This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Have you ever noticed,
when you offer a friend or a colleague or a partner a suggestion for improvement,
they often experience an urge to defend themselves?
Rather than listen to how they might change or do something better,
they try to preserve the status quo.
Like generals fighting a war,
they try to protect every square inch of the person they are Instead of embracing the person they might become.
In our episode last week, winning the battle against yourself,
we looked at how we often fail to make changes in our lives
because our best intentions are at odds with what scientists call the value system in the brain.
This brain network tends to prioritize the here and now and nudges us toward immediate gratifications instead of long-term benefits.
If you missed that episode, I'd urge you to go back and listen to it in this podcast feed.
Today, we look at one of the most powerful reasons we fail to make changes in our lives.
Very often, the people around us can see what we need to do differently or better.
But when they tell us, when they offer us feedback or heaven forbid criticism,
we respond with anger, with denial, with defensiveness.
This is a paradox because many of us also believe we want to live lives of continuous improvement.
What better way to improve than to listen to suggestions for improvement?
What causes so many of us to feel defensive?