Never go to bed on an argument … and 19 other relationship ‘rules’ unpicked by experts

Is it wrong to flirt with other people? Do you have to agree on politics? And is it all about sex? Therapists examine the truths and myths of relationship lore - Joanna Moorhead in The Guardian

1 It’s not all about sex


TRUE “For most people, a satisfying sexual relationship is an important part of a good relationship,” says Susanna Abse, psychoanalytic therapist and author of Tell Me the Truth About Love: 13 Tales from Couple Therapy. “While sex may not be the most important thing, it’s certainly an indicator of chemistry, and it matters – especially at the start. Also, if you’re having bad sex with someone in the beginning, why would you want to carry on?”

2 Your partner should know what you feel/need

FALSE This is one of those saccharine myths we’ve been sold by romantic fairytales. However close you are to someone, says Joanna Harrison, divorce lawyer-turned-couples-therapist and author of Five Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have, you’ll never be able to second-guess them on everything. “And why would you want to? That would be boring. Also, people change; we’re all evolving.” What matters is that you each share what you’re feeling, you listen to one another, and you try to see things from your partner’s point of view.

3 No relationship can survive an affair

FALSE There are many kinds of affair, and this, says Abse, is key. “An affair can be an exit strategy, sure. But it can also be a protest – a way of bringing your partner’s attention to something that isn’t working for you in the relationship. If it’s that kind of affair, and you can work through why it happened with your partner, you can move on from it – providing apologies are given, reparations are made and forgiveness is forthcoming.”
If you’re having bad sex with someone in the beginning, why would you want to carry on?

4 A relationship is stronger if you share a bed

FALSE The important thing isn’t whether you share a bed – it’s talking about why if you don’t, says Harrison. “Whether it’s down to snoring or young kids, sleeping in separate beds reduces the intimate time you get together. So you need to discuss how you can compensate.” Make love on the sofa in the evening when the kids have gone to sleep. If snoring has driven you to separate rooms, at least have your morning tea in bed together.

5 Never go to bed on an argument

FALSE So often, says Terrence Real, family therapist and author of Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, rows happen because one or both partners have been drinking, or they’re not feeling good, or it’s late and you’re both tired. “What I say is: you’re not going to resolve anything tonight. Go to bed, and the next morning have a cup of tea together and talk it through.” All relationships are about the cycle of closeness, disruption and return to closeness. “Our culture worships the harmony phase, but a good relationship thrives on surviving the mess. The work of intimacy is the collision of imperfections, and how we manage those.”

6 It’s wrong to flirt with other people

TRUE You can be playful with someone, says Real, “but if you look into their eyes, there’s a difference between the shades being down – ‘shop closed’ – and the signal ‘come hither’. And if you’re using the sexual energy between you and someone else to feel excited, that’s like a mini-affair.” The rule is this, says Real: if your partner could hear you, and the way you’re speaking would upset them, it’s not OK.

7 People can’t change

FALSE. “I’m in the personality transplant business,” says Real. “Therapy is about understanding why we behave as we do, and making conscious decisions to change things in order to hang on to someone we care about.” Relate therapist Simone Bose, who runs her own practice, agrees that people can change, but they have to want to, and that means confronting aspects of themselves that might be uncomfortable or painful. “What’s hardest is overcoming the defensive mechanism you have as default,” she says.

  

8 Having arguments doesn’t have to be bad


TRUE If an argument escalates to violence or one partner feeling unsafe, that’s wrong, and you need expert help. But as you learn the landscape of your partner, says Harrison, arguments show you’re working each other out. “You’re finding out what your partner is passionate about, and sharing that. So these disagreements are full of useful information about what matters to each of you. If couples stop talking about what they care about, and sometimes arguing about it, they can start to feel disconnected.”

9 The ‘one’ is out there somewhere

FALSE “This is demonstrably nonsense: you only have to look at the people who find love again after losing their partner,” says Real. “We tend to fall in love with a person who we subliminally believe is going to heal us, give us what we didn’t get in our early life. Relationships tend to replay situations we’ve been in before. We fall in love with what completes us, in other words. And it’s this feeling – that we ‘fit together’ – that makes us feel we’ve found ‘the one’.” A successful relationship comes down to rewriting the script, so you’re not playing out things that went wrong in the past.

10 Once a cheater, always a cheater

TRUE and FALSE What’s most interesting about cheating, says Real, isn’t why someone does it – that’s obvious (it’s exciting, it’s sexy, it’s a thrill). No: the interesting thing is why someone doesn’t do it. “Cheating is always selfish: it’s always about overriding what you should do. So if you’ve learned from it and moved on, then no, you won’t necessarily be a cheater again. But your partner might never feel 100% assured you won’t do it again. It’s important to understand that.”

11 Marriage is just a piece of paper

FALSE “The question I’d ask a couple,” says Real, “is: who is your community? Who is supporting you, and how have you signalled you need that support, that you value it for your relationship?” Few rituals are left in modern life, he says, and a marriage ceremony is one that includes others as well as the couple themselves. “There’s something transformative about it being an experience embedded in the community,” he says. “That’s why it mattered to fight for the legal right for gay couples to marry.”

12 If a relationship needs therapy, it’s too late

FALSE Individuals are complicated, and partners who love one another and can see there’s potential for an ongoing relationship can also see there are stumbling blocks, says Bose. Having therapy, especially quite early on in a relationship, can ensure they get across those hurdles without the relationship being damaged. On the other hand, she cautions against therapy that goes on and on. “Some couples are scared to leave – you’ve got to be able to carry on without that crutch.”

13 You should always own up if you cheat

TRUE and FALSE You should usually confess, but not always, says Abse. “If we’re talking about a one-night stand on a business trip, maybe it’s OK, and better not to share it with your partner. But if you’ve had a longer-term relationship with someone else and you never reveal it to your partner, you’re avoiding something. It’s going to leave you in a sad place because you’ll have lost that sense that you and your partner share your deepest feelings.”

14 You have to agree on politics

FALSE If politics matters deeply to you then yes, says Bose, you need to be aligned. But if it doesn’t, voting for different political parties probably won’t unseat your relationship to any extent. “Much more important is sharing the same values: what’s important to you, what you truly believe matters. If you don’t agree on values, it seeps into your everyday life and can affect your relationship at a very deep level.”

15 Relationship problems always come down to money or sex

FALSE “In fact, they always come down to one thing: communication,” says Harrison. “Money and sex are taboo subjects in many families, and we all bring our family baggage to any relationship. But the issues aren’t about these things per se, they’re about being able to talk about these things – and everything else that matters.”

16 It’s always obvious when a relationship is over

FALSE Even for an experienced therapist like Joanna Harrison, it’s often not clear whether a couple are going to make it through. “Individuals have different thresholds for what they can deal with in a relationship,” she says. “There are no absolutes, no moment where it has to be all over.”

17 You need to have lots in common

FALSE In fact, says Abse, unconsciously we’re looking for someone who has attributes we’re lacking – because being with them helps us to learn different ways, and to grow our characters. “So if you’re a shy kind of person, you might find yourself attracted to someone gregarious.” It also means you can rely on the other person for those things – it’s the yin/yang thing. “A relationship is often more interesting and dynamic where there are challenges and differences.”

18 You need regular date nights

FALSE It’s not date nights that matter, says Harrison, it’s time together. So you don’t have to spend money or go out or have a treat (though that might be lovely). The bit your relationship needs is time shared as a couple: snuggled together on the sofa watching TV or a walk in the park can be every bit as good as a pricey meal out.

19 A baby will jeopardise your relationship

TRUE It’s tempting to hope a child who shares your genes, who you created together, will bond you and keep your relationship going. But, says Abse, relationship satisfaction goes down in the early weeks, months and years after the arrival of a baby. “Having a baby changes everything – you can’t underestimate that. You lose freedom, you lose autonomy, you lose intimacy. It’s a really challenging time for a couple.”

20 You can have a good sex life for ever

FALSE Viagra has sold us this idea, says Abse, and sure, in theory there’s no reason why sex should ever stop. But in the real world, things are different. “I’m wary of putting pressure on older people,” she says. “The reality is, for most long-term couples, sex drops off after their 50s or 60s. Those who carry on usually shift from swinging from the chandeliers to a more gentle, slow sex that might not involve penetration. It can be very intimate, but not all couples want it.”

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The Straw Man and The Great Indian Kitchen

By Girish Menon

In the introduction to his book ‘How to win every argument’ Madsen Pirie writes:

Sound reasoning is the basis of winning an argument. Logical fallacies undermine arguments…Many of the fallacies are committed by people genuinely ignorant of logical reasoning, the nature of evidence or what counts as relevant material. Others however might be committed by persons bent on deception. If there is insufficient force behind the argument and the evidence, fallacies can add enough weight to carry them through.

The Malayalam film The Great Indian Kitchen is one such exercise in fallacious reasoning. The film maker sets up and destroys a Straw Man in the form of some highly conservative Sabarimala devotees who are male, upper caste and Hindu­. In such households, the film argues, the women are perennially confined to the kitchen and subject to male whims. Some women have bought into the system while the female protagonist and her mother-in-law take up the feminist cause of subversion and rebellion.

A Straw Man, Pirie writes, is a misrepresentation of your opponent’s position, created by you for the express purpose of being knocked down. This is usually done by over-stating an opponent’s position. If your opponent will not make himself an extremist, you can oblige with a Straw Man.

The Straw Man is fallacious because he says nothing about the real argument. Its function is to elicit, by the ease of his demolition, a scorn which can be directed at the real figure he represents.

This writer carried out a straw poll (not representative at all!) among those who supported the filmmaker’s thesis and not one of them stated that they were aware of such instances happening to people known to them. Instead, most of them pointed their fingers to North Kerala where apparently such practices are rife. I did ask a former resident of North Kerala if such things happened there and his response was that ‘Women everywhere were the same North or any part of Kerala’.

Some feminists I know took up cudgels on behalf of the female protagonist even though their own life experiences did not match the film’s heroine. They quoted some sisters who were treated badly by their husbands, but added that these husbands also wanted to live of their wife's earnings. However, they were not willing to question the failure of the female protagonist, who is depicted as educated and modern, to carry out due diligence before entering into the marital contract.

In this writer’s view, the creation and destruction of the Straw Man is the only protest available to progressives and feminists. Because, despite the Supreme Court’s progressive decision in the Sabarimala case, even the progressive left government has declared its inability to implement reforms to Sabarimala rituals. This is because the majority opinion which includes many Hindu women want to maintain the status quo and are unconvinced by the feminist rhetoric.

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds - Lessons for Persuaders

By James Clear


The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, “Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.”

Leo Tolstoy was even bolder: “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”

What's going on here? Why don't facts change our minds? And why would someone continue to believe a false or inaccurate idea anyway? How do such behaviors serve us?

The Logic of False Beliefs

Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day.

However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong.

In Atomic Habits, I wrote, “Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence.”

Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. While these two desires often work well together, they occasionally come into conflict.
In many circumstances, social connection is actually more helpful to your daily life than understanding the truth of a particular fact or idea. The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker put it this way, “People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs, so one function of the mind may be to hold beliefs that bring the belief-holder the greatest number of allies, protectors, or disciples, rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true.”

We don't always believe things because they are correct. Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about.

I thought Kevin Simler put it well when he wrote, “If a brain anticipates that it will be rewarded for adopting a particular belief, it's perfectly happy to do so, and doesn't much care where the reward comes from — whether it's pragmatic (better outcomes resulting from better decisions), social (better treatment from one's peers), or some mix of the two.”

False beliefs can be useful in a social sense even if they are not useful in a factual sense. For lack of a better phrase, we might call this approach “factually false, but socially accurate.” When we have to choose between the two, people often select friends and family over facts.

This insight not only explains why we might hold our tongue at a dinner party or look the other way when our parents say something offensive, but also reveals a better way to change the minds of others.

Facts Don't Change Our Minds. Friendship Does.

Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome.

The way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially.

The British philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that we simply share meals with those who disagree with us:

“Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. However, the proximity required by a meal – something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt – disrupts our ability to cling to the belief that the outsiders who wear unusual clothes and speak in distinctive accents deserve to be sent home or assaulted. For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.”

Perhaps it is not difference, but distance that breeds tribalism and hostility. As proximity increases, so does understanding. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln's quote, “I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”

Facts don't change our minds. Friendship does.

The Spectrum of Beliefs

Years ago, Ben Casnocha mentioned an idea to me that I haven't been able to shake: The people who are most likely to change our minds are the ones we agree with on 98 percent of topics.

If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. You already agree with them in most areas of life. Maybe you should change your mind on this one too. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, it's easy to dismiss them as a crackpot.

One way to visualize this distinction is by mapping beliefs on a spectrum. If you divide this spectrum into 10 units and you find yourself at Position 7, then there is little sense in trying to convince someone at Position 1. The gap is too wide. When you're at Position 7, your time is better spent connecting with people who are at Positions 6 and 8, gradually pulling them in your direction.

The most heated arguments often occur between people on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the most frequent learning occurs from people who are nearby. The closer you are to someone, the more likely it becomes that the one or two beliefs you don't share will bleed over into your own mind and shape your thinking. The further away an idea is from your current position, the more likely you are to reject it outright.

When it comes to changing people's minds, it is very difficult to jump from one side to another. You can't jump down the spectrum. You have to slide down it.

Any idea that is sufficiently different from your current worldview will feel threatening. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates.

In conversation, people have to carefully consider their status and appearance. They want to save face and avoid looking stupid. When confronted with an uncomfortable set of facts, the tendency is often to double down on their current position rather than publicly admit to being wrong.

Books resolve this tension. With a book, the conversation takes place inside someone's head and without the risk of being judged by others. It's easier to be open-minded when you aren't feeling defensive.

Arguments are like a full frontal attack on a person's identity. Reading a book is like slipping the seed of an idea into a person's brain and letting it grow on their own terms. There's enough wrestling going on in someone's head when they are overcoming a pre-existing belief. They don't need to wrestle with you too.

Why False Ideas Persist

There is another reason bad ideas continue to live on, which is that people continue to talk about them.

Silence is death for any idea. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Ideas can only be remembered when they are repeated. They can only be believed when they are repeated.

I have already pointed out that people repeat ideas to signal they are part of the same social group. But here's a crucial point most people miss:

People also repeat bad ideas when they complain about them. Before you can criticize an idea, you have to reference that idea. You end up repeating the ideas you’re hoping people will forget—but, of course, people can’t forget them because you keep talking about them. The more you repeat a bad idea, the more likely people are to believe it.

Let's call this phenomenon Clear's Law of Recurrence: The number of people who believe an idea is directly proportional to the number of times it has been repeated during the last year—even if the idea is false.

Each time you attack a bad idea, you are feeding the very monster you are trying to destroy. As one Twitter employee wrote, “Every time you retweet or quote tweet someone you’re angry with, it helps them. It disseminates their BS. Hell for the ideas you deplore is silence. Have the discipline to give it to them.”

Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones. Don't waste time explaining why bad ideas are bad. You are simply fanning the flame of ignorance and stupidity.

The best thing that can happen to a bad idea is that it is forgotten. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared. It makes me think of Tyler Cowen's quote, “Spend as little time as possible talking about how other people are wrong.”

Feed the good ideas and let bad ideas die of starvation.

The Intellectual Soldier

I know what you might be thinking. “James, are you serious right now? I'm just supposed to let these idiots get away with this?”

Let me be clear. I'm not saying it's never useful to point out an error or criticize a bad idea. But you have to ask yourself, “What is the goal?”

Why do you want to criticize bad ideas in the first place? Presumably, you want to criticize bad ideas because you think the world would be better off if fewer people believed them. In other words, you think the world would improve if people changed their minds on a few important topics.

If the goal is to actually change minds, then I don't believe criticizing the other side is the best approach.

Most people argue to win, not to learn. As Julia Galef so aptly puts it: people often act like soldiers rather than scouts. Soldiers are on the intellectual attack, looking to defeat the people who differ from them. Victory is the operative emotion. Scouts, meanwhile, are like intellectual explorers, slowly trying to map the terrain with others. Curiosity is the driving force.

If you want people to adopt your beliefs, you need to act more like a scout and less like a soldier. At the center of this approach is a question Tiago Forte poses beautifully, “Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?”

Be Kind First, Be Right Later

The brilliant Japanese writer Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.”

When we are in the moment, we can easily forget that the goal is to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe. We are so caught up in winning that we forget about connecting. It's easy to spend your energy labeling people rather than working with them.

The word “kind” originated from the word “kin.” When you are kind to someone it means you are treating them like family. This, I think, is a good method for actually changing someone's mind. Develop a friendship. Share a meal. Gift a book.

Be kind first, be right later.

The science of influencing people: six ways to win an argument

Hidebound views on subjects such as the climate crisis and Brexit are the norm – but the appliance of science may sway stubborn opinions writes David Robson in The Guardian 

 

Illustration: Getty Images/Observer Design


“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters of religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s,” wrote Mark Twain.

Having written a book about our most common reasoning errors, I would argue that Twain was being rather uncharitable – to monkeys. Whether we are discussing Trump, Brexit, or the Tory leadership, we have all come across people who appear to have next to no understanding of world events – but who talk with the utmost confidence and conviction. And the latest psychological research can now help us to understand why.

Consider the “illusion of explanatory depth”. When asked about government policies and their consequences, most people believe that they could explain their workings in great detail. If put to the test, however, their explanations are vague and incoherent. The problem is that we confuse a shallow familiarity with general concepts for real, in-depth knowledge.

Besides being less substantial than we think, our knowledge is also highly selective: we conveniently remember facts that support our beliefs and forget others. When it comes to understanding the EU, for instance, Brexiters will know the overall costs of membership, while remainers will cite its numerous advantages. Although the overall level of knowledge is equal on both sides, there is little overlap in the details.

Simply asking why people support or oppose a policy is pointless. You need to ask how something works to have an effect

Politics can also scramble our critical thinking skills. Psychological studies show that people fail to notice the logical fallacies in an argument if the conclusion supports their viewpoint; if they are shown contrary evidence, however, they will be far more critical of the tiniest hole in the argument. This phenomenon is known as “motivated reasoning”.

A high standard of education doesn’t necessarily protect us from these flaws. Graduates, for instance, often overestimate their understanding of their degree subject: although they remember the general content, they have forgotten the details. “People confuse their current level of understanding with their peak knowledge,” Prof Matthew Fisher of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, says. That false sense of expertise can, in turn, lead them to feel that they have the licence to be more closed-minded in their political views – an attitude known as “earned dogmatism”.

Little wonder that discussions about politics can leave us feeling that we are banging our heads against a brick wall – even when talking to people we might otherwise respect. Fortunately, recent psychological research also offers evidence-based ways towards achieving more fruitful discussions.

Ask ‘how’ rather than ‘why’
Thanks to the illusion of explanatory depth, many political arguments will be based on false premises, spoken with great confidence but with a minimal understanding of the issues at hand. For this reason, a simple but powerful way of deflating someone’s argument is to ask for more detail. “You need to get the ‘other side’ focusing on how something would play itself out, in a step by step fashion”, says Prof Dan Johnson at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. By revealing the shallowness of their existing knowledge, this prompts a more moderate and humble attitude.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray and a pro-Brexit protester face off outside parliament earlier this year. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

In 2013, Prof Philip Fernbach at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues asked participants in cap-and-trade schemes – designed to limit companies’ carbon emissions – to describe in depth how they worked. Subjects initially took strongly polarised views but after the limits of their knowledge were exposed, their attitudes became more moderate and less biased.

It’s important to note that simply asking why people supported or opposed the policy – without requiring them to explain how it works – had no effect, since those reasons could be shallower (“It helps the environment”) with little detail. You need to ask how something works to get the effect.

If you are debating the merits of a no-deal Brexit, you might ask someone to describe exactly how the UK’s international trade would change under WTO terms. If you are challenging a climate emergency denier, you might ask them to describe exactly how their alternative theories can explain the recent rise in temperatures. It’s a strategy that the broadcaster James O’Brien employs on his LBC talk show – to powerful effect.

Fill their knowledge gap with a convincing story
If you are trying to debunk a particular falsehood – like a conspiracy theory or fake news – you should make sure that your explanation offers a convincing, coherent narrative that fills all the gaps left in the other person’s understanding.

Consider the following experiment by Prof Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan and Prof Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter. Subjects read stories about a fictional senator allegedly under investigation for bribery who had subsequently resigned from his post. Written evidence – a letter from prosecutors confirming his innocence – did little to change the participants’ suspicions of his guilt. But when offered an alternative explanation for his resignation – to take on another role – participants changed their minds. The same can be seen in murder trials: people are more likely to accept someone’s innocence if another suspect has also been accused, since that fills the biggest gap in the story: whodunnit.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Rory Stewart taking part in a BBC TV debate earlier this month. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

The persuasive power of well-constructed narratives means that it’s often useful to discuss the sources of misinformation, so that the person can understand why they were being misled in the first place. Anti-vaxxers, for instance, may believe a medical conspiracy to cover up the supposed dangers of vaccines. You are more likely to change minds if you replace that narrative with an equally cohesive and convincing story – such as Andrew Wakefield’s scientific fraud, and the fact that he was set to profit from his paper linking autism to MMR vaccines. Just stating the scientific evidence will not be as persuasive.

Reframe the issue
Each of our beliefs is deeply rooted in a much broader and more complex political ideology. Climate crisis denial, for instance, is now inextricably linked to beliefs in free trade, capitalism and the dangers of environmental regulation.

Attacking one issue may therefore threaten to unravel someone’s whole worldview – a feeling that triggers emotionally charged motivated reasoning. It is for this reason that highly educated Republicans in the US deny the overwhelming evidence.

You are not going to alter someone’s whole political ideology in one discussion, so a better strategy is to disentangle the issue at hand from their broader beliefs, or to explain how the facts can still be accommodated into their worldview. A free-market capitalist who denies global warming might be far more receptive to the evidence if you explain that the development of renewable energies could lead to technological breakthroughs and generate economic growth.

Appeal to an alternative identity
If the attempt to reframe the issue fails, you might have more success by appealing to another part of the person’s identity entirely.

Someone’s political affiliation will never completely define them, after all. Besides being a conservative or a socialist, a Brexiter or a remainer, we associate ourselves with other traits and values – things like our profession, or our role as a parent. We might see ourselves as a particularly honest person, or someone who is especially creative. “All people have multiple identities,” says Prof Jay Van Bavel at New York University, who studies the neuroscience of the “partisan brain”. “These identities can become active at any given time, depending on the circumstances.”

You are more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly. You will also come across better to onlookers

It’s natural that when talking about politics, the salient identity will be our support for a particular party or movement. But when people are asked to first reflect on their other, nonpolitical values, they tend to become more objective in discussion on highly partisan issues, as they stop viewing facts through their ideological lens.

You could try to use this to your advantage during a heated conversation, with subtle flattery that appeals to another identity and its set of values; if you are talking to a science teacher, you might try to emphasise their capacity to appraise evidence even-handedly. The aim is to help them recognise that they can change their mind on certain issues while staying true to other important elements of their personality.

Persuade them to take an outside perspective
Another simple strategy to encourage a more detached and rational mindset is to ask your conversation partner to imagine the argument from the viewpoint of someone from another country. How, for example, would someone in Australia or Iceland view Boris Johnson as our new prime minister?

Prof Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan, and Prof Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, have shown that this strategy increases “psychological distance” from the issue at hand and cools emotionally charged reasoning so that you can see things more objectively. During the US presidential elections, for instance, their participants were asked to consider how someone in Iceland would view the candidates. They were subsequently more willing to accept the limits of their knowledge and to listen to alternative viewpoints; after the experiment, they were even more likely to join a bipartisan discussion group.

FacebookTwitterPinterest The front pages of two New York newspapers on Friday 2 June 2017, as Donald Trump pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. Photograph: Richard B Levine/Alamy

This is only one way to increase someone’s psychological distance, and there are many others. If you are considering policies with potentially long-term consequences, you could ask them to imagine viewing the situation through the eyes of someone in the future. However you do it, encouraging this shift in perspective should make your friend or relative more receptive to the facts you are presenting, rather than simply reacting with knee-jerk dismissals.

Be kind
Here’s a lesson that certain polemicists in the media might do well to remember – people are generally much more rational in their arguments, and more willing to own up to the limits of their knowledge and understanding, if they are treated with respect and compassion. Aggression, by contrast, leads them to feel that their identity is threatened, which in turn can make them closed-minded.

Assuming that the purpose of your argument is to change minds, rather than to signal your own superiority, you are much more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly rather than belligerently, and affirming your respect for the person, even if you are telling them some hard truths. As a bonus, you will also come across better to onlookers. “There’s a lot of work showing that third-party observers always attribute high levels of competence when the person is conducting themselves with more civility,” says Dr Joe Vitriol, a psychologist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As Lady Mary Wortley Montagu put it in the 18th century: “Civility costs nothing and buys everything.”

Study Economics To Win Every Argument

by Girish Menon

The Emperor's new clothes courtesy Cactus Records

Since 1992 when former US President Bill Clinton’s campaign manager coined the winning slogan, ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ persuaders of all belief systems have been increasingly relying on economic arguments to win the debate. The Brexit vote and Trump’s election are recent examples of the success of an economic point of view to the detriment of all others. A student with a good A level in economics will be equipped to reason out the merits and demerits of each argument and defend her own belief system or prejudice.

The A Level syllabus

In the book The Econocracy three Manchester University students describe the irrelevance of their university’s economics syllabus, which failed to acknowledge and explain the financial crisis of 2008. On the other hand, the A level syllabus of the AQA board not only discusses the financial crisis of 2008 but also explores themes in behavioural economics, the fast emerging and highly popular area in modern economics..

In a nutshell an A level in economics is divided into two parts viz. Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. Microeconomics explores the theoretical utopia of a free market which is known as perfect competition and compares it with modern market phenomena like Monopoly, Oligopoly and Monopsony. Macroeconomics looks at the picture from a national point of view and explores themes like Inequality, Unemployment and Immigration, Economic Growth and Trade/Budget deficits. It also considers the tradeoffs that governments face as they try to resolve crises.

Am I suited for an Economics A Level Course?

Unlike economics courses at most universities which rely on a strong foundation in mathematics, an A level economics course is right for any student who has an A grade in Mathematics and English at the GCSE level. He should have a curiosity about the world he lives in, is able to think logically and must have a desire to debate issues based on evidence.

In short, an Economics A Level Course can combine well with the sciences, the arts, the languages as well as the humanities. You could do this A level especially when you wish to specialise in other subjects at the degree level.

What will I gain from doing the Economics A Level Course?

You will realise that there is no such thing as a free market. You will have heard politicians and other persuaders trying to praise the virtues of the free market. After doing an A level in Economics, you will understand the assumptions that underlie free market theory. You will then conclude that those arguing for a free market are not making objective arguments but are indulging in alternative facts.

You will realise the bluntness of economic policy tools and why governments are unable to solve the problems of climate change, rising inequality, racism and other social ills.

Most importantly, you will understand the meaning of economic terms. You will discover that many popular ‘economic arguments’ are actually political arguments couched in economic terms. You will then be able to indulge in debate in a confident manner and be able to point out loopholes in your opponents’ arguments.

Many handed person

A businessperson was once asked what kind of economist she wished to hire. She replied, ‘a one handed economist’. When she was asked to explain her strange reply, she said, ‘When I ask a question of an economist I want him to give me a straight reply and not resort to phrases like on the other hand…’.

A good A level economist may not be employed by the above businessperson, but he will get the ability to realise that almost all economic decisions are fraught with uncertainty and the law of unintended consequences. It will enable him to separate truthful people from snake oil salesmen. Isn’t that a worthwhile asset to have?

Why we argue – and how to do it properly

The internet provides ample space for stating opinions. But true persuasion is an art – one this week-long series aims to teach

• 
• • Protagoras
  • theguardian.com, Monday 9 September 2013 13.00 BST

Marlon Brando as Mark Anthony in the 1953 film Julius Caesar. 'True persuasion is democratic.' Photograph: Cine Text/Allstar

It's the weekend and you are heading out to meet friends at the cinema. You are looking forward to seeing the new thriller by a favourite director. But then you discover that some of your friends would rather see the latest superhero movie, or some a new romantic comedy. Everybody pauses, uncertain how to proceed. You decide to get everyone to see the thriller. You won't force them – after all, they are your friends and unlikely to remain so if you threaten them. You could bribe them by offering to buy the tickets – but movie-going is expensive enough as it is, and you don't want to set a precedent. So you decide to try and persuade them – to get them to really want to go. But how?

You could begin by telling your friends about reviews you have read recommending your chosen film and trashing the others – or by pointing out the relative box office success of the movies on offer. But what reviewers do your friends trust? Do they want to see a hit movie or are they the sort of people who like to "discover" hidden gems?

Perhaps you should remind them that on previous visits to the cinema your choices have been good ones. And all you want is for everybody to have a good time. Alternatively you might explain just how much you have been looking forward to the movie after a really bad week. Are your friends likely to be moved by pity or should you appeal to other feelings?

Perhaps these appeals – to the authority of reviewers, your own character, and to your friends' emotions – seem too manipulative. You could try logic. Movie-going may not be an exact science but there are degrees of reasonableness. If a director's movies have been dire since that first breakout hit then it's a good bet that the new one will be weak. You might argue that the superhero blockbuster is good but the genre can never be truly great; that one of the movies has a lead actor with a bad track record; that the comedy is so long the bar will shut before it ends.

However strong your convictions about quality cinema may be, these alone will not win the day. You need to make an argument. And a successful argument must appeal not to just anyone in general but to your friends in particular. It must be adapted to their estimations of movie reviewers, feelings and beliefs about you and your character, and rely on rational claims of a kind they will recognise.

What is true of the cinema is – in this case – also true in public and political life. In a democracy, rather than force or bribe people to assent to our ideology, we try to win them over through persuasion. That can be a challenge. It requires us to understand where other people are coming from and to develop arguments that are outward-facing.

Not everyone thinks as we do. People have different experiences and possess different information; they have different values and do not always share our criteria of judgment. To persuade them we have to make connections with our audience – with what they might think, feel and be familiar with. This is not about tricking people or fooling them. It is about truly persuading them to share our views on a particular issue – and that means developing a relationship.

A glance at the newspapers and much of the internet demonstrates, however, that many people think the purpose of public communication is to reflect well on themselves – to announce their own importance, specialness or cleverness. An infamous academic chooses not to be convincing but to increase his brand value by performing provocatively; a troll communicates publicly but seeks only private "lulz"; shouting things your audience already believes, yet pretending that you're not allowed to say them, seems to be an easy route to success on talk radio or the op-ed pages. But the only thing such people are saying with their arguments is "look at me!"

Online communication makes easy the simple affirmation of our beliefs, the monetisation of strident "opinion" and the anonymous onanistic expression of inchoate hostility. And that means more arguments – but less persuasion.

True persuasion is democratic. In giving people reasons to act with us we recognise that they aren't inferiors who can be compelled but thinking, feeling and speaking beings. And true persuasion is an art. Contrary to the books on the self-help and business psychology shelves there are no magic "words that work". You have to cultivate an "eye", developing a feel for situations and empathy for those you want to persuade. The name of that art is "rhetoric".

Of course, you don't need to bother with any of this if you and your friends just go and see your favoured films separately. But that is to give up on society, politics and progress. If people cannot persuade or be persuaded then there can be no shared beliefs, co-ordinated collective action or intellectual evolution. The only change will come from force, bribery or manipulation.

In defiance of such a bleak outcome, Comment is free will over the coming week run a series on how to argue in the spirit of Isocrates, the ancient Greek philosopher and rhetorician: "the kind of art which can implant honesty and justice in depraved natures has never existed and does not exist … But I do hold that people can become better and worthier if they conceive an ambition to speak well, if they become possessed of the desire to be able to persuade their hearers."

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How to judge your audience and remain true to your arguments

Being two-faced has had a bad rap recently. But to convince people of your argument you have to adapt it to your audience

• 
• • Protagoras
  • theguardian.com, Tuesday 10 September 2013 13.20 BST

'On BBC Question Time Russell Brand is never going to persuade Melanie Phillips, and she will never sway him. They'd be foolish to try.' Photograph: Matt Crossick/PA

One of the greatest achievements of reality television gameshows has been the promotion of a distinctive ethical principle: that almost the worst thing you can do is be "two-faced". To say one thing to one group of people and something else to another is widely regarded as the epitome of dishonesty. And the very worst thing? The failure to be "true" to yourself – to moderate or modify your public appearance in response to the expectations of others.

Adapt to circumstances

But if you want to persuade people, or simply communicate clearly, the last thing you should do is say the same thing to everyone and refuse to adapt to circumstances. On the contrary, the first step in developing a good argument is to think about how to fit it to the situation in which you find yourself. It used to be that skill in this was considered a virtue. Rhetoricians called it "decorum".

Today we think of being "decorous" as conforming. But all it means is being "fitting" – using words and arguments that are "apt" given the situation. It is generally a bad idea to give an expletive-packed wedding speech that endlessly insults the bride, not because expletives and insults are always bad but because they are at odds with the mood of collective celebration characteristic of weddings.

Similarly, an economist explaining the Phillips curve ought to do so differently if talking to a niece taking business studies GCSE, the retired sales executive next door or a room full of trade unionists.

Know your audience

In making an argument you are trying to bring three things into alignment: yourself, your words and your audience. You are trying to move your audience so that it is in agreement with you – but to do that you need to move too. And between you – what moves you both – is a form of words and a set of arguments. If you are inflexible, using words and making references that are completely at odds with your audience you won't persuade anybody of anything (except of the view that you are unconvincing and unintelligible).

In practical terms this simply means that you need to know your audience. Cicero, the Roman philosopher, rhetorician and politician, believed that the perfect orator would have to master everything to do with the life of other citizens: laws and customs, traditions and general outlooks, "the way people usually think". In becoming familiar with the general outlooks of other people, as well as the particular outlook of specific groups, you are better placed to adapt your argument as needed.

A problem in the present day is that contemporary communications media make decorum extremely difficult, if not completely impossible. Politicians have long been aware that words said in one context may be rebroadcast in quite another. They have tended to deal with this by being bland and non-commital or by supplementing what they say with briefing and spin. In adopting such positions on the basis of opinion polls and focus groups politicians make the opposite mistake to the foul-mouthed best man. They forget their argument and give themselves over entirely to the audience (who, in turn, succumb to boredom).

It's not only politicians who can find their words taken and used in a quite unexpected context. These days any of us might be live-tweeted or filmed and put online. The examples are piling up of those who forgot that what they said on social media was not private but being said to everybody. On below-the-line comments boards – where most are anonymous or pseudonymous – it is difficult to be sure who one is talking to. This is one reason why people on Guardian comment threads often try to appeal to the (possibly imaginary) audience they know that exists: the moderators, subeditors, or "Guardian readers".

Pitching to the third party

But if you want to persuade you need to have a better idea of the audience you mean to reach. And it isn't the person whose comments you are attacking. On BBC Question Time Russell Brand is never going to persuade Melanie Phillips, and she will never sway him. They'd be foolish to try. They are trying to persuade the people watching them. It is the same online. Persuasive arguments will be pitched to a "third party" – the audience of readers.

Of course you don't know who that audience is. Are they old or young, male or female, new to the topic or experienced? Yet all of us, when we start to compose some kind of general argument, has in mind an "ideal" or "typical" audience. It is worth being clear to yourself who you think this is. It shouldn't be people who think exactly as you do – since those aren't people you need to persuade. Nor should it be a bunch of idiosyncratic types who think like nobody else.

Let's be reasonable

It needs to be something like generally "reasonable" people, neither fanatical nor obstinate, informed but not specialist. What views or outlooks can you assume they share? What are they likely to think decent, kind and reasonable and what might they think is unacceptable, unkind and daft? Be clear on this and you can start to think about how to argue your case. That means paying attention to, and thinking about, other people, their feelings and experiences. If you want to have a chance of persuading people then you need to have a lot more than two faces. Don't be true to yourself. Be true to your arguments.

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How to use your anecdotes well – and sparingly

There's an art to telling stories to complement an argument without overdoing it – or making yourself the centre of attention

• 
• • Protagoras
  • theguardian.com, Wednesday 11 September 2013 11.01 BST

David Cameron, left, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown all used anecdotes about people they had met during the 2010 leaders' debate. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

The most memorable moment of the 2010 general election leaders' debate was when David Cameron tried to justify a point about immigration by citing the agreement of "a 40-year-old black man" he had met in Plymouth who had served in the Royal Navy for 30 years (thus enlisting at the age of 10).

This impossibly young seaman was not the only person called as a witness in that debate: Nick Clegg had been talking to a ward nurse in a short-staffed hospital and a burglary victim from London; Gordon Brown had met a trainee chef and received a letter from a recovered cancer patient; Cameron had also recently met a crime victim from Crosby, a drug addict from Witney and a man suffering from cancer of the kidney. The latter reappeared in Cameron's 2012 speech to his party conference, and in a recent speech on social security Ed Miliband told stories of meeting a young unemployed man in Long Eaton and "somebody who had worked all his life, for 40 years" in the scaffolding business.

Are such stories a good form of argument? They seem to be popular with political speech writers and advertising copywriters who often use them to lend colour and "human interest" to a speech. But as the leaders' debate demonstrated, they can also sound such a false note that they distract from the claims you want to advance. To work well, stories must be in harmony with, and contributing to, your overall argument.

One way they can do this is by bringing to your argument "witnesses" who provide evidence that supports a particular claim. In school we learn to quote supposed "authorities" – writers who lend support to our case not simply because of the veracity of their findings or the eloquence they lend to our words but also because they have some kind of recognised standing which we hope to add to our own.

Know your witnesses

Outside school such citations are useful, but the range of potential sources is greater and the usefulness of any single one cannot be taken for granted. Different audiences value different sorts of "authorities" and a fundamental mistake is to refer to something your audience cannot evaluate or will not evaluate positively. Far from strengthen your case this will weaken it.

Use your anecdotes sparingly

Even good witnesses should be used sparingly and carefully. Excessive and obvious reliance on them will make it seem as if you can't think for yourself. And it can easily seem pretentious. Someone trying to persuade you simply by dropping names of powerful people they have met or of authors they have read is, to put it mildly, annoying.

Make anecdotes tell stories

Stories can also serve as examples – instances of reality which are presented as proofs of some kind of norm. They invite people to make an induction – to conclude that there is some kind of general underlying rule at work and of which we must take heed. When a child points out that their friend doesn't have to go to bed so early, or a teenager insists to a parent that "nobody else has to visit Grandma every weekend", they are trying to illustrate the presence of a rule or a norm from which their parents are unreasonably or bizarrely departing. In a similar way Cameron wants us to conclude from a single dramatic example that the NHS is bad for patients and Miliband that apprenticeships are working out well.

Anecdotal examples of this sort are a necessary and valuable part of everyday, public and political argument. That is because (climate change partially excepted) such arguments are rarely about the nature of physical reality but often about social reality. They concern partial and practical judgments about some aspect of our varied and complex cultures: whether or not people are on the whole trustworthy; the likelihood that people receiving social security are "striving" or "skiving"; whether exams are getting easier or harder.

To make strong claims about the social reality of these things you will need to present examples and these can be made vivid if expressed in the form of stories. The most effective – combined with other evidence and information – help bring clearly to mind something you want the audience to think about more, to sympathise with or to see in a new way. They help to establish a picture of a situation and a definition of reality on the basis of which conclusions may be drawn.

Stories come in many genres. They may be little comedies or tragedies, homely confirmations of what "everybody knows" or unexpected revelations. It is important to be sure that your story is emotionally in tune with the rest of your argument (rather than a substitute for it). And it certainly must not dominate.

Don't make yourself the story

One of the more annoying techniques of politicians is to use purely personal experience as an anecdotal exemplar – as if, just because the politician "got on their bike", we must accept that everyone could or should do likewise. Stories about the speaker may be fine for entertaining dinner speeches (on the way to which a really funny thing happened), but they have a limited place in argumentative speeches where the good character of a speaker should be evident and not need explicit mention.

The problem with Cameron, Clegg, Brown and Miliband's stories is that often they aren't a contribution to the main argument but an attempt to convince the audience that these are great guys, men of the people, on our level. They have forgotten that a good argument is always about the audience to whom it is addressed and not the person making it. If you make yourself the story your argument will fail.

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Ask yourself: what are you arguing about?

Life is not a well-set exam – the questions we ask may be ambiguous. Defining the dispute is itself part of the argument

• 
• • Protagoras
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 12 September 2013 15.30 BST

'When your flatmate accuses you of eating the last of the cheese your first reaction might be to refute the conjecture.' Photograph: CS-Stock / Alamy

The New Statesman columnist Mehdi Hasan recently addressed his online interlocutors thus: "Dear thickos on Twitter, for the 100th time: opposing arming the rebels does not make one 'pro-Assad'."

Now, there's a lot happening in this short rhetorical moment – including invective and hyperbole aimed at the refutation of a false syllogism. But overall it is an argument about arguments. Hasan wants to argue over the question "Should the UK arm the rebels in Syria?"; others would prefer the question: "Should the UK support Assad?" Although connected, these are two distinct questions. Which one is asked makes quite a difference to how a discussion about policy towards Syria will unfold. In any argument what we are arguing about may be the most important thing to dispute.

What are you arguing about?

Life is not a well-set examination. Our problems are not clearly specified and the questions we have to answer to ourselves are rarely unambiguous. Even something seemingly simple such as an argument about what music to play at a family party might also, possibly, be an argument about what kind of party it is to be, who the party should be for, or which members of the family deserve most respect. If you think the debate is about the relative merits of Britpop over glam rock, you might be in trouble if your partner thinks it is about your inability to respect your in-laws. In short, the point of a dispute isn't clear or fixed before an argument begins. It is one of the things established in and through the argument.

Understanding this can be emotionally important when organising the family get-together. It is of immense political importance when there is going to be a vote. Voters think lots of different things and they think them in all sorts of different ways.

Consequently, a vote will work out differently depending on how voters perceive an issue. For example, the renewal of Trident might be presented as purely a defence issue. People's views will then depend on how they think about threats to security and how they assess the usefulness of Trident in warding them off. But the issue can plausibly be construed as one of cost. In deciding on that question, the same people might take a different position. "Should we seek to deter nuclear attacks on the UK?" and "Are nuclear weapons your No 1 priority for government spending?" will lead to very different outcomes.

Four kinds of argument

In arguing, then, we need to think carefully about the explicit and implicit questions we are addressing and about the kind of argument that we want to have about them. Roman rhetoricians had a useful way of thinking about this. They used the term "stasis" for the "point" around which a dispute could or should turn, and identified four general kinds.

1. Fact

The first kind is "conjecture". This is the argument about fact – whether something is or is not the case. When your flatmate accuses you of eating the last of the cheese your first reaction might be to refute the conjecture – you were at work, you are allergic to dairy, your flatmate ate them last night when he had the munchies.

2. Definition

But suppose you did take the cheese and there is no denying it? The argument might then shift to "definition" – the name that should be given to your action. You might have taken the cheese thinking it was yours – in which case it wasn't "theft" but a "mistake".

3. Quality

Your third option is to make the argument one of "quality"; you admit the crime but argue that your action was a good one. You were aiding your flatmate in a diet, the cheese was almost out of date and you were avoiding waste, you gave it to someone who was really hungry.

These are all ways of shifting the terrain of a dispute. How you use them depends in part on whether or not you are in the position of prosecution or defence. A prosecutor wants to keep things narrow, presenting an audience with a simple choice of yes or no, guilty or not guilty. A defendant will want to open up a variety of arguments so as to sow reasonable doubt. The political conservative might want to keep things at conjecture so as to avoid challenges to "traditional values" while the political radical may want an argument about "quality" so as to show how an unconventional action expresses a higher moral code.

You can see how different stases work in many contemporary political arguments. Debate about the EU is an obvious example. "Sceptics" have successfully made the argument about a conjecture. They ask, implicitly, "who has given away British sovereignty?". They then resist any sort of nuance seeking only to bring forward as many examples as they can to prove the fact that sovereignty has been lost. "Europhiles" try to move on to a debate about definition (talking about "partnership" and so on) or over "quality", where they like to argue that since sovereignty is weakened by globalisation, joining a larger bloc is to enhance rather than give away power.

4. Place

There is a fourth "stasis" that the Romans referred to as "place". Here, the dispute is over jurisdiction – whether or not the issue is one that can legitimately be addressed. In Rome that meant disputing that it was something the court could hear. In politics this is usually a "reactionary" argument since it is intended to ward off disputes.

Thus, we hear often that government has no right to decide on same-sex marriage or tell people who they can and can't employ, and that courts cannot judge the content of newspapers. But in our crowded and cacophonous virtual public spheres we (like Mehdi Hasan) might all make good use of the stasis of place. The art of arguing involves knowing which questions to ask and how to ask them, learning how to answer the questions put and deciding which questions to ignore. Sometimes, just before the guests arrive is neither the time nor the place to start an argument.