Evaluating Advice: Seek Understanding, Not Confirmation

You have an important decision to make, but you are uncertain about some information, so you consult someone who might help. After they reply, first ask, “Why do you believe that?” Next, tactfully and respectfully present information that could challenge what they said. You are interested in their rationale, and also in the emotion with which they express it. Emotion may tell you something about their confidence and their ability to discuss the information dispassionately. You want to know whether you are dealing with someone who is genuinely trying to help you reach a sound decision, or someone so attached to a conclusion or agenda that contrary evidence becomes an unwelcome intrusion.

An important distinction: passion is not necessarily evidence of irrationality, just as calmness is not necessarily evidence of rationality. Some people become passionate because they care about getting things right, while others remain composed while presenting misinformation. The objective is not to judge someone’s thinking by their emotional temperature. It is to examine the relationships among their reasoning, their emotions, their willingness to consider alternatives, and the evidence for their conclusions. This matters because we often rely on physicians, financial advisers, officials, family, friends, and self-described experts whose knowledge and motives we cannot verify. Their confidence does not establish their accuracy.

Asking “Why do you believe that?” requests the evidence, assumptions, experiences, and interpretations behind a conclusion. “You should do this” gives you a conclusion. An explanation lets you evaluate how the conclusion was reached. If someone says a choice is obvious “because everybody knows it is the best option,” you have learned very little, since that is a declaration, not an explanation. Compare that with, “I recommend it because three independent studies found these benefits, but they have limitations, and I would want to assess costs and risks first.” That person has made their reasoning available for scrutiny. They are not necessarily correct, but you can examine their claims. This reflects a central principle of critical thinking: conclusions should be evaluated by the quality of their evidence and reasoning, not the confidence or status of the speaker.

Robert Kurzban and the problem of believing our own explanations

People do not always have accurate access to the processes that shape their judgments. In Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind, Robert Kurzban (2010) challenges the assumption that the mind is a single, consistent system. He argues that it is better understood as a collection of specialized systems that do not always operate in harmony. Both the person you ask and the person you believe yourself to be may be less consistent than you imagine. Someone may sincerely report their reasons while personal interests, social relationships, reputational concerns, or emotional reactions contribute without being recognized.

Kurzban and Aktipis (2007) examined how a modular view applies to social cognition and self-presentation, noting that some processes may manage the impressions others form of us without prioritizing accuracy or consistency. Someone may want to appear knowledgeable, preserve a reputation for being right, or persuade you toward a position that serves their interests. These motives need not involve deliberate deception. So asking “Why do you believe that?” is a useful beginning but not enough, because a sincere explanation is not necessarily accurate and a confident one is not necessarily well supported. Kurzban’s account is a theoretical framework, not proof that every belief results from a hidden motive. Still, it is a reason for caution, and we should apply that caution to ourselves as well.

The danger of motivated reasoning

Motivated reasoning refers to the ways our goals, preferences, identities, and prior commitments influence how we process information. We like to believe we examine evidence and then reach a conclusion, but we may reach a conclusion for other reasons and then defend it skillfully. When a cherished belief is challenged, we scrutinize the opposing argument while overlooking weaknesses in our own, demanding strong evidence from others while accepting weak evidence for what we already favor. Ziva Kunda (1990) provided an influential analysis showing that people can be swayed by desired conclusions while still needing to construct arguments that seem reasonable. Motivation does not replace reasoning; it shapes which considerations receive attention. This also explains why more information does not always change minds: if the aim is to defend a conclusion, new information becomes more material for the defense.

The same applies when evaluating advice. If you question a recommendation and the person dismisses every contrary study, criticizes every opposing expert, and repeats the recommendation with growing certainty, you may have met someone whose commitment is distorting how they weigh evidence. Kahan and colleagues (2013) studied cognitive reflection, ideological commitments, and reasoning about empirical evidence, and their findings cautioned against assuming that one ideological group is inherently more rational than another. Motivated reasoning is not the exclusive property of people with whom we disagree, so we should ask whether we apply the same standards to our own beliefs.

What happens when you respectfully challenge someone’s advice?

After asking why, introduce information that may challenge their conclusion, not to embarrass them but to see whether the recommendation withstands scrutiny. You might say: “I understand why you reached that conclusion. However, I came across some information that seems to point in a different direction. Would you be willing to examine it with me?” This shows that you want to understand rather than win, gives the person a chance to show how they handle conflicting evidence, and helps you distinguish someone committed to a conclusion from someone committed to finding the best-supported one.

A thoughtful person might say, “I wasn’t aware of that. Let me reconsider,” or “That study is interesting, but there are reasons it may not apply here. Let’s compare its methods with the other evidence.” Both are constructive: the first acknowledges a possible need to revise, and the second offers a reasoned disagreement that can itself be evaluated. By contrast, someone who refuses to examine the information, attacks your intelligence, or treats disagreement as an insult makes it harder for you to judge whether the advice is trustworthy, though this does not prove their conclusion wrong. Even well-intentioned challenges can threaten a person’s sense of competence, so tact helps, though it cannot guarantee a productive response.

Emotional control, confidence, and intellectual humility

When you challenge a recommendation, notice whether the person listens, becomes curious, acknowledges limits to their knowledge, and separates disagreeing with an argument from disliking the person presenting it. But do not confuse composure with competence: a calm speaker can rely on faulty evidence, and an upset one can be right. The better question is whether emotion prevents the person from examining the issue fairly.

A physician who patiently explains the research, identifies uncertainties, and says what might change the recommendation is reassuring, not because she shows no emotion but because she is willing to explain and qualify her advice. A financial adviser who insists an investment is unquestionably safe, dismisses concerns, and refuses to discuss possible loss presents a different problem: unwarranted certainty, inadequate explanation, and resistance to legitimate questions. We learn more by evaluating behavior and reasoning together than by reading emotion alone.

Leary and colleagues (2017) examined individual differences in intellectual humility and found that it is associated with how people approach information and disagreement. Intellectual humility does not mean lacking conviction; it means recognizing that conviction and certainty are not substitutes for evidence. Someone can say, “Based on the evidence, I think this is the best decision, but I could change my mind if we learn something important.” That differs sharply from, “I know I am right, and nothing you say will change my mind,” which places the conclusion beyond examination.

Do not confuse confidence with competence

Kruger and Dunning (1999) examined how people’s actual competence relates to their assessments of their own performance, suggesting that those with limited skill may also lack the knowledge needed to recognize their shortcomings. This should not be exaggerated. It does not show that confident people are generally incompetent or that uncertainty proves expertise; it shows that self-assessment alone is an unreliable measure of ability. When someone says they are certain, ask what supports that certainty: their experience, the evidence they have examined, whether their claims match reliable independent sources, whether they separate what they know from what they assume, and whether they can explain the limits of their recommendation. The same applies to credentials, which matter in specialized fields but do not eliminate error, outdated knowledge, conflicts of interest, or bias. The goal is not suspicion of everyone but discernment about why we trust someone.

A practical method

For your next important decision, begin by asking for the recommendation: “Why do you believe this is the best option?” Ask about evidence: “What information most strongly supports your conclusion?” Explore uncertainty: “What are the principal weaknesses in this argument, and what might change your mind?” Introduce a contrary finding: “I have seen evidence that points in a different direction. How would you account for it?” Then observe whether the person considers the evidence, distinguishes facts from interpretations, acknowledges what they do not know, and can explain why they still favor their recommendation. You are not looking for someone who agrees with you, but for someone who can explain a position and evaluate alternatives without making agreement a condition of the conversation.

Apply the method to yourself too. Before rejecting a challenge, ask whether you would accept the same evidence if it supported the opposite conclusion. Before defending your position, ask what evidence would persuade you that you are mistaken. These questions may be uncomfortable, but discomfort is sometimes a signal that you are examining a belief that matters.

Trust is earned through the quality of the reasoning

After asking why, respectfully introducing a challenge, and watching the response, you have learned something about the person’s knowledge, reasoning, openness to alternatives, handling of uncertainty, and emotional investment. But you have not established that the recommendation is correct. That requires examining the evidence, consulting reliable sources, and considering whether the advice fits your circumstances. An open-minded person may be wrong, and a defensive one may be right about a particular fact. Interpersonal behavior can inform your assessment of a source but cannot replace independent evaluation of the claim.

Kurzban reminds us that thought and behavior are less consistent than we imagine, research on motivated reasoning shows how goals and commitments shape our evaluation of information, and research on intellectual humility shows how acknowledging our limits can improve how we handle disagreement. Together these support a principle: do not judge advice solely by the confidence of its delivery, the credentials of the speaker, or the emotional force behind it. Examine the reasoning, investigate the evidence, and observe how the person responds to a reasonable challenge, remembering that this standard applies to everyone, including the person in the mirror. We cannot eliminate bias by wanting to be objective, but we can build habits that make it harder for bias to go unexamined.

So instead of asking only “Who should I believe?” ask, “What are the reasons for this belief, how strong is the evidence, what might contradict it, and how willing are we to reconsider?” That is more demanding, and also more defensible. The purpose of a good conversation is not necessarily to keep the opinions we brought to it, but to leave with a better understanding of what we know, what we do not, and what we still need to discover. That is the difference between seeking confirmation and seeking understanding.

References

Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Dawson, E. C., & Slovic, P. (2013). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Behavioural Public Policy, 1(1), 54–86. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500005271

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480–498. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480

Kurzban, R. (2010). Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite: Evolution and the modular mind. Princeton University Press.

Kurzban, R., & Aktipis, C. A. (2007). Modularity and the social mind: Are psychologists too self-ish? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 131–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868306294906

Leary, M. R., Diebels, K. J., Davisson, E. K., Jongman-Sereno, K. P., Isherwood, J. C., Raimi, K. T., Deffler, S. A., & Hoyle, R. H. (2017). Cognitive and interpersonal features of intellectual humility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(6), 793–813. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672

 

Conversational Pivot: The Balance Between Revealing & Inquiring

Have you ever left a conversation realizing you learned everything about the other person while they learned nothing about you? Or perhaps you experienced the reverse, sharing deeply only to realize the other person remained an enigma. These dynamics represent more than mere stylistic differences (McCusker, 2004, 2023). Psychological research highlights two distinct conversational orientations rooted in how we handle self-disclosure: those driven to elicit information and those driven to provide it.

The Question-Asker vs. The Storyteller

In 1983, Miller, Berg, and Archer developed the "Opener Scale" to measure an individual's ability to elicit personal disclosures from others, confirming that being an "opener" is a distinct, measurable personality trait (Miller et al., 1983). Supported by subsequent findings, openers excel at drawing others out through targeted follow-up inquiries (Colvin & Longueuil, 2001). This distinction matters because verbal fluency does not equate to effective conversation. Quiet individuals who practice active listening often cultivate deeper affinity; indeed, Huang and colleagues demonstrated that people who ask frequent follow-up questions are significantly better liked because they signal genuine interest and care (Huang et al., 2017; Yeomans et al., 2019).

Conversely, the storyteller orientation defaults to spontaneous self-disclosure, volunteering experiences and emotions unprompted. Early research by Sidney Jourard established that this transparency is fundamental to emotional closeness (Jourard, 1958). Rather than signaling narcissism, such sharing typically operates on the reciprocity principle. As articulated by Altman and Taylor’s social penetration theory, relationships progress along a continuum of intimacy as participants trade increasingly vulnerable insights, moving from superficial data to core fears and aspirations (Altman & Taylor, 1973).

The Anatomy of a Mismatch

When persons rated high as opener and as storyteller interact, a predictable disconnect occurs. The opener asks questions, the storyteller provides narratives, and twenty minutes later, both feel unfulfilled. The opener laments the lack of reciprocal inquiry, while the storyteller wonders why the opener withheld personal details. Each usually attempts to reciprocate using their preferred currency—one through probing, the other through vulnerability—yet neither recognizes the other's intent.

While a classic meta-analysis by Collins and Miller confirms a powerful three-way link between self-disclosure and personal liking, disclosure alone is insufficient for true connection (Collins & Miller, 1994).

Responsiveness as the Engine of Intimacy

The critical bridge between these styles is perceived responsiveness. Interpersonal intimacy requires not just mutual disclosure, but the explicit validation that your partner is actively attuned to your message (Laurenceau et al., 1998; Reis & Shaver, 1988). True closeness flourishes when we exchange emotional meanings rather than static facts, steering away from conversational one-upmanship and leaning into exploratory, validating questions.

Left unchecked, both orientations carry distinct risks. Question-askers can inadvertently transform a dialogue into a one-sided interrogation, leaving partners wary of their excessive privacy. Storytellers risk dominating the exchange entirely, turning potential connections into competitive monologues.

Orchestrating the Dynamic Rhythm

Exceptional conversationalists seamlessly navigate both roles. They cultivate a fluid rhythm of listening, inquiring, revealing, and validating. To evaluate your own pattern, consider whether your primary aim in an encounter is to discover the other person or to reveal yourself.

The ultimate metric of a successful interaction is not a rigid division of speaking time, but a shared commitment to responsiveness. Moving beyond the binary of "tell me about you" or "let me tell you about me," the master communicator adopts a unified philosophy: "Tell me about you. I will share about myself. And I will genuinely value what you say." That shift transforms a transient conversation into an enduring relationship.

 

References

Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363–377.

Collins, N. L., & Miller, L. C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457–475.

Colvin, C. R., & Longueuil, D. (2001). Eliciting self-disclosure: The personality and behavioral correlates of the Opener Scale. Journal of Research in Personality, 35(2), 238–246.

Huang, K., Yeomans, M., Brooks, A. W., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2017). It doesn't hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430–452.

Jourard, S. M. (1958). A study of self-disclosure. Scientific American, 198(5), 77–82.

Laurenceau, J.-P., Barrett, L. F., & Pietromonaco, P. R. (1998). Intimacy as an interpersonal process: The importance of self-disclosure, partner disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness in interpersonal exchanges. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1238–1251.

McCusker, P.J. (2004). Conversation: Striving, Surviving, and Thriving. Amazon.

McCusker, P.J. (2023). Questioning & Answering: How, Who, When, & Where. Amazon.

Miller, L. C., Berg, J. H., & Archer, R. L. (1983). Openers: Individuals who elicit intimate self-disclosure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(6), 1234–1244.

Reis, H. T., & Shaver, P. (1988). Intimacy as an interpersonal process. In S. Duck (Ed.), Handbook of personal relationships (pp. 367–389). Wiley.

Yeomans, M., Brooks, A. W., Huang, K., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2019). It helps to ask: The cumulative benefits of asking follow-up questions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Critical Decisions and Rationality

You undoubtedly heard about him. He spent his professional life studying and teaching how we think, and was awarded a 2002 Nobel Prize for it.  His mega-bestseller book Thinking Fast and Slow sold more than 2.6 million print copies and 1.5 million audiobooks . It has been translated into more than 35 languages.  In short, Daniel Kahnemann was thoroughly capable of rational thought.  He is estimated to have had a net worth of 10 million dollars. So, you might instinctively wonder how such a person could commit suicide. But the more interesting and important question is this: How could the man who spent his professional life teaching the rest of us how easily human beings make irrational decisions make such an extraordinary decision himself?  That question becomes even more compelling when we discover what actually happened.

Kahneman did not appear to be responding to a sudden emotional crisis. According to reporting published a year after his death, he had made a deliberate decision to end his life through assisted suicide. The day before his death, he told a small circle of family and friends that he was traveling to Switzerland and that his life would end there. He apparently wanted to avoid what he regarded as the suffering and indignities that could accompany the final years of life.

That changes the question completely.  His was not necessarily a failure of intelligence, but  about what makes life worth continuing. And those are two very different questions.

Kahneman's Nobel Prize was awarded for his research into human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty. His work with Amos Tversky demonstrated something that traditional economic theory had largely overlooked: human beings are not consistently rational decision-makers. We rely upon mental shortcuts, or heuristics, and those shortcuts can produce systematic errors.

But there is a subtle point here that is easily missed. Understanding irrationality does not make a person rational.  Knowing about cognitive biases does not vaccinate a person against them.  A psychologist can understand depression and still become depressed. A physician can understand the dangers of smoking and still smoke. A financial expert can understand the mathematics of compound interest and still make terrible financial decisions. And a Nobel Prize-winning authority on judgment can still be confronted with a decision for which there is no objectively demonstrable “correct” answer.

Kahneman himself spent much of his career demonstrating precisely this limitation.  One of his most important insights was that our minds do not operate as a single, perfectly rational calculating machine. We use rapid, intuitive processes as well as slower, more deliberate forms of reasoning. The metaphor made famous in Thinking, Fast and Slow is that of System 1 and System 2. System 1 is rapid, automatic and intuitive.  System 2 is slower, more effortful and analytical. But neither system guarantees truth.

That is where Kahneman's own death becomes intellectually fascinating. We tend to assume that a rational person will always choose options that maximize life, health, money or longevity. But rationality cannot tell us what we should value in the first place. Reason can help answer the question, “Given my objectives, which course of action is most likely to achieve them?”  It cannot, by itself, answer the prior question: “What should my objectives be?”  That is a philosophical question, not merely a mathematical one.

Kahneman apparently placed an extraordinarily high value on autonomy and on avoiding what he regarded as the indignities associated with severe decline. His decision therefore cannot reasonably be evaluated simply by asking whether living longer would have produced more years of life.  He was making a different calculation. He was asking what those additional years would be worth. That distinction is critical.

Imagine two people who are given exactly the same medical prognosis. One says, “I want every possible day.” The other says, “I do not want to live through the final stage of decline.”  Which one is rational? There is no mathematical equation capable of answering that question without first assigning values to autonomy, dependency, suffering, pleasure, dignity, relationships and the meaning of continued existence.

This brings us directly back to Kahneman's life's work.  His research demonstrated that human decisions are profoundly influenced by loss aversion—our tendency to experience losses more intensely than equivalent gains. His work also showed how framing, reference points and expectations influence the way we evaluate alternatives. Perhaps, then, the most profound lesson of Kahneman's final decision is not that he somehow escaped the cognitive biases he spent his life studying.  It may be that he understood better than most people that nobody escapes them.

There is another important distinction.  Suicide associated with acute psychological crisis is not the same phenomenon as a carefully planned decision to seek assisted death at the end of life. The ethical, psychological and medical questions surrounding those circumstances are different, even though both involve an intentional decision to end one's life.

Research on suicidal behavior does, however, provide an intriguing connection to Kahneman's field.  Researchers studying suicide have found associations between suicidal behavior and impaired decision-making, cognitive rigidity, restricted consideration of alternatives, difficulties imagining alternative futures, and problems with cognitive control. One review describes suicidal crises partly as situations in which the person's ability to search for alternatives and simulate possible futures becomes severely constrained.

But those findings do not establish that Kahneman's decision was the product of impaired cognition. In fact, we do not possess sufficient evidence to make such a conclusion. And that is precisely where responsible thinking becomes important.

It would be extraordinarily easy to look backward at Kahneman's death and construct a convenient psychological explanation. We could say he was depressed. We could say he was afraid of aging. We could say he had become cognitively impaired. We could say he had become a victim of the very biases he had spent his life studying.  But unless the evidence establishes those things, they remain speculation.

Kahneman himself warned us about this kind of retrospective certainty.  In his Nobel autobiography, he recalled an early experience involving a patient who had committed suicide. What struck him was the contradiction between the powerful retrospective feeling that the suicide had somehow been inevitable and the obvious fact that it had not been predicted beforehand. He recognized this as an example of what later became part of his interest in the hindsight effect.  That observation seems remarkably relevant here. Once we know that Kahneman deliberately chose assisted suicide, it is tempting to believe that we understand why he did it. We don't.

We know something about his decision. We do not know everything that was happening inside his mind.  And perhaps that is the most important lesson of all.  Knowing how people make decisions is not the same thing as knowing why one particular person made one particular decision.

Kahneman spent decades showing us that the human mind is capable of constructing convincing explanations after the fact. We see an outcome and then instinctively construct a story that makes the outcome appear predictable.  But predictable is not the same as inevitable.  And understandable is not the same as justified.

Kahneman's death therefore presents us with an uncomfortable intellectual paradox. The man who devoted his life to demonstrating the limitations of human judgment ultimately made a decision that no one else can fully evaluate for him.  Perhaps that is because the final question of life is not simply a question of rationality.  It is a question of values. How much is autonomy worth?  How much dependency is acceptable?  How much uncertainty can we tolerate? How much suffering would we accept in exchange for additional time? And perhaps most importantly: Who gets to decide?

Those questions cannot be answered by System 1 or System 2 alone.  They cannot be answered by a Nobel Prize or bank account. And they cannot be answered by another person looking from the outside. They are questions each of us eventually has to confront for ourselves. Kahneman spent his life teaching us to be suspicious of our own certainty. His death may have provided one final lesson: Sometimes the wisest thing we can say about another person's critical decision is that we do not know enough to know exactly why he made it.  Perhaps the wisest thing we can say about our own critical decisions is that we had thought carefully enough beforehand to have a good idea about why we made them.

References

Dombrovski, A. Y., & Hallquist, M. N. (2022). Search for solutions, learning, simulation, and choice processes in suicidal behavior. WIREs Cognitive Science, 13(1), e1561.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Nobel Prize Outreach. (2026). Daniel Kahneman – Facts. NobelPrize.org.

Nobel Prize Outreach. (2026). Daniel Kahneman – Biographical. NobelPrize.org.

Perrah, M., & Wichman, H. (1987). Cognitive rigidity in suicide attempters. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 17(3), 251–255.

Saffer, B. Y., & Klonsky, E. D. (2015). Cognitive distortions and suicide attempts. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 39, 443–451.

Wenzel, A., Brown, G. K., & Beck, A. T. (2009). Cognitive therapy for suicidal patients: Scientific and clinical applications. American Psychological Association.

Zweig, J. (2025). Reporting on Daniel Kahneman's assisted suicide, as summarized by Kirkus Reviews.

Prioritizing Approval Or Authenticity ?

We all face a choice that is rarely as simple as it first appears: Do I say and do what will gain the approval of others, or do I say and do what is genuinely consistent with who I am?  Most of us would probably answer, “Authenticity.” It sounds like the obvious choice. Be yourself. Stand up for what you believe. Don't live your life according to someone else's expectations. But real life is not that simple.

Approval has value. We need other people. We need acceptance, affection, respect, cooperation, and belonging. Sometimes adapting our behavior to the expectations of others is not weakness or dishonesty. It is simply being socially intelligent.  The problem begins when approval becomes more important than authenticity—when maintaining someone else's favorable opinion requires us to repeatedly suppress, distort, or deny ourselves. The choice between approval and authenticity can therefore tell us a great deal about a person's self-esteem, psychological needs, and identity.  It also raises a more fundamental question: Who is actually directing the person's life—the person, or the people whose approval the person wants?   Notice that I used the word “wants” and not “needs.”  I did so because sometimes the nature of the dysfunctional issue is confusing what we want from others with what we truly need from them. 

The first factor is that we often want to belong.  Human beings are inherently social. Acceptance by others has consequences for our emotional and social well-being. Consequently, concern about what other people think is not, by itself, evidence of low self-esteem.

A person may choose approval because maintaining a relationship matters. A spouse may compromise.  A parent may restrain an opinion for the sake of a child. A friend may avoid saying something unnecessarily hurtful. A worker may adapt to the expectations of a workplace.

These choices do not necessarily represent inauthenticity. They may represent maturity. The important question is not: “Did I modify my behavior to accommodate someone else?” The more revealing question is: “What did I have to give up in order to obtain that approval?” If the answer is nothing essential, accommodation may simply be part of healthy social functioning. If the answer is my values, beliefs, preferences, boundaries, or sense of self, something very different may be happening.

Research has long recognized that people's sense of worth can become dependent upon particular sources of validation, including the approval of others. Crocker and colleagues describe these as contingencies of self-worth—conditions that a person believes must be satisfied in order to feel worthy. That distinction is crucial. Wanting approval is normal. However, needing approval in order to feel worthwhile is psychologically different.

The second factor is strength and stability of one's self-esteem.  A person with relatively secure self-esteem can tolerate disapproval.  Someone may disagree with me without destroying my sense of who I am. Someone may dislike me without proving that I am unworthy. Someone may reject an opinion of mine without requiring me to abandon it.

This does not mean that a person with healthy self-esteem is indifferent to criticism. Quite the opposite. A secure person can listen to criticism because criticism does not automatically become a threat to identity. The more fragile the person's self-worth, however, the greater the temptation to obtain reassurance from other people.

This creates a potentially troublesome equation: Their approval = evidence that I am acceptable. And therefore: Their disapproval = evidence that something is wrong with me.

Research on contingencies of self-worth suggests that when self-esteem is heavily invested in particular domains, people can become especially motivated to protect themselves from failure or disapproval in those domains. That can interfere with learning, relationships, autonomy, and self-regulation. Thus, the question is not simply whether someone has “high” or “low” self-esteem. A person may appear confident while having a self-esteem system that is highly dependent upon external validation. The better question is: “How much of my sense of worth depends upon other people's reactions to me?”

The third factor is autonomy which is more than independence. It means experiencing oneself as the author of their actions.  Self-Determination Theory, developed principally by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as fundamental psychological needs. Research in this tradition suggests that people function better when they experience their behavior as self-endorsed rather than controlled by external pressures.

This gives us another way to understand the approval-versus-authenticity dilemma. If I choose to please you because I genuinely want to please you, I am still exercising autonomy.  But if I believe: “I have no choice. I must please you or I will not be acceptable,” my behavior is no longer being directed primarily by my own values. It is being directed by anticipated externally-controlled consequences. That distinction can be subtle. Two people may behave identically while experiencing their behavior very differently. One thinks: “I want to do this.” The other thinks: “I have to do this if I want them to accept me.”  The behavior is the same. The psychological meaning is not.

The fourth factor is fear of rejection.  Sometimes approval is pursued not because it feels particularly rewarding, but because its absence feels threatening. This is an important distinction.  A person may not be thinking: “I want everyone to like me.” They may instead be thinking: “I cannot afford for them not to like me.” That is a very different psychological position.

Fear of rejection can make authenticity expensive. It can cause a person to remain silent when they disagree, laugh when they are not amused, agree when they do not agree, apologize when they have done nothing wrong, or adopt opinions that are socially safer than their own. Over time, this can produce a curious form of psychological dependence.  The person becomes increasingly skilled at determining what others want—and increasingly uncertain about what they themselves want.

The fifth factor is identity that answers a fundamental question: “Who am I?”  A reasonably coherent identity provides an internal reference point. It allows a person to evaluate choices according to personal values, commitments, preferences, beliefs, and goals. When identity is less settled, external opinions can become disproportionately influential. The person may effectively borrow an identity from the people around them.  They become what their family expects.  Then what their friends expect. Then what their employer expects. Then what their social group expects. Then what their culture expects.

There is nothing inherently wrong with belonging to groups or adopting shared values. Identity is partly social. Danger comes when social conformity replaces self-authorship.  Authenticity is closely related to this concept of self-authorship. Ryan and Ryan describe authenticity in terms that include autonomy, congruence, and genuineness. They argue that authenticity involves acting in ways that are congruent with one's values and interests rather than merely acting to please others or obtain rewards. Authenticity, therefore, can be demanding.  It requires knowing—or at least honestly attempting to discover—what one actually values.

The sixth factor is the importance of the relationship. Not every relationship deserves the same degree of resistance to social pressure. There is a difference between modifying one's behavior to maintain an important relationship and modifying one's identity to maintain it. A healthy relationship permits differences. A controlling relationship may require conformity. That distinction matters.  If I disagree with my spouse about where to eat, compromise is sensible. If I disagree with my spouse about something central to my values, and I must pretend to agree in order to preserve the relationship, the issue has changed.  The question becomes: “Can this relationship tolerate the existence of a separate person?”  Healthy relationships generally allow two people to remain two people.  When approval requires psychological surrender, the relationship has become more than a relationship. It has become a source of behavioral control.

The seventh factor is what the choice produces over time. Choosing approval occasionally may produce harmony. Choosing approval repeatedly at the expense of authenticity may produce something else: resentment.  The person may begin to resent the people whose approval they have worked so hard to obtain. But there is an even deeper possibility. They may eventually resent themselves.  That is because every act of self-suppression contains an implicit message: “What I really think, want, or believe is less important than what you want me to be.” Repeated often enough, that message can become internalized. The individual no longer needs someone else to demand conformity.  They begin demanding it of themselves.  This is one reason contingent self-worth can become problematic. The pursuit of validation may initially motivate a person, but when maintaining self-esteem becomes the dominant objective, it can interfere with autonomy and adaptive self-regulation.

Consequences and Choices

There are consequences of choosing authenticity  Authenticity can produce disagreement. It can produce rejection.  It can cost friendships.  It can create family conflict. It can threaten careers. It can result in being misunderstood.  Therefore, choosing authenticity does not guarantee happiness. Sometimes authenticity requires accepting a painful consequence.

But there is an important psychological difference between: “They rejected me because I refused to become someone I am not” and “They accepted me because I became what they wanted.”  The first may hurt one's feelings.  The second can gradually erode one's identity.

Authenticity therefore should not be confused with stubbornness. A truly authentic person must also be capable of changing their mind.  If evidence demonstrates that I am wrong, changing my position can be authentic.  If experience reveals that one of my values needs reconsideration, changing it can be authentic. Authenticity is not loyalty to one's previous opinion. It is loyalty to one's honest process of evaluating what one believes and values.

Prioritizing approval tells us about one’s self-esteem.  Not necessarily that a person has low self-esteem. Rather,  it may reveal where the person has placed the conditions for feeling worthy. If approval is merely pleasant, the person can tolerate its absence. If approval is psychologically necessary, the person's self-worth may be contingent upon external evaluation.

Crocker and colleagues found that contingencies of self-worth can be domain-specific. A person may be relatively secure in one area while being highly dependent upon validation in another. Someone may therefore have strong self-esteem professionally but fragile self-esteem romantically. Another person may be confident intellectually but extremely dependent upon social acceptance.

This is why asking whether someone has “high” or “low” self-esteem may not tell us enough. We should also ask: “What threatens their self-esteem?” and “What do they need from others in order to maintain it?” Those questions may reveal much more. 

The approval/authenticity choice also reveals what psychological need is dominant at the moment. The person choosing approval may be prioritizing: Belonging — “I need to remain part of the group.”  Security — “I need to avoid rejection or conflict.”  Affection — “I need to feel loved.”  Status — “I need to be respected.”  Validation — “I need confirmation that I am worthwhile.”  Safety — “Disagreement could have serious consequences.”  Control by others — “Their reaction determines what I am permitted to do.” Identity preservation — paradoxically, “I need their approval because their acceptance has become part of who I am.”

The person choosing authenticity may instead be prioritizing: Autonomy — “I need to direct my own life.”  Integrity — “I need my behavior to correspond with my values.” Self-respect — “I need to be able to live with my own choices.”  Congruence — “I need my public self and private self to be reasonably consistent.”  Identity — “I need to remain recognizable to myself.” Growth — “I need the freedom to discover and revise who I am.”

Neither list is inherently superior. The psychological question is which need dominates, why it dominates, and what price the person is willing to pay to satisfy it.

Ultimately, the approval/authenticity dilemma may tell us something profound about identity. If a person's identity is primarily externally referenced, the person asks: “Who do they want me to be?” If identity is primarily internally referenced, the person asks:” Who am I, and what do I believe I should do?” A psychologically healthy identity probably requires both. We are not isolated individuals. Other people matter. Their opinions sometimes provide valuable information. Their criticism can expose our blind spots. Their approval can be emotionally meaningful. Their rejection can hurt. But other people cannot be allowed to become the sole authors of our identity. That is where authenticity becomes important.

Research examining authenticity within Self-Determination Theory indicates that people can experience greater authenticity when their social environments support autonomy, and that authenticity varies across situations rather than being a fixed characteristic that someone either possesses or lacks. This is particularly important. Authenticity is not an all-or-nothing personality trait. We may be highly authentic with one person and highly approval-seeking with another. We may be authentic at work but approval-dependent in a romantic relationship. We may be authentic with friends but conform to family expectations. The relevant question is therefore not: “Am I authentic?” It is: “Where, with whom, and under what circumstances do I stop being authentic?” That question can be remarkably revealing.

Perhaps the deepest mistake is to frame the issue as: Approval or authenticity? The real objective should be: Authenticity with the capacity for healthy accommodation. I do not have to reject other people's opinions in order to remain myself. I do not have to be difficult in order to be authentic. I do not have to say everything I think. I do not have to insist on getting my way. I do not have to sacrifice relationships merely to prove that I am independent. But neither should I have to continually sacrifice myself to preserve those relationships. The mature position lies somewhere between narcissistic self-assertion and submissive conformity. It is the ability to say: “I care what you think, but what you think does not determine who I am.” That may be one of the clearest signs of secure self-esteem. I can value your approval without requiring it. I can listen to your criticism without surrendering my identity. I can compromise without feeling that I have betrayed myself. I can change my mind without feeling that I have lost myself. And I can tolerate your disapproval without automatically concluding that I am wrong.

In the final analysis, the question is not whether we ever choose approval over authenticity. We inevitably will. The more important question is: How much of ourselves are we willing to exchange for approval—and what does that exchange eventually cost us? Because approval obtained by pretending to be someone else is not necessarily acceptance of me. It may simply be acceptance of the person I have learned to perform. And there is an important difference between being accepted and being known.  Authenticity gives us at least a chance to be both.

 

References

Crocker, J., & Wolfe, C. T. (2001). Contingencies of self-worth. Psychological Review, 108(3), 593–623.

Crocker, J., Knight, K. M., & Cooper, M. L. (2005). Contingencies of self-worth. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(4), 200–203.

Crocker, J., Brook, A. T., Niiya, Y., & Villacorta, M. (2006). The pursuit of self-esteem: Contingencies of self-worth and self-regulation. Journal of Personality, 74(6), 1749–1772.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1987). The support of autonomy and the control of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(6), 1024–1037.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.

Ryan, W. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2019). Toward a social psychology of authenticity: Exploring within-person variation in autonomy, congruence, and genuineness using self-determination theory. Review of General Psychology, 23(1), 99–112.

MacDonald, G., Saltzman, J. L., & Leary, M. R. (2003). Social approval and trait self-esteem. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(2), 23–40.

 

Don't Regret That You Never Asked Them

A loved one recently died, or was otherwise permanently lost to you. You are in mourning. Later, you begin to process what you have lost. In addition to other emotions, you feel regret. “There were so many things I wished I had asked about.”

What were the questions?

Perhaps you wanted to know more about your mother’s childhood. What was she like as a little girl? What did she fear? What did she dream about becoming? Who was her first love? What did she regret? What were the happiest moments of her life?

Perhaps it was your father. You realize that although you knew him as your father, there was an entire person you never completely knew. What did he believe before you were born? What experiences changed him? What did he think about his own father? What did he consider his greatest accomplishment? What did he wish he had done differently?

Or perhaps you wanted to ask a spouse, brother, sister, friend, or grandparent questions that seemed unimportant at the time but suddenly seem enormously important now.

The problem is that death changes the nature of a question. Before death, almost any question can be postponed. There will be another visit. Another telephone call. Another holiday. Another opportunity. After death, there isn't. That is one of the cruelest features of bereavement. The person who possessed the answers is gone, but the questions remain.

Research suggests that this experience is not unusual. A study of bereaved people found that they commonly wished they had discussed subjects involving personal information, their relationship, death and dying, and practical matters that would follow death. People often avoided these conversations because they wanted to protect themselves or the dying person emotionally, because of differences within the relationship, or because the person's condition made the conversations difficult.

In another study involving bereaved families of cancer patients, approximately one-third said they regretted not having talked sufficiently about death. Interestingly, a much smaller percentage regretted having talked about death. That finding deserves attention.

We often avoid talking about death because we believe the conversation will make death more frightening. Sometimes it does make the moment uncomfortable. But discomfort is temporary. Lost opportunity is permanent.

There is a difference between causing discomfort and causing harm. A difficult conversation may produce anxiety, tears, silence, or even disagreement. But avoiding the conversation can leave the survivor with questions that can never be answered.  This does not mean that every possible question should be asked. Nor does it mean that we should interrogate someone we love simply because death might someday occur. Conversations are relationships, not interviews.

The point is something more fundamental: we tend to assume that we know the people we love better than we actually do. We know the roles they played in our lives. We know the stories they told repeatedly. We know their habits, their opinions, their personalities. But knowing someone is not the same as knowing that person's history. There may be an enormous amount of information hidden behind the person we see every day. And sometimes we don't discover how much we didn't know until it is too late.

Regret is usually treated as a negative emotion. We think of it as something we should overcome. But recent research on bereavement-related regret suggests that regret can also function as an invitation to examine what mattered to us in the relationship. One recent qualitative study described bereavement regret as an active and continuing experience that connects the present self with the past self and can draw attention to one's values.

In other words, regret may contain information. When I say, “I wish I had asked my father about his childhood,” I am not merely expressing sadness. I am revealing something about myself. I wanted to know him. That realization may be painful, but it is also valuable.

Perhaps I can no longer ask my father. But I can ask someone else. I can ask my mother. I can ask my brother. I can ask an older friend. I can ask my children about their lives while I am still here to hear the answers. And perhaps I can tell them the things I have assumed they already know.

There is another important reason to ask questions while we can. Questions do not merely obtain information. They communicate interest. When you ask someone, “What was your childhood really like?” you are saying, in effect, “Your life matters to me.” When you ask, “What are you most proud of?” you are saying, “I want to understand what has been important to you.” When you ask, “Is there anything you wish you had done differently?” you are giving that person permission to reflect rather than merely remembering. And when you ask, “Is there anything you want me to know that I have never asked you?” you may open a door neither of you knew was there.

We frequently wait for the perfect opportunity to have these conversations. There probably isn't one. The person may be busy. You may be busy. The television may be on. Dinner may be waiting. Someone may say, “That's a strange question.” Ask anyway. You don't need to announce that you are about to have an important conversation about mortality. In fact, ordinary conversations may be better. A question can be asked while sitting at the kitchen table. While driving. While walking. While looking through old photographs. While having a cup of coffee.

The conversation doesn't have to be solemn. It can be funny. It can wander. It can become something completely different from what you expected. That may be its greatest value. We tend to think that what we want from these conversations is information. But perhaps what we really want is connection.

The emerging understanding of grief supports this idea. Contemporary approaches to bereavement recognize that continuing a symbolic or emotional relationship with someone who has died can be a normal part of mourning. The goal is not necessarily to erase the relationship but to integrate it into the survivor's continuing life. That means the questions we failed to ask don't necessarily have to become meaningless. We can search photographs. We can talk with relatives and friends. We can read old letters. We can visit places where the person lived. We can reconstruct stories from fragments.

Sometimes we can simply acknowledge the unanswered question. “I wish I had asked.” There is no requirement that every regret be solved. Some questions will remain unanswered forever. That is part of being human. But there is a lesson available in the regret.

If someone you love is still alive, ask. Ask about the things you think you already know. Ask about the things you think you don't need to know. Ask about childhood. Ask about love. Ask about failure. Ask about success. Ask what they fear. Ask what they believe. Ask what they regret. Ask what they hope. Ask what they remember about you.

Perhaps most importantly, ask: “What is something about you that you wish I knew?” Then be quiet. Let them answer. Because someday, you may desperately wish you had asked. And someday, someone may desperately wish you had asked you.

 

References

McCusker, P.J. (2023).  Questioning & Answering: How, Who, When, & Where.   Amazon.

Generous, M. A., & Keeley, M. (2017). Wished for and avoided conversations with terminally ill individuals during final conversations. Death Studies, 41(3), 162–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2016.1236850.

Miyashita, M., et al. (2017). Talking about death with terminally ill cancer patients: What contributes to the regret of bereaved family members? Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2017.07.010.

Wright, K. B., et al. (2023). Survivors' perspectives on saying goodbye: Implications for end-of-life engagement across the lifespan and grieving process. Death Studies.

APA Dictionary of Psychology. (2018). Continuing bond. American Psychological Association.

Recent qualitative research on bereavement-related regret: “I could have”: The lived experience of bereavement-related regret. Death Studies (2025). https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2025.2502987.

Desiring, Acquiring, Keeping, and Discarding

You don't hear the 1980s meme "Whoever dies with the most toys wins" much anymore, but the acquisition mindset is as strong as ever. Just look at how many packages show up on doorsteps each week. So it's worth asking an uncomfortable question: why do we want all this stuff in the first place?

We tell ourselves we buy things because we need them. Sometimes that's true. But often "need" quietly slides into "want," then "I deserve this," then "I won't be satisfied until I have it."

There's a psychological arc here. Desiring something is pleasurable even before we own it — we imagine how the new car will feel, how much easier life will be with that appliance. The object becomes a small promise about the future. Then we acquire it, feel a brief surge of satisfaction, and eventually it just becomes part of the background. What was new becomes normal.

This is why chasing possessions can feel like running on a treadmill. Research on materialism consistently links placing high value on possessions with lower well-being — though the picture is nuanced; motives, circumstances, and having enough resources all matter. Still, making acquisition a central measure of a successful life isn't a reliable path to happiness.

A Sampling Period for Stuff

David Epstein's Range argues against specializing too early. He describes a "sampling period" where people try different things before committing to one path. What if we applied that to possessions?

Instead of deciding we need to own something, we could experiment with the activity first. Rent or borrow the bike before buying an expensive one. Cook with what you have before filling the kitchen with gadgets. Ask whether you actually live the lifestyle you're buying for. Explore before you acquire.

That runs against consumer culture, which pushes us to buy first and discover later. Epstein also borrows a distinction from psychologist Robin Hogarth: "kind" learning environments have stable patterns and fast, accurate feedback; "wicked" ones don't. Our relationship with possessions is a wicked environment — we're bad at predicting what will make us happy, how long we'll enjoy something, or whether it'll solve the problem we thought it would. Our preferences, bodies, and lives keep changing, yet we treat purchases like permanent solutions to temporary problems.

The Weight of Keeping

Keeping isn't just the opposite of discarding — it often requires justification. I might need it someday. It was expensive. It reminds me of someone. Sometimes these are good reasons. Sometimes they're just stories that make letting go feel harder than acquiring.  There are circumstances, however, when keeping is primarily due to lack of attention to and blissful ignorance of the price we pay for keeping our possessions

The physical cost is obvious: stuff takes space, time, and maintenance. The mental cost is subtler — every possession is a small unfinished decision (use it? fix it? sell it? feel guilty about it?). One object is nothing; thousands create an environment of unfinished business.

There's an interpersonal cost too. Possessions live in shared spaces, and one person's keepsake is another's clutter. Arguments about "stuff" are often really about control, identity, money, or whose priorities get to dominate the household. Constant acquiring consumes shared space and shared patience, not just money.

Experiences vs. Things — With a Caveat

Research comparing material and experiential purchases generally finds people get more well-being from experiences, partly because experiences create social connection and become part of our life story. But the advantage depends on circumstances — for people with fewer resources, a possession that solves a real problem can be just as satisfying as an experience.

None of this is an argument for anti-materialism. A good chair, a reliable car, a well-equipped kitchen — these genuinely improve life. The question isn't whether possessions are good or bad, but whether they're serving our lives or whether our lives have become organized around acquiring, maintaining, and protecting them.

Letting Go

Discarding is hard because it forces us to admit our past selves made choices our present selves no longer endorse — the shirt for a life never lived, the exercise equipment for a resolution that faded, the "someday" books. Letting go means saying, "I thought this would matter to me. It didn't. That's okay."

This connects back to Epstein: his case for range isn't "try everything forever" — it's sample, learn, find what fits, and be willing to change course. Our possessions deserve the same treatment. We can acquire without assuming permanent obligation, keep what still serves us, and discard the rest without treating it as failure.

Keeping Score Differently

The goal isn't owning as little as possible — that's just obsession in a different direction. The goal is owning consciously, so our homes reflect our lives rather than the accumulated evidence of every impulse we've had.

As the old line goes — sometimes attributed to Marcus Aurelius or Seneca — "everything you own owns you." Maybe the real lesson isn't "he who dies with the most toys wins." It's closer to this: he who knows what is enough has already won.

                                                                            References

Epstein, David. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Riverhead Books, 2019. 

Pandelaere, Mario. "Materialism and Well-Being: The Role of Consumption." Current Opinion in Psychology, 2016. 

Van Boven, Leaf. "Experientialism, Materialism, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Review of General Psychology, 2005. 

Guevarra, Darwin A., and Ryan T. Howell. "To Have in Order to Do: Exploring the Effects of Consuming Experiential Products on Well-Being." Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2015.

Lee, Jacob C., Deborah L. Hall, and Wendy Wood . "Experiential or Material Purchases? Social Class Determines Purchase Happiness." Psychological Science, 2018.

Epstein, David. "Kind and Wicked Learning Environments." Range Widely, May 16, 2024.

*

Choosing Not to Know

 Everybody Does It

We all occasionally decide that some information is not worth the effort needed to acquire it.  But do you ever deliberately fail to acquire relevant, valuable information?  For instance, imagine you meet a new person who is physically attractive. You want very much to develop a relationship.  You feel vague unease about a feature of their personality. However, your wish for connection over-rides your motivation to evaluate your hunch.  

Why We Avoid Information (Even When It Could Help Us)

Have you ever put off checking your bank balance, opening a scary-looking envelope, or asking a question because you weren't sure you wanted the answer? You're not alone — and you're not being irrational. Psychologists call this information avoidance: the habit of steering clear of facts that could actually help us, simply because getting those facts feels uncomfortable.

It's Not About Being Lazy or Uninformed

For a long time, people assumed that if someone didn't seek out important information, it was because they didn't know better or couldn't be bothered. But research tells a different story. Most of the time, we avoid information because learning it comes with a cost — emotional, mental, social, or practical.

Think about it: information that challenges what you believe, forces you to change your behavior, or might confirm your worst fear can feel genuinely threatening. In moments like that, not knowing can feel safer than knowing — even though, deep down, we usually sense that knowing would help.

Researchers have found that this kind of avoidance often works as a self-protective strategy. It buys us time before we have to deal with something upsetting, whether that's a health scare, money trouble, or a rocky relationship. When we're anxious or uncertain, avoiding information can be a way of managing that anxiety and holding onto hope a little longer — even if it's temporary.

You can see this play out in everyday life: people put off genetic testing because they're afraid of what it might reveal, avoid checking their finances because they're afraid of debt, tune out political news because they're emotionally worn out, or skip medical screenings because not knowing feels more bearable than a diagnosis. In every case, it's not a random choice — it's a kind of trade-off between the pain of finding out and the comfort of staying unaware.

Not All Avoidance Looks the Same

Psychologist Julia Nolte, whose research began at Cornell University before she moved to Tilburg University, has shown that this kind of avoidance isn't one single behavior — it changes depending on the situation, the type of information, and what's motivating the person at that moment.

Her work also draws an important distinction: sometimes people passively miss out on information simply because they never encounter it, but other times they actively choose not to learn something — even when it would be easy to find out and would clearly be useful. That second kind, the deliberate choice to stay in the dark, is what makes information avoidance so interesting.

Nolte's studies also found that people avoid information for many different reasons — to dodge emotional distress, sidestep a tough decision, save mental energy, protect a hopeful outlook, or avoid future regret. Interestingly, age doesn't predict this in a simple way. Older adults aren't automatically more likely to avoid information; it really depends on the specific situation and what matters most to them at the time.

Sometimes It's Not the Information — It's How It's Presented

Another interesting finding: people often don't want less information — they want it presented more simply. Research shows that people tend to make decisions based on the general "big picture" takeaway rather than a pile of precise numbers and details. So what looks like avoidance might actually just be a preference for a clear summary over an overwhelming wall of data. Give someone a short, meaningful version of the facts, and they may be perfectly willing to engage — even if they'd have avoided the same information buried in spreadsheets and statistics.

Avoidance Is Part of a Bigger Defense System

More recent research points out that avoiding information is just one tool in a larger toolkit people use to protect themselves from uncomfortable truths. If someone can't dodge the information itself, they might instead question whether the source is trustworthy, downplay how relevant it is to them, or dismiss what it implies. This matters because it means simply making information more available doesn't guarantee people will accept it — if the underlying urge to protect themselves is still there, they'll just find another way to push the information away.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

We live in a world overflowing with information — endless news, notifications, and algorithm-fed feeds all competing for our attention. Given that flood, being selective about what we pay attention to isn't just understandable, it's necessary. The real question isn't whether people avoid information anymore. It's which information they avoid, when, and why.

A Mix of Personality and Circumstance

Whether someone avoids information depends on both the moment they're in and who they are as a person.

In the moment, factors like how emotionally intense a situation is, how threatening it feels, how much uncertainty is involved, time pressure, mental overload, and social expectations can all push someone toward avoidance. Someone who eagerly checks their finances when things are going well might avoid the exact same information during a financial rough patch.

As a person, certain traits make some people more prone to avoidance across many areas of life — things like discomfort with uncertainty, anxiety, a strong need for quick closure, a tendency to sidestep emotions, optimism, confidence in one's own abilities, and general curiosity. These traits shape how threatening something feels and how someone chooses to cope with it.

Put simply: your circumstances decide when information starts to feel costly, and your personality shapes how you respond once it does.

What You Can Actually Do About It

Understanding why we avoid information is useful — but the real value comes in catching yourself doing it and making a better choice. Here are some practical takeaways:

Notice the difference between being busy and being avoidant. Ask yourself honestly: am I truly too busy to check this, or do I just not want to know the answer?

Weigh the cost of not knowing. A few minutes spent facing something today can prevent a much bigger problem down the road.

Not everything deserves your attention. It's fine — even healthy — to ignore clickbait, outrage-bait, and pointless social media arguments. But avoiding things that affect your health, money, relationships, or responsibilities is a different story, and much more costly.

Build a routine instead of waiting to "feel ready." Set a regular time each week to open bills, check your bank balance, or deal with medical results. A consistent habit reduces the emotional weight of these tasks and stops small problems from growing into big ones.

Swap fear for curiosity. Instead of dreading what information might reveal, ask what you might learn from it and what new options it opens up. Remember: information doesn't create problems — it just reveals ones that already exist, usually while there's still time to do something about them.

Don't mistake short-term relief for long-term well-being. Avoiding a problem might feel better right now, but it usually makes things harder later.

Make staying informed a habit, not a crisis response — check your finances regularly, follow reliable news in small doses, keep up with checkups, and ask questions when something's unclear.

Stick to trustworthy sources. When something feels confusing or overwhelming, lean on credible experts rather than rumors or sensational headlines. Quality matters more than quantity.

Talk it through with someone you trust. Processing difficult information with a friend, family member, or colleague can make it easier to handle and can offer perspective you might be missing on your own.

Accept that uncertainty is normal. Ignoring a hard truth doesn't make the uncertainty go away — but gathering more information, even incomplete information, usually helps you feel more in control.

Remember: information is a tool, not a verdict. Whether it's a diagnosis, a bank statement, or a performance review, its purpose is to help you understand where you stand and make a good decision — not to define or discourage you.

A simple daily check-in: before you put off learning something, ask yourself — Will this help my future? Will knowing help me make a better decision? Will waiting make things harder to fix? If the answer to any of these is yes, it's usually worth facing the information now rather than later.

 

References

Howell, J. L., & Shepperd, J. A. (2016). Establishing an information avoidance scale. Psychological Assessment, 28(12), 1695–1708.

Meese, W. B., Hua, J., & Howell, J. L. (2024). Information avoidance: An interchangeable strategy of self-protection. Social Science & Medicine, 354, 117065.

Nolte, J. (2023). The age of avoidance? The roles of context, cognition, and affect in adult age differences in decision avoidance (Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University).

Nolte, J., Deng, S. L., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2021). Age differences in media consumption and avoidance with respect to COVID-19. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 77(4), e76–e82.

Nolte, J., Deng, S. L., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2023). Information avoidance in consumer choice: Do avoidance tendencies and motives vary by age? Experimental Aging Research, 49(2), 112–129.

Nolte, J., Löckenhoff, C. E., & Reyna, V. F. (2022). The influence of verbatim versus gist formatting on younger and older adults' information acquisition and decision making. Psychology and Aging, 37(2), 197–209.

Sweeny, K., Melnyk, D., Miller, W., & Shepperd, J. A. (2010). Information avoidance: Who, what, when, and why. Review of General Psychology, 14(4), 340–353.

Your Sibling, Your Rival ?

Perhaps the greatest misconception about sibling rivalry is that it is largely a childhood problem that disappears with maturity. In reality, sibling rivalry often accompanies individuals throughout their entire lives. What changes is not the rivalry itself but the object of competition. For instance, often the toy fought over at age five becomes parental attention during adolescence, occupational success during adulthood, caregiving responsibilities in middle age, and inheritance after parents die. The psychological processes remain remarkably similar even though the circumstances differ.

Understanding sibling rivalry requires looking beneath the surface. Most disagreements between brothers and sisters are minimally, if at all, about the issue being argued. Instead, they represent the visible expression of deeper psychological processes involving identity, fairness, comparison, recognition, belonging, and self-worth.

As I have argued throughout all my writings (e.g., McCusker, 2026), every human behavior emerges from the interactions among very specific, defnable internal and external determinants. No single determinant explains sibling rivalry. Biological temperament, cognitive development, emotional regulation, personality, family structure, parental behavior, cultural expectations, socioeconomic circumstances, and life experiences continuously interact. Depending upon which determinants are most influential at a particular moment, siblings may become each other's greatest allies or lifelong competitors.

However, sibling rivalry is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Like most patterns of human behavior, it can be understood, anticipated, and modified. The most effective interventions are those that enlist ego strength, improve cognitive processing, reduce unnecessary comparisons, and increase emotional maturity. In other words, the solution lies less in changing our siblings than in changing how we interpret and respond to them.

Early Childhood: Competition for Survival

The earliest form of sibling rivalry is rooted in a child's perception that parental attention is a limited resource. Infants and toddlers possess neither the cognitive sophistication nor the emotional regulation necessary to appreciate that parents can love multiple children equally while attending to one child more than another at a given moment.

Developmentally, this perception is understandable. Young children think concretely rather than abstractly. If a parent spends twenty minutes comforting one child, the other child often concludes that the parent loves the sibling more. The conclusion is inaccurate but psychologically understandable.

Developmental psychologists have long recognized that secure attachment develops through consistent responsiveness rather than equal treatment (Bowlby, 1969/1982). Equality and fairness are not synonymous. Different children require different forms of parenting because they differ in temperament, maturity, and developmental needs.

Parents unintentionally intensify rivalry when they compare children. Statements such as "Why can't you behave like your sister?" or "Your brother never acted this way" appear harmless because they are intended to motivate improvement. Instead, they communicate that acceptance is contingent upon comparison. Once comparison becomes the family's standard of evaluation, children naturally begin comparing themselves as well.

Fortunately, this tendency can be modified. Parents should compare each child only to that  particular child's previous level of functioning. Improvement becomes the standard rather than superiority. Instead of praising one child for being "the smartest," parents might observe that "you worked much harder on your reading this week." Such statements reinforce growth rather than hierarchy.

Likewise, parents should deliberately schedule individual time with each child. Children who know they will receive predictable individual attention become less likely to compete for unpredictable attention. The objective is not equal minutes but perceived emotional availability.

Children also benefit from learning emotional vocabulary. Rather than punishing jealousy, parents can help children identify it. Naming emotions reduces their intensity by recruiting higher cortical processing rather than leaving behavior governed primarily by emotional reactivity (Siegel, 2012).

Middle Childhood: Achievement Becomes Identity

As children enter school, entirely new opportunities for comparison emerge. Academic performance, athletic ability, musical talent, popularity, appearance, and teacher approval become highly visible measures of competence. Parents often unintentionally reinforce these comparisons by emphasizing report cards, awards, or extracurricular accomplishments. During this developmental period children begin constructing their identities. They naturally ask themselves, "What am I good at?" Unfortunately, many answer a different question: "What am I better at than my sibling?"

Social comparison theory predicts exactly this phenomenon (Festinger, 1954). Human beings evaluate themselves by comparing themselves with similar others. Brothers and sisters provide perhaps the most accessible comparison group available.

Corrective strategies should therefore focus on reducing unnecessary comparisons while encouraging differentiated competence.  Every child should be encouraged to develop interests based upon genuine curiosity rather than competition. One child may enjoy mathematics while another prefers art. Problems arise only when parents implicitly rank these interests according to perceived prestige. The healthiest families celebrate excellence without requiring identical excellence.

Equally important is teaching children that another person's success does not diminish their own opportunities. Success is not a pie that becomes smaller as others receive larger pieces. This cognitive reframing represents one of the earliest forms of ego strengthening. Children who learn to admire excellence rather than resent it often become adults who collaborate rather than compete unnecessarily.

Adolescence: Identity Formation and Independence

Adolescence presents perhaps the greatest opportunity for sibling rivalry because identity formation becomes the central developmental task (Erikson, 1968).  Teenagers seek individuality. Ironically, many establish individuality by becoming the opposite of a sibling. If one sibling excels academically, another may reject academics entirely. If one becomes highly athletic, another may emphasize artistic pursuits. While differentiation often reduces direct competition, it sometimes becomes so extreme that siblings lose meaningful common ground.

Parents should encourage individuality without encouraging opposition.  Rather than defining children according to fixed characteristics—"the athlete," "the intellectual," "the responsible one"—parents should emphasize that identity remains flexible throughout life. Research on growth mindset demonstrates that individuals who view abilities as improvable experience greater resilience and less defensive behavior (Dweck, 2006).

Family discussions should likewise emphasize cooperation over competition. One practical strategy involves assigning collaborative responsibilities rather than competitive ones. Adolescents working together toward shared goals learn to evaluate one another as teammates rather than opponents.

Young Adulthood: Different Roads, Different Timetables

During young adulthood, comparisons shift toward educational attainment, occupational success, income, marriage, and social status. Modern society intensifies these comparisons through social media. Individuals rarely compare themselves with reality. Instead, they compare themselves with carefully edited versions of other people's lives. Siblings are not immune. One sibling becomes a physician, another a teacher. One marries at twenty-five, another at forty. One has children while another remains childless. Each life follows its own developmental trajectory, yet many families continue evaluating everyone according to identical standards.

Corrective strategies require recognizing that developmental timing varies enormously. Success should be evaluated according to progress toward personally meaningful goals rather than conformity to cultural expectations.

Families can encourage this perspective by asking different questions. Instead of asking, "Who earns more money?" they might ask, "Who has become more competent, more compassionate, or more fulfilled?" Notice that these questions redirect attention toward character development rather than status comparison. This shift represents strengthening cognition over emotional reactivity.

Middle Adulthood: The Return of Childhood

Many individuals are surprised to discover that sibling rivalry often intensifies during middle adulthood. The reason is straightforward. Aging parents reintroduce many of the emotional dynamics established during childhood. Questions suddenly emerge regarding caregiving, financial contributions, medical decision making, and inheritance. Old grievances frequently reappear. One sibling recalls being expected to assume responsibility while another remembers being overlooked. Each narrative contains elements of truth because each child experienced a somewhat different family.

Corrective strategies begin with acknowledging this reality. No two siblings grow up in precisely the same household because parents themselves continually change across time. Recognizing this simple fact reduces unnecessary arguments regarding whose memories are "correct." Both memories may be accurate from each individual's perspective.

Families also benefit from explicit communication before crises occur. Waiting until a parent becomes seriously ill often guarantees emotionally reactive decision making. Instead, siblings should discuss expectations years in advance. Who lives closest? Who possesses medical knowledge? Who has scheduling flexibility? Who can contribute financially?

Responsibilities should reflect practical realities rather than perceived fairness alone.  Equity often proves healthier than equality.

Later Life: Inheritance and Legacy

After parents die, unresolved sibling dynamics frequently become attached to inheritance. Ironically, arguments that appear to involve money usually involve something far more psychologically significant. Inheritance symbolizes recognition, appreciation, belonging, and love. A family heirloom may possess little monetary value yet enormous emotional value because it represents one's relationship with a deceased parent.

Corrective strategies begin by recognizing symbolism. Before disagreements escalate, siblings should ask themselves a simple question: "What does this object actually represent to me?" Often the answer has little to do with financial value. Open discussion regarding sentimental significance frequently uncovers solutions impossible to discover through legal negotiation alone. Likewise, parents can substantially reduce future conflict by explaining—not merely documenting—the reasoning behind estate decisions while they are still living. Transparency reduces ambiguity. Ambiguity fuels conflict.

The Central Role of Ego Strength

Throughout life, one psychological variable repeatedly determines whether sibling rivalry becomes constructive or destructive. That variable is ego strength. Individuals possessing strong ego strength can admire another person's accomplishments without interpreting them as personal failures.

Those possessing weaker ego strength often perceive another person's success as evidence of their own inadequacy. The objective circumstances may be identical. The interpretations differ dramatically. This distinction explains why two siblings raised in the same household may respond very differently to the same event. One sees inspiration. The other sees competition. The difference lies primarily in cognitive interpretation rather than external reality.

Strong ego strength allows individuals to tolerate temporary disappointment, regulate emotional reactions, appreciate delayed gratification, maintain perspective during conflict, and evaluate themselves according to internal standards rather than continual external comparison. These capacities are not inherited fully formed. They develop through repeated practice.

Practical Strategies for Every Family

Several evidence-based principles can reduce sibling rivalry regardless of age.

First, avoid comparisons whenever possible. Compare individuals with their own previous performance rather than with one another.

Second, praise effort, persistence, kindness, honesty, and cooperation more frequently than talent or outcomes. Character remains under greater voluntary control than natural ability.

Third, encourage shared experiences. Positive interactions accumulate just as negative interactions do. Families create emotional memories every day.

Fourth, distinguish fairness from sameness. Different children require different parenting. Explaining those differences reduces unnecessary assumptions regarding favoritism.

Fifth, communicate directly rather than through parents or other relatives. Triangulation magnifies misunderstanding.

Finally, continually strengthen ego strength.  Individuals with stronger ego strength require less external validation because they increasingly evaluate themselves according to internally chosen standards. They become capable of celebrating another person's accomplishments without feeling psychologically diminished. This may be the most effective antidote to sibling rivalry throughout the life span.

Conclusion

Sibling rivalry is not simply competition between brothers and sisters. It reflects universal psychological processes involving comparison, identity, belonging, recognition, and self-worth. Because these processes accompany human development from childhood through old age, opportunities for rivalry remain present throughout life.

Fortunately, rivalry need not define sibling relationships. The strongest families intentionally replace comparison with appreciation, competition with cooperation, resentment with understanding, and emotional reactivity with thoughtful reflection.

As I have emphasized throughout my work, every important decision should begin with a question: Which determinants are currently most influential, and are they helping or hurting the outcome? Sibling rivalry is no exception.

When personal insecurity, distorted cognition, emotional impulsivity, or unresolved family narratives become prepotent, conflict naturally follows. When stronger cognition, greater empathy, emotional regulation, and well-developed ego strength become dominant, rivalry gradually gives way to mutual respect.

Ultimately, siblings need not become competitors simply because they share parents. They can become lifelong allies if each develops sufficient psychological maturity to understand a profound truth: another person's success neither diminishes nor determines one's own worth. It merely provides another opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary diversity of human potential.

References

Adler, A. (1927). Understanding human nature. Greenberg.

Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). Basic Books. (Original work published 1969)

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. W. W. Norton.

Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140.

McCusker, P. J. (2026).   Why You Are Who You Are: And Improving Who You Are.  Amazon

McHale, S. M., Updegraff, K. A., & Whiteman, S. D. (2012). Sibling relationships and influences in childhood and adolescence. Journal of Marriage and Family, 74(5), 913–930.

Siegel, D. J. (2012). The developing mind (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Volling, B. L. (Ed.). (2012). Sibling relationships. American Psychological Association.