There are people who claim to be always right. They want to win at all costs. And even if you dismantle their arguments one by one, they won't be convinced. It is as if their life depended on being right. And in a sense it is because they have built their identity around the irresistible need to be right and impose their opinion on others.
The need to be right hides a deep insecurity
People who always want to be right usually adopt body language through which they project an image of security and superiority. It is also common for them to use arrogant language by which they close all escape routes so that the only valid opinion is theirs.
These people always know what's going on. They consider themselves all-rounders. They are always ready to tell you where you went wrong. And even if you are an expert in something, they always know more than you and do not take into account your opinions.
From this profile, people who claim to be always right behave like narcissists. They are arrogant people and feel superior. They have an exaggerated perception of their "I" fueled by an excessive ego.
However, behind the desire to be right there is something much deeper than an excessive ego.
A study conducted at the University of Villanova revealed that grandiosity alone, without vulnerability, does not relate to the desire to impose one's opinion. In fact, even if the most vulnerable narcissists, those with low self-esteem, are not inclined to brag, they still need to validate their image through defensive strategies.
Therefore, the desire to be right is not just a tactic to impress others and demonstrate their supposed knowledge, intelligence and experience, but it is a strategy to validate oneself. People who want to be right really need to be convinced of their worth.
This attempt to impose itself on others arises from the feeling of fragility of the ego, which strives to maintain a perception of itself as something exceptional. This responds to the need to impress themselves and validate their self-concept.
Pretending to be always right would therefore derive from the vulnerability core of narcissism, which becomes more intense and maladaptive the further down the person's life flows. That is why, even as the whole world collapses around them, their arguments lose weight and the evidence disproves them, they will continue to claim that they are right.
How to deal with people who claim to be always right?
As you mature in life, you realize that peace is more important than being right. When you are aware of your strength and what you are capable of, you don't have to prove anything to anyone, not even yourself. That level of self-knowledge gives you perspective. It gives you the essential psychological distance to know which battles deserve to be fought and which ones are best left alone.
Maturity also gives you the wisdom to understand that you can't always change people. Everyone must follow his own path. Learn from your mistakes. Fall and get up. That path is part of his life journey, and even if you have the best of intentions, you can't always get a person obsessed with always being right to develop an open mind.
This means that in the vast majority of cases you don't have to fight with a person who always wants to be right. Perhaps you should ask yourself how interested you are in giving your opinion and what value it could bring. In more extreme cases, you may also wonder how interested you are in maintaining a relationship with that person.
Of course, sometimes there is no choice but to accept the challenge, especially when that person wants to impose their way of seeing the world or their absurd and whimsical decisions can hurt you.
In that case, instead of openly declaring war on her, the smartest thing to do is to encourage her to think. You can do this through questions that offer an alternative to the common thread of his thoughts, such as: "How did you come to this conclusion?" or "Have you ever thought that ...?"
With any luck, these questions will get him to reconsider his opinion and consider another possibility without feeling too offended to be defensive.
Finally, it is better to be aware that we often make mistakes and we do not know everything because in this way we will always be motivated to seek, grow and improve. The alternative, believing that you are always right, means, among other things, not feeling the need to change and learn. An old saying goes: "Either you are happy or you are right ...", who knows who it belongs to, but it is very true.
