You’re at a party with a date—someone you really like.

You know a lot of people at this party, yet somehow you and your date get stuck talking to someone you find insufferable.

Each time you see them, they’re too drunk, too handsy, too close, their spittle sprays in your face through those big, red, wet popsicle lips.

They’ve been interrupting your new person’s sentences, clipping them off well below the node. Guessing before listening.

“So he decided to name the kid—”

“Bob!” interrupts the interrupter.

“No—after his mother.”

You’re mortified, wishing you could fast forward the night. Get to the post mortem performance review. Bond over the shared creeps you got from Wet Lips Spittle Mouth.

In the elevator, you profusely apologize about getting stuck with that absolute horror human, when—much to your deepest horror, your date says:

“Oh, he wasn’t so bad.”

This, naturally, stops you in your tracks.

“There is no worst guy. He’s it. He wins!”

“I thought he was sort of endearing.”

Now, you can either appreciate this aspect of your possible mate, or you can get defensive because HOW ON EARTH CAN YOU LOVE SOMEONE WHO ISN’T ANNOYED BY THE SAME SORT OF ANNOYING?

They’re wrong. You’re right.

The guy is gross and you’re absolutely correct.

Your taste in people is impeccable—in fact, having good taste in people is one of your finest qualities.

The guy was a garbage monster.

Your new person is wrong, and you are now consumed with the fact that your partner doesn’t know that they’re wrong, and therefore you must now spend the rest of the night proving to your new person how wrong they are in order for them to be on the same page as you, living the same reality.

Because, like you just said: You are right.

Except…

You might be wrong.

This moment of feeling objectively right about something subjective is called Naïve Realism, and we all, to one degree or another, suffer from it.

Naïve realism is our innate ability to feel that how we see the world, and what we believe about it, is objective and correct. This phenomenon is what finds people stating their opinions as facts.

That what we feel is true is, in fact, true for everyone.

Or, should be.

I used to be one of those people.

For a long time—too long—I felt like my opinions were facts. And it wasn’t until I read somewhere that in order to keep an open mind, you should always carry your opinions loosely, because that signals that you are open to change.

Since I am open to change, whenever I became convinced of my own veridicality, I began to ask: Can I accept that I might be wrong? Is there something more here that I can’t see or don’t know?

The answer is almost always yes.

Sometimes when things FEEL true to us, we have trouble understanding how these same things might not feel true to others.

Here’s where we get confused: because we have the ability to physically see and identify things for what they are: a lamp, a vase, a couch, a meal, we conflate our ability to correctly identify them with our feelings about them.

We assume the ability to identify objects means we are unbiased about these objects instead of understanding that it’s not objectivity through which our world is mediated but subjectivity, built and shaped over the course of our lives by our personal experience, family customs, and surrounding culture.

At the heart of naïve realism is a false belief that we experience things exactly as they are, that the world itself is a material object. What we fail to recognize is that there is no “exactly as it is.”

Every person on Earth (and maybe even every animal?) is shaped by different circumstances and experiences. We have separate histories, emotions, and cultural biases. We have been influenced by different things and different people, and all those things come together to create and shape our point of view.

We have only ever been ourselves. We are trapped inside our own egocentric bias. We will never be anyone else, and so we have trouble understanding that an experience, or an opinion that has been backed up by our lifetime of experiences could ever be wrong.

And so, when someone disagrees with us, we assume, naturally, that they are wrong. Of course, everything we perceive and take in cognitively is a personal interpretation and not, in fact, impartial truth.

In philosophy, naive realism falls under the theory of perception, and it’s considered “naïve” because it claims that humans perceive things in the world directly and without the mediation of any impression, idea, or representation.

People interpret the world with immense variability, and without knowing about the egocentric bias of Naïve Realism, the source of many conflicts may never be resolved. Dr. Matthew Lieberman is a professor of Social Cognition and director of the Neuroscience Lab at UCLA, and he’s conducted studies into naïve realism and the Gestalt Cortex—the place in the brain where our experience of reality is created.

Naïve realism can negatively impact friendships because of fixed viewpoints. It can cause wars and divorces because people are so certain of their rightness, and reject all other opinions, thoughts, or suggestions.

So, the next time you feel completely and absolutely certain, remember that what’s true for you is not necessarily true for everyone. Once you get good at this, and it becomes reflexive, you can introduce the concept at the dinner table when your family is arguing about politics.

The next time you KNOW you’re right, ask yourself what else you might be overlooking. Being open in this way makes living less tense.

Trust me. I’m right about this.

Until next week I remain…