On the willingness to admit wrongness: Validation of a new measure and an exploration of its correlates

Wrongness admission is the act of a person publicly acknowledging that they held an inaccurate belief or attitude. Some people seem more willing to engage in wrongness admission than others. These individual differences may be important in understanding the prevention of wrongness admission. The purpose of these studies was to develop and validate a measure of the willingness to admit wrongness. In three studies (Ntotal = 579), we created a 7-item scenario-based measure (“WAW”) and found that it was correlated with agreeableness, honesty/humility, and, to a lesser extent, openness to experience. Furthermore, those who scored higher on the WAW were more likely to indicate that they would publicly admit they are wrong on Facebook and were more likely to admit wrongness in daily life. This measure will be helpful as theories of wrongness admission develop, but also when considering interventions that may increase wrongness admission and intellectual humility in the general public.