The Atlantic Changing Your Mind Can Make You Less Anxious Humans are programmed to think we’re right at all costs. Fighting that instinct will set you free. ” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the psychologist Henry Murray asked a sample of college sophomores to participate in a seemingly innocuous experiment in which they would write their “personal philosophy of life,” including their core values and guiding principles, and then engage in a civil debate with a young lawyer about the merits of the phil...