When does intellectual pride hinders thinking?

Question

When does intellectual pride hinders thinking?

Answer 1

This can happen even at the highest echelons of academia.  Published and respected professors who have devoted their life's work to a theory, only to have it come to question when new evidence is uncovered, are often the staunchest detractors of anything new that may disprive their theory.  For example, in psychology, at the height of Watson and Skinner, behaviourists refused to see beyond anything that could not be explained by external observation (S-R) for a long time.