This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Have you ever noticed when you offer a friend or a colleague or a partner a suggestion for improvement,

they often experience an urge to defend themselves?

Rather than listen to how they might change or do something better, they try to preserve the

status quo. Like generals fighting a war, they try to protect every square inch of the person they

are instead of embracing the person they might become. In our episode last week, winning the battle against yourself, we looked at how we often

fail to make changes in our lives because our best intentions are at odds with what scientists

call the value system in the brain. This brain network tends to prioritize the here and now

and nudges us toward immediate gratifications

instead of long-term benefits. If you miss that episode, I'd urge you to go back and listen to it

in this podcast feed. Today, we look at one of the most powerful reasons we fail to make changes in our lives.

Very often, the people around us can see what we need to do differently or better.

But when they tell us, when they offer us feedback, or, heaven forbid, criticism, we respond with anger, with denial, with defensiveness.

This is a paradox because many of us also believe we want to live lives of continuous improvement.

What better way to improve than to listen to suggestions for improvement.

Thank you. improve than to listen to suggestions for improvement. What causes so many of us to feel defensive?

How can we listen better to feedback and offer feedback in a manner that will be heard?

Overcoming defensiveness as a way to improving our lives.

This week on Hidden Brain.

We've all been there.

Someone pipes up at a work meeting to ask why we were late, or a partner

tells us we need to do a better job cleaning up after ourselves. A friend asks why we haven't

...