“Since the argument matches the template some of my psychological adaptations recognize as confrontational, emotions start to interfere with my normal cognition, and as a result I’m unable to think carefully and my argument is much less persuasive than expected.”
I’ve trained myself to notice when I start to get emotionally involved in a confrontation, and to make a conscious effort to take “one step back” and I deliberately apologize to the person for something, though not necessarily what we’re arguing about. That one step will a) snap me out of the confrontational mode, and b) convince whoever I’m talking to that I’m reasonable and open to their point of view. This method has helped me a lot at work and with family, and I wish I could remember to use it all the time.
This method has helped me a lot at work and with family, and I wish I could remember to use it all the time.
Just keep on using it as much as you can, perhaps periodically reminding yourself, and the habit will reinforce itself.
If you want to improve faster, you could try something like Benjamin Franklin’s incredibly nerdy method: he would pick some good habit to reinforce (or bad one to avoid) and he would remind himself of this daily. Every time he fell short of his goal, he would make a check mark on a spreadsheet. When he’d gone a week without a single check mark, he would proceed on to the next habit on his list.
(Irrelevant story: Back in high school English class, we were assigned two essays about morality from the same time period. One was Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which was every bit as creepy as the title suggests. The other was Franklin’s description of his spreadseet-of-virtue experiment, which would not have been out of place as a top-level post on Less Wrong. Reading these together produced some of the most severe mood whiplash that is physically possible.)
“Since the argument matches the template some of my psychological adaptations recognize as confrontational, emotions start to interfere with my normal cognition, and as a result I’m unable to think carefully and my argument is much less persuasive than expected.”
I’ve trained myself to notice when I start to get emotionally involved in a confrontation, and to make a conscious effort to take “one step back” and I deliberately apologize to the person for something, though not necessarily what we’re arguing about. That one step will a) snap me out of the confrontational mode, and b) convince whoever I’m talking to that I’m reasonable and open to their point of view. This method has helped me a lot at work and with family, and I wish I could remember to use it all the time.
Just keep on using it as much as you can, perhaps periodically reminding yourself, and the habit will reinforce itself.
If you want to improve faster, you could try something like Benjamin Franklin’s incredibly nerdy method: he would pick some good habit to reinforce (or bad one to avoid) and he would remind himself of this daily. Every time he fell short of his goal, he would make a check mark on a spreadsheet. When he’d gone a week without a single check mark, he would proceed on to the next habit on his list.
(Irrelevant story: Back in high school English class, we were assigned two essays about morality from the same time period. One was Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which was every bit as creepy as the title suggests. The other was Franklin’s description of his spreadseet-of-virtue experiment, which would not have been out of place as a top-level post on Less Wrong. Reading these together produced some of the most severe mood whiplash that is physically possible.)