Bitter Medicine

CORE DEFINITION

Honest advice grates on the ear while benefiting conduct: the classical saying holds that sincere and useful counsel is often rejected because it is harsh to hear and wounds pride. The core proposition is that discomfort at criticism is produced by self-defensive processes and confirmation bias rather than by the criticism being wrong, so the feeling is not a reliable guide to the advice's quality. The key qualification is that the principle cuts both ways, since the discomfort does not make the advice correct and a speaker's good intentions do not excuse a delivery that prevents the message from being received.