Nobody gets every belief right, and a Yale psychologist says admitting that is the first step toward a sharper, calmer mind.
Quick Take
- Yale trauma psychologist Joan M. Cook published a TIME op-ed on November 7, 2026, laying out how to build open-mindedness.
- Cook says no one’s beliefs are 100 percent accurate, and she encourages people to question their own assumptions like a detective.
- She points to confirmation bias, our tendency to favor information that fits what we already believe, as a key obstacle.
- A broader review of the science backs her up, showing bias-awareness training and perspective-taking can measurably boost open-mindedness.
What The Yale Psychologist Actually Said
Joan M. Cook, a trauma psychologist and professor in the Psychiatry Department at Yale School of Medicine, laid out her case plainly. “We’re human, so it’s not possible or even realistic to expect that every belief we hold is accurate,” she wrote. That’s not a small admission. It’s an invitation to question things we’d rather not question, starting with ourselves.
Cook isn’t telling people to swallow every claim that comes their way. She tells the people she works with to “put on their detective caps” and test whether a thought is actually true. That applies to beliefs about yourself, about other people, and about the wider world. It’s a method, not a surrender.
The Bias That Keeps Us Stuck
Cook zeroes in on confirmation bias, the habit of trusting information that confirms what we already think while brushing off anything that doesn’t. It’s a well-known trap, and it’s one reason arguments rarely change minds. People don’t usually weigh evidence fairly. They hunt for evidence that flatters their existing view.
Her fix is awareness training, simply learning to notice the bias in real time. She cites a comprehensive review showing that training people to recognize their own blind spots, paired with perspective-taking exercises, can genuinely increase open-mindedness. That review doesn’t claim instant transformation. It points to a trainable skill, not a personality fix.
Why Open-Minded Doesn’t Mean Wishy-Washy
Here’s where a lot of people get confused, and it matters. Open-mindedness is not the same as having no opinion or treating every claim as equally valid. Researchers define it as fairly weighing alternatives and being willing to update your view when the evidence actually warrants it. That’s a far cry from folding under pressure or pretending bad arguments deserve equal footing.
Perspective-taking, understanding how someone else sees an issue, is a related but separate skill from intellectual humility, which is recognizing the limits of your own knowledge. Conflating the three turns a precise psychological tool into a vague mood. Keep them separate, and the whole idea gets a lot more useful.
The Payoff: Less Division, Clearer Thinking
Studies on intellectual humility find a real link to lower political and religious polarization. People who accept they might be wrong tend to see opponents as less irrational and treat disagreements with less hostility. One analysis of more than 4,000 people found this held especially true for political beliefs, though the pattern was murkier on religious ones.
Other work finds intellectual humility can cool negative reactions toward people who hold different views entirely, which matters in a country where neighbors often can’t discuss politics without a fight breaking out. None of this requires caving on core convictions. It just requires admitting you might not have the full picture, which, frankly, nobody does.
Where The Training Can Backfire
Not every method works the same for everyone. One review of intervention research found that straight-up bias training produces large effects on average, but warns the approach can backfire if people feel personally attacked or threatened while learning about their own blind spots. That’s a useful warning for anyone trying to apply this at the dinner table instead of in a clinic.
The lesson lands squarely on personal responsibility, a theme conservatives have long championed over outsourcing judgment to institutions or algorithms. Cook’s advice doesn’t ask anyone to abandon core convictions or defer to authority. It asks each person to do the harder, quieter work: check your own thinking before assuming you’ve got it all figured out. That’s not weakness. It’s discipline.
Sources:
time.com, cambridge.org, academic.oup.com, tandfonline.com, psycnet.apa.org
