You’re
in a tense conversation with a friend trying to defend your position on a political
leader and his policies and start to feel yourself losing ground. Your voice
gets louder. You talk over one of your colleagues and correct his point of
view. He pushes back, so you go into overdrive to convince everyone you’re
right. It feels like an out of body experience — and in many ways it is. In
terms of its neurochemistry, your brain has been hijacked.
It is a
common scenario especially with high voltage political campaigns around the world.
However this can happen even in a simple conversation between couples regarding
the child’s future which can convert into an ugly argument.
By definition an argument is a series of statements typically used
to persuade someone of something or to present reasons for accepting a conclusion.
So what goes in our brain that makes us lose the argument and the other win
inspite of us knowing more relevant facts but we simply can’t win the argument.
The fact that everyone believes that they are right is well known but the
reason some people win the argument has
to do with changes in the brain which the other ones don’t have.
Corpus Callosum
We all
know that there are two parts of the brain, the right and the left hemisphere.
These hemisphere are joined by fibrous tract known as the corpus callosum .The thickness
of the corpus callosum determines the cross connection between two sides of the
brain. Any conversation requires the valid points to be remembered from the hippocampus
(memory storage part of the brain) and the impulse is transferred to the
thinking brain (Left parietal and frontal lobe) and then to the right counterpart to form
a meaningful sentence and finally to the speech center. This sounds very
complicated but you can actually imagine the brain overworks when we get into
an argument and hence we feel exhausted by the end of it.
So people having thickened corpus callosum
fibers tend to hasten this process and are able to come up with valid points
supporting their point of view. Also they will end up remembering and speaking
the right thing at the right time. Women surprisingly by birth have a thicker
corpus callosum and the saying that you can never win a conversation with a
woman holds true.
Stress
The
other reason is stress and persons behavior which make him prone to get worked
up. In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, the hormone and
neurotransmitter cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us
with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion
shut down. And the amygdala, our emotional and reactive brain, takes over.
The body makes a
chemical choice about how best to protect itself — in this case from the shame
and loss of power associated with being wrong — and as a result is unable to
regulate its emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality. So
we default to one of four responses: fight (keep arguing the point), flight
(revert to, and hide behind, group consensus), freeze (disengage from the
argument by shutting up) or appease (make nice with your adversary by simply
agreeing with him).This another reason why we end up losing the argument.
The moment we shift from
logical reasoning to emotional implosion we start losing the argument. This is
the area where we can work upon and can be highly effective. Going further I will
try to explain why some people end up in arguing on a regular basis.
The stress created in an argument prevents the honest and
productive sharing of information and opinion. But, I can tell you that the
fight response is by far the most
damaging to any relationships. It is also, unfortunately, the most common.
That’s partly due to another neurochemical process.
When you argue and win your
brain floods with different hormones: adrenaline and dopamine, which makes you
feel good, dominant, even invincible. It’s a feeling any of us
would want to replicate. So the next time we’re in a tense situation, we fight
again. We get addicted to being right. So what goes on in our mind that we
start losing the conversation and hence these series of cascade of neurochemicals
flooding our mind.
Luckily, there’s another hormone that can feel just as good as
adrenaline: oxytocin. It’s activated by human connection and it opens up the
networks in our executive brain, or prefrontal cortex, further increasing our
ability to trust and open ourselves to sharing. Your goal as a leader should be
to spur the production of oxytocin in yourself and others, while avoiding (at
least in the context of communication) those spikes of cortisol and adrenaline.
Here are a few exercises for you to do at work to help addiction
to being right:
Deciding Rules of engagement. If you’re heading into a conversation that
could be a little difficult, start by outlining rules of engagement. For
example, you might agree to give people extra time to explain their ideas and
to listen without judgment. These practices will counteract the tendency to
fall into harmful conversational patterns. Afterwards, consider see how you and
the person did and seek to do even
better next time.
Empathetic listening. In one-on-one conversations, make a
conscious effort to speak less and listen more. The more you learn about other
peoples’ perspectives, the more likely you are to feel empathy for them. And
when you do that for others, they’ll want to do it for you, creating a virtuous
circle.
Speak one at a time. In situations when you know one person is likely
to dominate a group, create an opportunity for everyone to speak. Ask all
parties to identify who in the room has important information, perspectives, or
ideas to share. List them and the areas they should speak about on a flip chart
and use that as your agenda, opening the floor to different speakers, asking
open-ended questions and taking notes.
Arguments are a way of life. We live, we love, we argue, we make up. Sometimes though, arguments cause breakage - of relationships, families and people.The more we can understand about how we argue, the more deliberate we can be in responding to conflict in such a way as to preserve the relationship.
