Why Is It So Hard To Admit When You’re Wrong?

PEOPLE WHO COMMIT intentional murder—and only those people—should be executed. That’s a view I held for virtually all of my adult life.

I am fully aware of the decadeslong debate over the death penalty. I have made it my business over the years to read the many conflicting studies on the practice’s efficacy. But I didn’t care if executing convicted murderers has a deterrent effect or not: I supported capital punishment because I want to do justice.

I am by nature a peaceable man; I have not hit anyone in anger since my teenage years. But my conception of what is just is informed by what I would want to do to a person who, beyond any shadow of a doubt, willfully killed my wife, another family member, or a close friend: inflict barbarous atonement for a barbaric act. One of the chief purposes of state-sanctioned execution has been to maintain social peace by forestalling blood feuds between people who would otherwise seek justice on their own.

I was not alone in advocating death sentences for murderers. Gallup reports that an average of 66 percent of Americans (and a majority of both parties) favored the death penalty for convicted murderers during the first decade of this century. By 2020, however, that number had dropped to 55 percent. Gallup has been documenting a widening gap on the issue between Republicans and Democrats over the past two decades, with a rock-solid 80 percent of Republicans still favoring the death penalty even as Democratic support has dropped to under 40 percent.

Despite that recent shift in the numbers, any rancor over the widening partisan divide with respect to the death penalty has been relatively mild compared to the growing estrangement over such issues as guns, affirmative action, climate change, and vaccinations. Research shows Americans increasingly align their opinions on hot-button issues along partisan lines and that they are likely to stick with those positions once committed.

Today, if you are a member of one of the two major American political parties, you are statistically likely to dislike and distrust members of the other party. While your affection for your own party has not grown in recent years, your distaste for the other party has intensified. You distrust news sources preferred by the other side. Its supporters seem increasingly alien to you: different not just in partisan affiliation but in social, cultural, economic, and even racial characteristics. You may even consider them subhuman in some respects.

AMERICANS GROW COLDER TOWARD THE OPPOSITE POLITICAL PARTY

You’re also likely to be about the characteristics of members of the other party, about what they actually believe, and even about their views of you. But you are trapped in a partisan prison by the psychological effects of