Why Are We Yelling?

Why Are We Yelling? will improve your relationships, professional life, and the way you view the world by showing you that arguments aren’t bad, but important growing experiences if we learn to make them productive.

Is climate change real? Should we ban guns? Is it a good idea to make vaccination a requirement? These are just a few of the polarizing issues of our times that make us anxious.

Opposing viewpoints create cognitive dissonance. This happens anytime we come across something that contradicts the way we see the world, and it makes us distressed. To try to relieve the uneasiness that comes with conflict, the voices in our head begin working on us. There are four you need to know about:

Power Reason Avoidance Possibility

Let’s take a look at the voice of power first. This one tries to get us to win the argument by shutting it down without any acceptance of the opposing view. Someone who believes that vaccines should be a requirement for everyone, might say “Anti-vaxxers are obviously wrong and crazy!”

The voice of reason looks for evidence against the offending position. It might say “there’s no evidence that vaccines are dangerous!” If you subscribe to the voice of avoidance, however, you might think neither of these things and just give up on getting involved.

These three voices are problematic because they shut down dialogue that can open up opportunities. That’s where the voice of possibility comes in handy. It helps us look at why people might see the world a certain way. This curious perspective on issues opens the pathway to solving them, which we’ll get to more in the next lesson.

Another tool in your arsenal of arguing effectively is knowing how to ask the right questions. But first, do you remember the game Battleship? You and a partner would arrange ships on a grid that the other player couldn’t see, then ask questions to try to find and sink their ships. What does this have to do with arguments? Well, some of us disagree like we play Battleship, with the intent to destroy our opponents fleet. The problem is, questions are the pathway through the weeds of disagreement. Curiosity can widen perspectives, uncover concerns, expand understanding, encourage empathy, and sometimes solve problems. But this only works if we learn how to use it appropriately. Think about the game Twenty Questions now. When playing, one person thinks of an object or person and the other can ask twenty questions to try and guess what it is. This game provokes creative, open-ended questions while preventing questions that have a specific answer. These are the types of questions we need to ask when arguing. Let’s say…