I see NVC as being badly flawed and based on the types of poor thinking LW specifically guards against,
Really?
A quick google brought me to this list of skills:
Differentiating observation from evaluation, being able to carefully observe what is happening free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us;
Differentiating feeling from thinking, being able to identify and express internal feeling states in a way that does not imply judgment, criticism, or blame/punishment;
Connecting with the universal human needs/values (e.g. sustenance, trust, understanding) in us that are being met or not met in relation to what is happening and how we are feeling; and
Requesting what we would like in a way that clearly and specifically states what we do want (rather than what we don’t want), and that is truly a request and not a demand (i.e. attempting to motivate, however subtly, out of fear, guilt, shame, obligation, etc. rather than out of willingness and compassionate giving).
At least 1, 2, and 4 sound like excellent interpersonal skills to have, and 1, 2, and 3 are good intrapersonal skills as well.
I would in fact say that this list describes critical rationality skills, ones that are not even optional for practical rationality on human hardware.
Which part of this list do you find objectionable? Or is it something I wasn’t able to find in the first inch or two of Google links?
(1) Any skill prefaced with “being able to” is compelling, as one could always just not do it and be no worse off. My concern is that NVC seems so prescriptive, admittedly it seems like the best approach to have were one restricted to one approach in interpersonal situations. However, one is not. I won’t disparage abilities if that’s truly what’s learned, but one is an order of magnitude better off if one knows when to not apply them. As I don’t see a deep theoretical understanding of reality inspiring the principles, I don’t know how NVC could instruct adherents regarding when exceptions to general rules arise. NVC’s principles and methods are likely optimal in more situations than any other similarly narrow advice.
(4) This is similar to (1), but it’s not true that this is always the best way to get something, nor is it true that having a genuine request rejected is the second best thing for a person. For instance, one might feel better off if one’s offensive and irritating request is rejected than if one’s genuine request is. In general, I am not unduly confident in my specific examples of when one ought to abjure the usual methods, but broad statements that there are no such situations are not reassuring, particularly when they are based on suspect analysis of human nature.
(2) I hope that “imply” is meant in its most expansive sense, “to make another (eventually) infer”, regardless of what a random person would probably think or feel or the immediate effect of the language.
Negotiation teaches one to customize one’s strategy in a way I don’t see in NVC. One is encouraged to know precisely when screaming, insulting, etc. would be most effective in meeting one’s goals. Have you ever seen a debate in which one person began to lose their cool and shout, and their interlocutor responded by affecting calm and lower the volume of their voice? It is an effective way to make an angry person angrier if one is trying to win a debate by making them look silly. In contrast, were I in a similar situation with a person with whom I had an important relationship, I might match their yelling and offensiveness so as to make them less embarrassed about losing control.
I advocate truly, broadly considering another person and what makes them infer, however, all NVC stuff I’ve seen gives the impression of a sweeping attempt to moderate violent expressions and suppress blame rather than a cool consideration of situations and consequences. I currently suspect NVC means “does not imply blame” in a way that categorically forbids expressions like “It’s your fault, you ass mucus.” It would be an argument from ignorance to just declare such a phrase (stipulate also any amount of vituperation) can never be the best thing to say.
(3) The idea that human needs are all universal is de-individualizing. Rather, people have very different needs. Once again, by listing the most common human needs, NVC may be better than nothing, and it may be better than any other similar listing, but authentic openness to others includes the idea they have needs alien to you and perhaps unique. Bearing the most common ones in mind is fine, of course. I recognize that this text does not say (or disclaim the idea that) all human needs are universal, as other NVC sources at least strongly imply.
Actually, no. People just have different ways of getting those needs met. The idea that people can actually have different fundamental needs is terribly unscientific—it implies that there’s more physical differentiation between individuals within a species than genetics allows.
[other stuff]
In general, it seems that your argument isn’t with NVC skills per se, but with the implication that their method is the one and only thing you should use, ever. But, part of learning any skill is the “man with hammer” phase, in which you really do need to pretend the whole world is a nail. That way, you can actually internalize for yourself which of those .03 percent or whatever things are not, in fact, nails.
Your broad assertion that LWers are special in being able to take in this sort of information is also a bit off-base: it doesn’t matter whether LWers can take in this (abstract) information, because abstract information is not a skill. And unconscious skill development can actually be hindered by an excess of conscious processing.
Could NVC be taught in a way that includes less epistemic garbage? Sure. Should one care? Not really, if one simply desires to obtain the result being offered.
(And, it’s important to be clear about what result you want—negotiation skills are about influencing someone else, while ISTM that NVC is about becoming a more compassionate person who understands others better and can communicate their intentions clearly. Some of these goals may well be antithetical to zero-sum negotiation, in that there may be reason to conceal one’s intentions, or to avoid any potentially-exploitable compassion.)
Actually, no. People just have different ways of getting those needs met. The idea that people can actually have different fundamental needs is terribly unscientific—it implies that there’s more physical differentiation between individuals within a species than genetics allows.
I think you are right and I was wrong. Compare the HNP core concerns, the Max-Neef needs, and the NVC needs inventory for more insight.
zero-sum negotiation
That’s not at all what the negotiation project is about. Negotiation theory encompasses zero-sum negotiation (a special case) as well as normal collaborative negotiations, as well as what the latest book calls Bargaining with the Devil, When to Negotiate, When to Fight. Characterizing negotiation as being about how to succeed in zero-sum situations is just wrong, negotiation goes Beyond Winning.
negotiation skills are about influencing someone else
Self control is an important element in influencing others, and as such it is central to negotiation theory. So is interpreting the world as it actually is. Clearly communicating one’s desires without having them interpreted as anything more demanding than a request (i.e. NVC) is useful, but it is only one way to interact with people and will not always be ideal, even among those one is emotionally intimate with.
Self control is an important element in influencing others, and as such it is central to negotiation theory. So is interpreting the world as it actually is. Clearly communicating one’s desires without having them interpreted as anything more demanding than a request (i.e. NVC) is useful, but it is only one way to interact with people and will not always be ideal, even among those one is emotionally intimate with.
I didn’t say negotiation and NVC didn’t have areas of overlap, I said there were areas where their goals might be in conflict. Not the same thing. (I also didn’t say that negotiation was always zero-sum, I said that zero-sum negotiation was an area where conflicts with NVC would likely exist.)
Compare the HNP core concerns, the Max-Neef needs, and the NVC needs inventory for more insight.
You could also look at my own SASS model, or the Murray-Bennett-Robbins models found in lots of self-help stuff. (See e.g. Robbins’ TED talk about the six human needs.) There’s also a recent 16-point needs model that lists all the same stuff, organized differently. (I don’t remember the scientist’s name right off, sorry.)
Pretty much every model of human needs ends up with the same big list, just grouped differently as far as categories. And what categorization you use really depends on what functional goals you have for applying your model, rather than there being any epistemologically “correct” classification. (Well, in theory, there’s whatever physical groupings that occur in the brain or genome, but there’s no point in waiting until we know that before we use the information we have.)
In general, when one is trying to train people to achieve some practical result, the best categorization to use is one that is both mnemonic, and closely tied either to the actions students need to take, and/or to the diagnostic/classification criteria they’ll be using. So, HNP, NVC, and I can all have quite legitimate reasons for categorizing the basic needs differently, depending on what we intend to train people to do.
To respond to this whole thread of discussion, what it seems to me is that NVC is a quite useful tool, and negotiation theory is the toolbox and instruction manuals.
It also seems that NVC could be a better designed tool (that’s not to say that it won’t do it’s job!), and that negotiation theory could be a better formulated heuristic of when to use the NVC-tool, and when to use the other tools...
My concern is now cutting the cruft from both and adding the useful bits into the repertoire of my own rationality.
I’ll have to look into them both further before I make any more in-depth of a comment than that, though.
ETA: Any recommendations on where to start reading up? (Free/online preferrable.)
I didn’t say negotiation and NVC didn’t have areas of overlap, I said there were areas where their goals might be in conflict.
It’s helpful and not difficult to see that zero-sum negotiations are a subset of negotiations in general. The principles of negotiation don’t shatter when a situation is zero-sum, rather, variables applicable to general/collaborative negotiation take on extreme values.
A model that recommended certain behaviors, all ideal for zero-sum negotiation, wouldn’t have goals “in conflict” with standard HNP, and if HNP recommends the same thing as this hypothetical zero-sum unit, then the situation is not best described by “areas of overlap”. It would be encompassed and limited, but fine for what it is.
However, there would be a serious problem if the model’s users did not recognize its limitations relative to the broader theory that encompasses it and correctly cease to use it often. If their beliefs about the system are false, it doesn’t seem likely the model’s designers would happen to find all the correct times to stop using it. It would furthermore be unfortunate if zero-sum trained people found themselves totally at sea whenever that happened, when they could have learned the broader approach all along, like someone who fails a history exam because it must be written in cursive, when they know history and print but not cursive. Hmm I hope to think of a better analogy.
I think that perhaps you are overly concerned with trying to present HNP as unequivocally superior to NVC. I am speaking here only about general criteria for evaluating bodies of knowledge, so your specific arguments about areas of applicability are of no import to me.
I’m not trying to say your favorite body of knowledge isn’t spectacularly wonderful, I’m simply saying that you are wrong to use the epistemic truth or falsehood of “motivational” beliefs as part of evaluating the instrumental utility of a body of practical knowledge that contains said motivational beliefs.
(Where a “motivational” belief is a verbal statement or set of advocated principles whose sole function within that body of knowledge is to prime one or more intuition pumps that are part of the skill being taught.)
This has nothing to do with HNP; it’s strictly regarding your earlier dismissal of NVC. So, it would not matter one whit whether the things being discussed were ABC and XYZ instead of HNP and NVC—I would still be making the same basic point here.
I’m simply saying that you are wrong to use the epistemic truth or falsehood of “motivational” beliefs as part of evaluating the instrumental utility of a body of practical knowledge that contains said motivational beliefs.
Where a “motivational” belief is a verbal statement or set of advocated principles whose sole function within that body of knowledge is to prime one or more intuition pumps that are part of the skill being taught.
Do you have evidence that this is the sole intended function of the foundational NVC beliefs (and many others), as distinguished from others which are intended as both true and motivational?
This is an example of a person (a CNVC Certified Trainer and Executive Director) correctly using a motivational “belief”. He thinks of himself as if he were a robot and has different homunculi within him, etc., and he is able to do this without actually believing he is a robot. He will certainly not derive things based on the assumption his nature being that of a robot, unlike with the false beliefs underlying so much of NVC, such as that his true nature is non-violent and socialization has taught him violence, etc.
Having false beliefs is bad in ways that are hard to predict, and it is important not to seek beliefs that are useful in a narrow sense rather than true (which is useful in the broad sense).
The concept you are talking about is common and widely used, and it’s even used correctly by the NVC person in the example I gave, but I have not seen and you have given no evidence that that is what NVC does most of the time.
I said that NVC is sub-optimal because the theory is untrue, it’s unclear how much the practice was shaped by the theory rather than vice versa, unlike the HNP it doesn’t seem to be based on rigorous peer review, etc. see above. You really have been talking about ABC and XYZ, and the point you are trying to make does not arise naturally in this case since that is apparently not what NVC is generally doing. Thanks to HNP, we know negotiation/interpersonal interaction can be taught, and well, without resorting to useful lies. I first said:
I am very, very unimpressed with it, particularly as it contrasts with a negotiation course I took taught by an editor of the last few books of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project Director.
My “dismissal” of NVC was due to knowing that there is a better way, so it doesn’t make sense to say “This has nothing to do with HNP” if the subject is my dismissal of NVC. As far as I could see from a quick overview, NVC is actually quite similar to a subset of HNP, that’s why it’s possible to say one is better than the other. It’s easier to compare shortstops to shortstops than shortstops to pitchers, particularly if those pitchers are jugs used for holding liquids. But a player who can play any position is really something.
I agree motivational “beliefs” are useful tools, but swooping down like Spider-Man to rescue false beliefs by saying they weren’t intended to be true would be an instance of the no true Scotsman fallacy, and trying to rescue them by saying no motivational “beliefs” are intended to be true (in the context of NVC) would be unsupported.
False statements don’t have the property of ritual impurity, irrevocably tainting by association all things associated with the speaker. Of course NVC could contain something useful. I qualified my skepticism based on my familiarity with it, its habit of proliferating nonsensical theories, etc. You introduced the word “dismissal”.
I am speaking here only about general criteria for evaluating bodies of knowledge, so your specific arguments about areas of applicability are of no import to me.
Pretend they’re analogies. In general, if one knows it is possible to teach a true theory or a false theory to motivate behavior, all else equal, the true one is preferable. E.g. NVC v. HNP. One cannot entirely dismiss the false belief based system unless one knows the goals are achievable under a true one, e.g., there is a difference in what judgments of NVC are justified between one person who knows about HNP and another who does not.
I agree motivational “beliefs” are useful tools, but swooping down like Spider-Man to rescue false beliefs by saying they weren’t intended to be true would be an instance of the no true Scotsman fallacy, and trying to rescue them by saying no motivational “beliefs” are intended to be true (in the context of NVC) would be unsupported.
Do note that I didn’t make either of those arguments. You still seem to be confusing me with someone who wishes to promote NVC.
(If I were such an advocate, I’d be a pretty bad one, since many of my statements to you have been both evaluative and judgmental. ;-) )
Really?
A quick google brought me to this list of skills:
At least 1, 2, and 4 sound like excellent interpersonal skills to have, and 1, 2, and 3 are good intrapersonal skills as well.
I would in fact say that this list describes critical rationality skills, ones that are not even optional for practical rationality on human hardware.
Which part of this list do you find objectionable? Or is it something I wasn’t able to find in the first inch or two of Google links?
For realsies!
(1) Any skill prefaced with “being able to” is compelling, as one could always just not do it and be no worse off. My concern is that NVC seems so prescriptive, admittedly it seems like the best approach to have were one restricted to one approach in interpersonal situations. However, one is not. I won’t disparage abilities if that’s truly what’s learned, but one is an order of magnitude better off if one knows when to not apply them. As I don’t see a deep theoretical understanding of reality inspiring the principles, I don’t know how NVC could instruct adherents regarding when exceptions to general rules arise. NVC’s principles and methods are likely optimal in more situations than any other similarly narrow advice.
(4) This is similar to (1), but it’s not true that this is always the best way to get something, nor is it true that having a genuine request rejected is the second best thing for a person. For instance, one might feel better off if one’s offensive and irritating request is rejected than if one’s genuine request is. In general, I am not unduly confident in my specific examples of when one ought to abjure the usual methods, but broad statements that there are no such situations are not reassuring, particularly when they are based on suspect analysis of human nature.
(2) I hope that “imply” is meant in its most expansive sense, “to make another (eventually) infer”, regardless of what a random person would probably think or feel or the immediate effect of the language.
Negotiation teaches one to customize one’s strategy in a way I don’t see in NVC. One is encouraged to know precisely when screaming, insulting, etc. would be most effective in meeting one’s goals. Have you ever seen a debate in which one person began to lose their cool and shout, and their interlocutor responded by affecting calm and lower the volume of their voice? It is an effective way to make an angry person angrier if one is trying to win a debate by making them look silly. In contrast, were I in a similar situation with a person with whom I had an important relationship, I might match their yelling and offensiveness so as to make them less embarrassed about losing control.
I advocate truly, broadly considering another person and what makes them infer, however, all NVC stuff I’ve seen gives the impression of a sweeping attempt to moderate violent expressions and suppress blame rather than a cool consideration of situations and consequences. I currently suspect NVC means “does not imply blame” in a way that categorically forbids expressions like “It’s your fault, you ass mucus.” It would be an argument from ignorance to just declare such a phrase (stipulate also any amount of vituperation) can never be the best thing to say.
(3) The idea that human needs are all universal is de-individualizing. Rather, people have very different needs. Once again, by listing the most common human needs, NVC may be better than nothing, and it may be better than any other similar listing, but authentic openness to others includes the idea they have needs alien to you and perhaps unique. Bearing the most common ones in mind is fine, of course. I recognize that this text does not say (or disclaim the idea that) all human needs are universal, as other NVC sources at least strongly imply.
Actually, no. People just have different ways of getting those needs met. The idea that people can actually have different fundamental needs is terribly unscientific—it implies that there’s more physical differentiation between individuals within a species than genetics allows.
In general, it seems that your argument isn’t with NVC skills per se, but with the implication that their method is the one and only thing you should use, ever. But, part of learning any skill is the “man with hammer” phase, in which you really do need to pretend the whole world is a nail. That way, you can actually internalize for yourself which of those .03 percent or whatever things are not, in fact, nails.
Your broad assertion that LWers are special in being able to take in this sort of information is also a bit off-base: it doesn’t matter whether LWers can take in this (abstract) information, because abstract information is not a skill. And unconscious skill development can actually be hindered by an excess of conscious processing.
Could NVC be taught in a way that includes less epistemic garbage? Sure. Should one care? Not really, if one simply desires to obtain the result being offered.
(And, it’s important to be clear about what result you want—negotiation skills are about influencing someone else, while ISTM that NVC is about becoming a more compassionate person who understands others better and can communicate their intentions clearly. Some of these goals may well be antithetical to zero-sum negotiation, in that there may be reason to conceal one’s intentions, or to avoid any potentially-exploitable compassion.)
I think you are right and I was wrong. Compare the HNP core concerns, the Max-Neef needs, and the NVC needs inventory for more insight.
That’s not at all what the negotiation project is about. Negotiation theory encompasses zero-sum negotiation (a special case) as well as normal collaborative negotiations, as well as what the latest book calls Bargaining with the Devil, When to Negotiate, When to Fight. Characterizing negotiation as being about how to succeed in zero-sum situations is just wrong, negotiation goes Beyond Winning.
Self control is an important element in influencing others, and as such it is central to negotiation theory. So is interpreting the world as it actually is. Clearly communicating one’s desires without having them interpreted as anything more demanding than a request (i.e. NVC) is useful, but it is only one way to interact with people and will not always be ideal, even among those one is emotionally intimate with.
I didn’t say negotiation and NVC didn’t have areas of overlap, I said there were areas where their goals might be in conflict. Not the same thing. (I also didn’t say that negotiation was always zero-sum, I said that zero-sum negotiation was an area where conflicts with NVC would likely exist.)
You could also look at my own SASS model, or the Murray-Bennett-Robbins models found in lots of self-help stuff. (See e.g. Robbins’ TED talk about the six human needs.) There’s also a recent 16-point needs model that lists all the same stuff, organized differently. (I don’t remember the scientist’s name right off, sorry.)
Pretty much every model of human needs ends up with the same big list, just grouped differently as far as categories. And what categorization you use really depends on what functional goals you have for applying your model, rather than there being any epistemologically “correct” classification. (Well, in theory, there’s whatever physical groupings that occur in the brain or genome, but there’s no point in waiting until we know that before we use the information we have.)
In general, when one is trying to train people to achieve some practical result, the best categorization to use is one that is both mnemonic, and closely tied either to the actions students need to take, and/or to the diagnostic/classification criteria they’ll be using. So, HNP, NVC, and I can all have quite legitimate reasons for categorizing the basic needs differently, depending on what we intend to train people to do.
To respond to this whole thread of discussion, what it seems to me is that NVC is a quite useful tool, and negotiation theory is the toolbox and instruction manuals.
It also seems that NVC could be a better designed tool (that’s not to say that it won’t do it’s job!), and that negotiation theory could be a better formulated heuristic of when to use the NVC-tool, and when to use the other tools...
My concern is now cutting the cruft from both and adding the useful bits into the repertoire of my own rationality.
I’ll have to look into them both further before I make any more in-depth of a comment than that, though.
ETA: Any recommendations on where to start reading up? (Free/online preferrable.)
It’s helpful and not difficult to see that zero-sum negotiations are a subset of negotiations in general. The principles of negotiation don’t shatter when a situation is zero-sum, rather, variables applicable to general/collaborative negotiation take on extreme values.
A model that recommended certain behaviors, all ideal for zero-sum negotiation, wouldn’t have goals “in conflict” with standard HNP, and if HNP recommends the same thing as this hypothetical zero-sum unit, then the situation is not best described by “areas of overlap”. It would be encompassed and limited, but fine for what it is.
However, there would be a serious problem if the model’s users did not recognize its limitations relative to the broader theory that encompasses it and correctly cease to use it often. If their beliefs about the system are false, it doesn’t seem likely the model’s designers would happen to find all the correct times to stop using it. It would furthermore be unfortunate if zero-sum trained people found themselves totally at sea whenever that happened, when they could have learned the broader approach all along, like someone who fails a history exam because it must be written in cursive, when they know history and print but not cursive. Hmm I hope to think of a better analogy.
I think that perhaps you are overly concerned with trying to present HNP as unequivocally superior to NVC. I am speaking here only about general criteria for evaluating bodies of knowledge, so your specific arguments about areas of applicability are of no import to me.
I’m not trying to say your favorite body of knowledge isn’t spectacularly wonderful, I’m simply saying that you are wrong to use the epistemic truth or falsehood of “motivational” beliefs as part of evaluating the instrumental utility of a body of practical knowledge that contains said motivational beliefs.
(Where a “motivational” belief is a verbal statement or set of advocated principles whose sole function within that body of knowledge is to prime one or more intuition pumps that are part of the skill being taught.)
This has nothing to do with HNP; it’s strictly regarding your earlier dismissal of NVC. So, it would not matter one whit whether the things being discussed were ABC and XYZ instead of HNP and NVC—I would still be making the same basic point here.
Do you have evidence that this is the sole intended function of the foundational NVC beliefs (and many others), as distinguished from others which are intended as both true and motivational?
This is an example of a person (a CNVC Certified Trainer and Executive Director) correctly using a motivational “belief”. He thinks of himself as if he were a robot and has different homunculi within him, etc., and he is able to do this without actually believing he is a robot. He will certainly not derive things based on the assumption his nature being that of a robot, unlike with the false beliefs underlying so much of NVC, such as that his true nature is non-violent and socialization has taught him violence, etc.
Having false beliefs is bad in ways that are hard to predict, and it is important not to seek beliefs that are useful in a narrow sense rather than true (which is useful in the broad sense).
The concept you are talking about is common and widely used, and it’s even used correctly by the NVC person in the example I gave, but I have not seen and you have given no evidence that that is what NVC does most of the time.
I said that NVC is sub-optimal because the theory is untrue, it’s unclear how much the practice was shaped by the theory rather than vice versa, unlike the HNP it doesn’t seem to be based on rigorous peer review, etc. see above. You really have been talking about ABC and XYZ, and the point you are trying to make does not arise naturally in this case since that is apparently not what NVC is generally doing. Thanks to HNP, we know negotiation/interpersonal interaction can be taught, and well, without resorting to useful lies. I first said:
My “dismissal” of NVC was due to knowing that there is a better way, so it doesn’t make sense to say “This has nothing to do with HNP” if the subject is my dismissal of NVC. As far as I could see from a quick overview, NVC is actually quite similar to a subset of HNP, that’s why it’s possible to say one is better than the other. It’s easier to compare shortstops to shortstops than shortstops to pitchers, particularly if those pitchers are jugs used for holding liquids. But a player who can play any position is really something.
I agree motivational “beliefs” are useful tools, but swooping down like Spider-Man to rescue false beliefs by saying they weren’t intended to be true would be an instance of the no true Scotsman fallacy, and trying to rescue them by saying no motivational “beliefs” are intended to be true (in the context of NVC) would be unsupported.
False statements don’t have the property of ritual impurity, irrevocably tainting by association all things associated with the speaker. Of course NVC could contain something useful. I qualified my skepticism based on my familiarity with it, its habit of proliferating nonsensical theories, etc. You introduced the word “dismissal”.
Pretend they’re analogies. In general, if one knows it is possible to teach a true theory or a false theory to motivate behavior, all else equal, the true one is preferable. E.g. NVC v. HNP. One cannot entirely dismiss the false belief based system unless one knows the goals are achievable under a true one, e.g., there is a difference in what judgments of NVC are justified between one person who knows about HNP and another who does not.
Do note that I didn’t make either of those arguments. You still seem to be confusing me with someone who wishes to promote NVC.
(If I were such an advocate, I’d be a pretty bad one, since many of my statements to you have been both evaluative and judgmental. ;-) )