This short excerpt from Eckhart Tolle's YouTube video explains how the unconscious need to be right is an egoic form of self-assertion. Tolle illustrates how disagreement can quickly pull a person into unconsciousness—defending a mental position, becoming louder, and identifying with the ego, sometimes leading to attacks on another person via conceptual labels rather than seeing them as human.
The need to be right is a very deeply unconscious egoic way of exercising self assertion. This is a very, very common form of unconsciousness. And you can see it around you in everyday life. Let's say you have a conversation, you're disagreeing, and then you have to be very alert to catch yourself, because you can get quickly drawn into unconsciousness and you begin to defend your mental position. You become more loud. And that's an indication that you're beginning to be totally identified with your mental, which is ego. And then you find yourself shouting out your mental position. That's the ego. You may not only be attacking the other's mental position, you may be actually attacking the other human being for what they are, whatever they may be. You have some conceptual label that you impose on them.
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