Making the Connection: Strategies to Build Effective Personal Relationships (Collection) (7 page)

Here, the arguer has focused on the general figures and statistics, but has also given an individual example of the benefit of the proposal.

What are the other person’s prejudices or assumptions?

We all come to arguments with prejudices and assumptions. Listen carefully to what the person is saying. What assumptions are they making? What kind of arguments do they seem to find convincing?

Remember that the person you’re listening to may have core beliefs that you’re not going to shake in the course of a short argument. You will not persuade a patriotic American that his country’s foreign policy in the past two decades has been profoundly wrong. And a religious person may be more likely to be sympathetic to a religious-based argument than to one based on the assumption that there is no God.

There are less obvious points to bear in mind, too. We all have views about ourselves. We have a particular image of ourselves and can get most disturbed when it’s apparent that others do not see us as we see ourselves. In an argument it can be a good idea to appeal to values that a person holds dear.

Bob:    “Sanjev, everyone knows that you’re a person who keeps his word. Just the other day Barbara was saying that ‘with Sanjev his word is his bond.’ So you cannot go back on the promise you made last week.”

In this argument Bob is appealing to Sanjev’s sense of identity as a person who is trustworthy. Most people care deeply about their reputations and how they are thought of by others. Appealing to a person’s core values and seeking to connect your arguments with those will be persuasive.

Useful example

“If you do this people will think you’re dishonest and manipulative. Do you want to be seen as that kind of person?”

Who does the person respect?

Finding out who the person you are arguing with respects or trusts is important. Imagine you know the person you’re arguing with is a passionate supporter of Barack Obama. It will be a powerful tool if you can point out that their view goes against
Barack Obama’s. At the very least, you should be able to say to them: “Look if Barack Obama disagrees with you, don’t you think that at least you need to think about the issue carefully?”

This is important too when considering which statistics you should use. If you know the person is a keen supporter of a particular children’s charity, say, then see if you can find a study by them supporting your conclusion. At the very least avoid statistics from organizations that the person you’re arguing with opposes. A militant atheist is not going to be convinced by a report on the power of prayer prepared by the Church of England. They would be more convinced if you could find a report from an atheist concluding that prayer can do some good.

Find common ground

A key to success in an argument is finding some common ground. Are there facts that you can agree on? Until there are some agreed-upon facts, it’s hard to proceed. Consider this argument between parents.

Getting it right

Mom:   “We must stop Tom watching
American Idol
. He’s watching too much TV.”

Dad:    “OK, but he loves
American Idol
. It would be really hard to stop him.”

Mom:   “Yes, but are we agreed Tom is watching too much TV?”

Dad:    “Yes, I agree.”

Mom:   “And he has watched two hours today already?”

Dad:    “That’s true.”

Mom:   “So he shouldn’t watch any more.”

Dad:    “Good point, let’s record it and he can watch it tomorrow.”

Mom:   “Good solution. Shall we say there is an absolute rule that he can watch no more than two hours of TV a day?”

Dad:    “Yes, that’s a good rule.”

This argument worked well. It could easily have gone wrong. Mom did well to move to establish some facts they could agree on. Dad, once he saw the key facts, agreed and they were able to find a solution.

There’s another lesson from this argument. The use of pronouns can be important. Talking of “we” can bring in the other person, and is a useful way to highlight what you agree on.

Useful examples

“Let’s try and establish what we agree on.”

“Could you explain that to me again? I’m having difficulty understanding your point.”

“We need to find a solution to this that we can both live with.”

Link up with a person’s positives. Where possible find areas of agreement:

“I agree you’ve made some great points in that presentation. However, we do need to weigh the disadvantages with the benefits.”

Everyone likes compliments and, even though it sounds old-fashioned, flattery. Just because you’re in an argument with someone doesn’t mean you can’t be nice to them!

But what if you can’t agree on the facts?

Sometimes it’s not possible to agree on the facts. In that case it may be that the argument is not going to go anywhere. In the preceding argument involving the parents, if they couldn’t have agreed on whether Tom had or had not watched television earlier in the day, it would have been difficult to resolve the argument.

Sometimes it’s useful to proceed in a discussion on the basis that a particular fact is true. For example, you might say: “Look, let’s assume that X is true, if so I agree with you.” You make it clear that you do not necessarily agree that X is true, and indeed if X turns out not to be true you will not agree.

This is particularly helpful if you think you have a strong case, even if your claim is wrong.

Bob:    “You think we should fire Lisa because she has lied to us. Now, we disagree on whether or not she has lied. But for the moment, let’s assume that she has lied. Even then, I still think we shouldn’t fire her. She’s never lied before and she’s a hard-working employee.”

Unless Bob makes this tactical move the argument may be stonewalled on the debate over whether or not there was a lie. However, if Bob succeeds in his argument that Lisa should be kept on whether or not she lied, then it matters much less whether or not there was a lie.

A similar tactic can be used to find a “contingent solution” to the argument:

Wu:     “Well, I know we’re disagreeing about how much this project is going to cost, but what about this as a solution? We’ll get the accounting department to cost this project. If they decide that it costs under $30K we’ll go ahead, but if it’s more we will not.”

In a case like this, where the facts are unknown or disputed, there’s not much point carrying on the argument until the facts are known. It’s better either to stop the argument until the facts are known, or to reach an agreement that will depend on the facts once they are known.

Summary

So, in all sorts of ways, listening has its advantages. You learn the other person’s counter-arguments, which you can then address. You find out their perspective, and then have insight into which approach might best convince them of your point of view. And who knows, when you give them free rein to spout off, they might very well dig themselves a hole they can’t get out of. So listen, listen, listen. I mentioned it thrice, it’s not such a price.

In practice

When listening, be careful not to daydream about what you’re going to say next. Practice attentive listening, where you are digesting exactly what that other person is saying. In doing so, you will add depth to your own argument, and be able to build common ground from which to move forward.

Chapter 5. Golden Rule 5: Excel at responding to arguments

As I’ve said several times already, being a good arguer means not only making the points that you want to make, but also responding to the points that other people have made. The best form of argument involves putting forward your best arguments and seeking to counter the other person’s.

There are three ways of responding to an argument:

• Challenging the facts upon which the other person is relying.

• Challenging the conclusions they are reaching.

• Accepting the point they have made, but arguing that there are other points that outweigh what has been said.

This will be clearer if we look at some examples.

All English people dress badly. The Queen is English. Therefore the Queen dresses badly.

Here there are two premises: that all English people dress badly and that the Queen is English. From this there is the conclusion that the Queen dresses badly. The logic here is flawless, but if you wanted to challenge the argument you can challenge the first premise—is it correct that all English people dress badly? Can you think of an English person who dresses well? (Probably not!) You might challenge the other premise—the Queen is English—but that seems harder to challenge. As this example shows, sometimes you cannot fault the logic of the argument, but you can challenge the accuracy of the statements (premises) used as the basis of the argument.

The Pope is Catholic. The Pope opposes abortion. All Catholics oppose abortion.

For this argument there are two premises: that the Pope is Catholic and that the Pope opposes abortion will be readily agreed by most people. But here the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Just because one person who belongs to a group has a view does not mean everyone has that view.

This is another bad argument:

A banana is a fruit. A banana is yellow. All fruit is yellow.

In both these arguments, weak conclusions are reached from indisputable facts. So conclusions do not always flow from the facts. Challenging a conclusion someone has made is the second excellent way of responding to an argument.

The third form of challenging an argument accepts the premise and conclusion, but asserts that the argument ignores other factors.

Walking to school is healthy. We want to be healthy. We should walk to school.

Assuming for the moment the premises and logic of this argument are correct, as they probably are, it’s not the end of the argument. We might want to be healthy, but there are other things that we want (e.g. getting to school on time, arriving in a cheerful mood) that need to be weighed against this argument. Also, there are different ways of being healthier that might fit into the day more easily. So while walking to school is laudable, the conclusion reached could be challenged by raising other factors that might pertain to this particular situation.

Let’s look at these different ways of responding to arguments in more detail.

Challenging the facts

Imagine Bob says this:

“Average temperatures in the US are falling, not rising, and therefore talk of global warming is nonsense.”

One way a person concerned about global warming could respond is by challenging the factual basis of the argument. They might be able to produce a survey that showed that in fact average temperatures in the US are rising.

As we have already seen, statistics and studies can be misleading. We saw in Golden Rule 1 how easily statistics can be misused. Remember some of the key things to ask about statistics:

• Who did the study? Was it independent?

• How big was the sample? Was it representative?

• Exactly what does the study show?

It is easy to be taken in by “science.” Beware of someone trying to bamboozle you with long words. Madsen Pirie, a leading expert on logic, gives an example of how something very simple can be made very complex:

The small, domesticated carnivorous quadruped positioned itself in sedentary mode in superior relationship to the coarse-textured rush-woven horizontal surface fabric.

Or, in more simple words: the cat sat on the mat!

It’s a common trick in arguing to make something sound very complicated. You are not then able to understand it and argue against it. Indeed, the trick is to make you believe that you’re not clever enough to understand their point and therefore agree to whatever they say. This is particularly common in academia. My experience is that, in fact, really clever people are able to explain their ideas in a very straightforward way. It’s those who
are less clever who feel the need to dress up their ideas with long words or complex ideas. You should never feel embarrassed about asking someone to explain what they’re saying in terms a reasonably intelligent person can understand. If they can’t, the fault lies with
them
, not with you!

Tip

Some people seem to live by the principle “Never use a four-letter word when a fourteen-letter word will do.” Beware of them!

Relying on experts can be a problem if you assume that as they’re expert in one area, they’re expert in all. Of course we can see that they are knowledgeable in a particular field, but in many other areas you could be far better versed. Certainly don’t listen to an academic expert on the topic of cars (an example of my extreme bias in making this presumption). I know many professors who are world experts in their fields, but there are few of them whose views on which is the best barber in Chicago I would accept; indeed, their appearance tells me more about which are the worst!

It is remarkable how the press, in particular, is willing to listen to the views of an expert on one area, and assume they are an expert in all areas. Film stars, for example, often weigh in on complex political matters and are asked for their political insight, information that would better come from an analyst in the field.