a subject, the louder and more aggressive they’ll get when you try to argue with them.
We often assume experts are the most set in their ways, but the 'Defensiveness Paradox' suggests the opposite. True experts can separate their identity from their knowledge, while those with shallow understanding feel a personal threat whenever their shaky beliefs are challenged.
Epistemic Decoupling and the Defensiveness Paradox
SSRN · 6274821
Contemporary political psychology often grapples with the mechanism of polarizationspecifically, why challenges to ideological positions elicit visceral, defensive reactions. This note explores the hypothesis that the depth of an individual's "substance"-defined here as the volume and quality of secondary research underpinning a perspective-is inversely proportional to their defensiveness. Drawing on literature regarding Self-Affirmation Theory, Intellectual Humility, and Motivated Reasoning, th