i consider myself a pretty well-liked dude, and this is one of my secrets to social success, if you will.

there's a shitload of reasons why i almost WANT to be the guy to apologize for being wrong - even if i'm not

1) if it's just you and someone else, and you know you're right, obviously the other person thinks they are just as right. you have an entire life's worth of time to prove beyond a doubt how they're wrong, so just let it go. because, 9 times out of 10, they will usually say something that contradicts themselves, THAT DAY. you can then jump on it and mention that whatever they said, doesn't seem to jive with what they said earlier, etc... you gain +3 social points because you were polite and conceded the initial argument, plus you get a point for remembering the conversation and bringing it up later. the third point you get is because if you do it right, usually they wind up thinking THEY figured out that THEY were wrong, so they still feel in the right.

2) if you're in a group and this happens you definitely wanna bail ASAP. because you KNOW whenever you hear 2 of your friends start to argue, 99% of the time you're just like "who cares stop arguing". so conceding an argument in front of a group really saves the group alot of hassle, and boosts the impression that the person you're arguing with would rather be stubborn, than right. makes you look like the reasonable one, which really goes far in the long term

source: my lack of social awareness is borderline autistic so i had to study people for a long time. and i debated in middle and high school, so my group of friends are stereotypically argumentative about the most asinine shit