Sharpening Thinking and Making Safer More Insightful Judgments and Decisions
Instalment Two: Blame for Major Mistakes, Reducing Arguments, Wrongly Judging by Outward Appearances, and When Facts Seem to Contradict Common Sense

The Main Contents

Part One
Not Rushing to Blame Before All the Facts are Known, and Learning From Mistakes to Help Create a Better Future

It's easy to make snap judgments, drawing hasty conclusions about who's to blame for something that's gone wrong, and lots of other things. But often it pays to try to be more analytical and thoughtful. Here are several examples of why a hasty conclusion can often be the wrong one, and how more thought can lead to better consequences in the end.

When hearing of a mistake, the emotions it can bring on, like anger, can tempt people to make a hasty judgment in indignation or scorn, and blame the person who ultimately made it. But sometimes there are things that make them less responsible than they appeared at first; or sometimes their mistake was the last in a string of errors made by various people, that made it more likely they would end up making the final one. However much or little they deserve blame, it's worth looking behind the mistake to see what led up to it, partly to try to learn lessons, so as to try to prevent such things happening again.

Here are some examples of lessons that have been learned when people have done just that, which led to possible disastrous consequences in the future that might have happened otherwise being avoided.

Looking Beyond the Person Who Made the Mistake to Find Contributory Factors

People often make mistakes. It goes without saying that sometimes the consequences can be serious or even tragic. Sometimes it can seem that people have behaved irresponsibly or worse, and sometimes they have; but often there will be more to it, and just punishing those who seem to be to blame, and leaving things at that, means the underlying causes won't be found, so the mistake is more likely to be made again, by someone else.

For instance, cars are being fitted with more and more sensors and other things to provide the driver with information that can protect them from accidents, and make their journeys quicker and more enjoyable. While in general that's a very good thing, what if a number of accidents happen because drivers are spending more time taking a few seconds out every so often to look at them or alter them, not foreseeing danger just ahead?

On one level, the drivers should have known better. But if several are making the same mistake, - and after all, a snap judgment made on the spur of the moment can be all it takes, - it might be time to modify cars, or regulate for the number of non-essential gadgets it's legal to put in new ones, or to provide more public warnings about how easy it is to make errors of judgment, or maybe upgrade driver training so as to give drivers experience on simulators of how catastrophic taking attention from the road for even seconds can sometimes be, and to teach them ways of coping with distractions. Perhaps something should be done in any case, to either minimise the dangers or make drivers more alert to them. Just blaming drivers who've already made mistakes won't help other drivers in the same situations who might be tempted into making them in future.

For example, one make of car had a system called BLIS, where an orange light would come on to warn people that a car had come close to them but was in a position where they couldn't see it because there was a blind spot. But in heavy traffic, the light would come on and go off nearly all the time till there was a danger of having an accident, because so much attention was being paid to the light.

Distraction could affect older drivers even more, because age slows reaction times, and people apparently need longer to start concentrating properly again after having been distracted.

Some Drivers Do Take Foolish Risks

It seems that some drivers are over-confident in their ability to drive and do other things at the same time. Whatever the reason is, some do take foolish risks. Some cars were rigged up with cameras, and went around recording driver behaviour, and about three quarters of all the accidents they recorded happened because drivers weren't paying attention. A lot were looking away at the time, and some did things like sending text messages while driving. Maybe sometimes, drivers assume something won't take long, but get absorbed in it and end up taking longer than they expected.

It's been found that people who take their eyes off the road to programme sat navs have often veered into another lane of traffic while doing it. In Japan, they've introduced regulations that forbid people to enter addresses into them while the car's moving.

Even people who've got their eyes free of distractions and their hands on the steering wheel can still be distracted if their minds are absorbed in something else, so they're not concentrating on where they're going well, so they're not quick on the uptake when a hazard looms into view, - and after all, people often have very little time to react. So accidents can happen because of distraction, even when a driver isn't taking their eyes off the road.

Some Reasons Pilots Can Make Mistakes

In aircrafts, it was found that some accidents happened in planes with sophisticated warning systems for alerting pilots they were too close to something like the ground, and that other things weren't quite as they should be; many pilots just ignored alarms that went off often, and at other times they couldn't work out what an alarm meant; and taking their eyes off where they were going even for a few seconds to try and work out which alarm was going off was sometimes long enough for an accident to happen, given how fast the plane was going. The alarms didn't give the pilots enough time to react.

Failing to Follow Manufacturers' Instructions

Following instructions can save lives: For instance, it was found in one study that three quarters of new parents weren't installing baby car seats properly, and yet they need to be installed properly to prevent accidents. But the reason the instructions weren't being followed might well have been because the instruction manuals were pages and pages and pages long! And if parents don't realise it's essential to install them exactly as the instructions say, or think they can easily work out what to do without them, that would be even more explanation of why they don't pay as close attention to them as they should. If it's really that essential, perhaps manuals ought to come with very clear easy-to-notice warnings on how important it is to follow them exactly, and to be made as user-friendly as possible, where they're not already.

It can help to know what errors and oversights people often make, since then they can be planned for. For instance, if manufacturers know people often have misplaced confidence in their own ability to work things out themselves - or other things that make them skip reading instructions or asking people who are in the know how something works, they can do things to try to prevent mistakes being made, such as putting warning labels on the products, simplifying instructions where possible, and other things.

Some things look so easy, it's no wonder people think they don't need instructions to find out how they work; but then there can turn out to be more to it than they thought, so accidents can happen. For instance, someone might pick up a gun at a firing range and think, "Really, how hard could firing one of these be!" But they simply don't realise that when it's fired, it will jerk backwards because of the force of the bullet going forwards, and they end up getting hit in the face with it.

Some things might look obvious, but really aren't. So it's as well for people to be a bit cautious when it comes to using new things, and it's as well for manufacturers to make possible pitfalls very clear.

Trying to Foresee and Prevent Costly Mistakes

Errors are just part of life for everyone. But since some can be so serious, it's worth giving some thought to what might go wrong and how to prevent it, when doing something a bit complicated or new. It's not possible to foresee everything, naturally. But at least risks can be reduced if it's at least foreseen that some things might go wrong.

For instance, when a baby begins to crawl or walk around and get into mischief, it can help to get down on all fours and look at everything from around their height, trying to work out what hazards there could be, so as to alter things to make the room safer. And parents could think through whether things happen in their house that could lead to risky situations, such as the baby being left unattended for a while, to try and think about whether things could be done to minimise the risks of harm.

For instance, if the baby might be put at risk because the phone sometimes goes off when they're doing things they really need to be supervised doing, such as having a bath or playing on a swing in the garden, or even just playing or sitting near things they could get hold of but shouldn't, and the temptation is always to just nip up and answer the phone on reflex whenever it goes off, hoping the call won't be long, perhaps an answerphone could be left on all the time, and then the phone could always just be left to ring, and important calls could be returned at a convenient time.

Sometimes, preventing serious errors can be done in very simple affordable ways. For instance, pilots now use checklists, where they tick off things when they do them before a flight; the checklists remind them of what needs doing, and ticking each task off when they've done it helps them remember if they've done it or not; if they've ticked it off, they'll know instantly that they have when they look back at it a bit later. It's a very simple method, but it could make the difference between life and death.

One of the things they have to do is check that various things about the plane are in working order before take-off; so they can write down all the bits of the plane they have to check on a list, print copies so they've always got one to hand, and tick the things off one by one as they check them.

Even bar tenders have memory aids to stop them forgetting or misremembering people's orders: Different things go in different-shaped glasses, and they learn when they start which drink goes in which kind of glass, and they put the glasses out as each bit of an order is being made, so they'll remember what specific types of drink each order was for, because they've got those glasses out.

Mistakes Can Happen Where People are Reluctant to Query Others' Decisions

Sometimes, it seems a person's pride or unwillingness to think of themselves as being vulnerable to error can contribute to terrible mistakes, partly because some people can become so irritated with anyone who suggests something's going wrong with something they're doing that people simply stop risking telling them; or sometimes in a hierarchical situation where they're in charge, people working for them, or others who know who they are, can really believe the one in charge knows best because of all their training and expertise, so they're reluctant to say anything if they think something seems to be going wrong, not really trusting their own judgment enough. Whatever the case, it's wisest for anyone in a position of authority to have humility, and to realise errors are so common to humankind that everyone probably makes them, so it's no surprise if they do, so as to be open to correction from anyone.

Sometimes the culture of a workplace encourages attitudes that can lead to disasters, because the ones in charge are confident they know best, and people grow accustomed to the tradition of not challenging them, even when they see a problem. Quite a few hospitals have apparently been like that up until recently - some probably still are - with nurses and other staff afraid to challenge doctors, even when they've been able to see they were doing something wrong. A study found that doctors themselves had unrealistically high expectations of their ability to perform well when tired.

An experiment was done where someone phoned some nurses in a hospital, claiming to be a doctor they'd never met, and told them to give a certain dose of a drug to a patient, and to give it immediately so it would take effect before he saw them, so he could tell how well it was working when he did his ward round; he said he'd sign the prescription for it later. The drug was only used as a placebo, so no damage could really be done, but apparently the nurses didn't know that. The dose the doctor told them to give was twice the dose recommended on the bottle, yet almost all the nurses still gave it, even though there was also a rule that said no nurse was to give a drug till a doctor had signed the prescription for it.

This could be worrying, partly because sometimes, doctors have been known to order the wrong dose to be given, often when they've been working a long shift and are tired. Too high a dose could sometimes be fatal. But then, it's very understandable how nurses would be faced with a dilemma in a health profession where sometimes minutes can make the difference between a good and bad outcome for a patient, and where doctors usually know what they're doing. Still, it should never be assumed that people know what they're doing, no matter how respected a position they hold, whoever they are.

In fact, there was a study that found that even many doctors wouldn't express misgivings over a course of treatment a more senior doctor was recommending.

There have even been aircraft crashes where the co-pilot thought the pilot was doing something wrong, but didn't speak up because the pilot was supposed to be the one in control, and they respected his authority and were confident in his abilities and experience, or they perhaps feared looking foolish if they were wrong, or didn't fancy the confrontation any criticism might lead to.

Apparently, there are a few medication errors that have had funny sides: One doctor left instructions on a patient's notes to give a treatment for a painful ear infection. He meant for ear drops to be put in the patient's right ear. But he abbreviated the note so it said to put them in the patient's "R ear". The nurse giving the medication mistook that for the word rear an thought it was an instruction to put the drops up the patient's bottom like a suppository.

The error was interpreted by some as being caused by unquestioning obedience to authority. Perhaps some members of the general public wouldn't think they had any reason to know better than the nurse did, since they would assume the doctor knew what he was talking about, and maybe some would think that after all, if you've got a pain in your foot, the doctor will often prescribe you something to take by mouth, such as a painkiller, so isn't it possible it could work from the other end up, - apart from the fact that it surely couldn't be an efficient way to take medication, since it might come hurtling out again the opposite way it had gone in before long. But maybe someone with a nurse's training and some familiarity with the medications used should have had more doubts. Perhaps the nurse did, but assumed the doctor just must know better, or didn't recognise the medication as ear drops, and assumed it must be for something bowel-related.

An Experiment That Found Worrying Levels of Unquestioning Obedience Among Medical Staff

Anyway, because of reports about things like that, in a worrying experiment, a group of researchers, made up of doctors and nurses who'd become concerned by scary reports about the rate of medical errors, and perhaps things they themselves knew of nurses' unquestioning obedience to doctors who told them to give drugs to patients, tested nurses' obedience themselves. They had found it especially unsettling that even skilled nurses who were highly trained and so should really have known better were still just doing what the doctor said even when their instincts should have told them they were doing something wrong. The researchers wanted to find out if it was actually in reality only fairly rare for that to happen, or whether it happened a lot. Also they wondered if it would even happen where the doctor wasn't present, but when someone they'd never met just claimed to be a doctor over the phone. And they wanted to know just how serious the errors could get without the one who seemed to be making them being challenged.

One researcher claimed to be a doctor, though he was a stranger to all the nurses he contacted. He phoned twenty-two separate nurses' stations on several different kinds of wards - children's, psychiatric, surgical and so on. He said he was a doctor, and told the nurse to give 20 milligrams of a drug called astrogen to a patient he named. The nurse had four very good reasons to have questioned the order:

1. It was hospital policy that prescription orders shouldn't be given over the phone.
2. The drug was unauthorised - it had not yet been cleared for use, or put on the list of medications used on the wards.
3. The dose of medication the researcher told the nurse to give was twice the maximum daily amount the labels on the containers said should be given, a dose very likely to be unsafe.
4. The order was given by someone the nurse didn't know, had never met or seen, and had never spoken a word to before.

But all but one of the nurses went straight to the medicine cabinet and got the prescribed dose of the drug and went on their way to the patient to give it to them. But as they did they were stopped by a secret observer who told them about the experiment.

Maybe because quick obedience to the doctor had always been the most efficient and timely way of caring for patients' needs before, - and after all, quick administration of drugs could sometimes maybe even mean the difference between life and death, - the nurses had got used to just doing what the doctor said. But also, since people are brought up to respect and obey authority, and usually obedience to authorities is the best policy, they must have been just used to it. And that might go for lots of other nurses and others responsible for the care of people all over the world.

Perhaps nurses' training should include cautions about how it's best to question doctors if they're at all concerned that there might be something wrong, even if the doctors don't like it. A doctor might be more senior and have had more years of training, but that doesn't necessarily mean they know best, especially since they might be tired after a long shift so their judgment is impaired a bit, or simply have bad handwriting and they did actually write down the correct dose and drug but it looks like something else, or a number of other things.

And the public in general may well do well to be more alert to the fact that authority figures don't always know best, no matter how much more education or experience they've had.

Everyone will likely make mistakes every now and again throughout their entire lives though.

Efforts Made to Reduce Errors

Errors have been reduced a lot in some industries such as aviation, partly because training for pilots and crews involves training in communication and the importance of accepting advice from junior staff; apparently it used to be more common for pilots to think they knew best, but an air crash where a flight engineer apparently didn't dare inform the pilot that the fuel was running out helped to change attitudes in the industry, and training courses started including the importance of good informative communication between crew members.

Perhaps medical training ought to do something similar, so as to make sure attitudes are different in future.

People are much more likely to stick to rules when they know the reasons for those rules. Otherwise they can forget them, or think they're just so much needless bureaucracy. So it's best if training courses explain what can go wrong, and why rules have been put in place. Errors might be less likely to be made when people remember cautionary tales about what can go wrong if the rules aren't followed.

Actively trying to think of what might go wrong, and planning for how to handle it if it does, and trying to find out why things have gone wrong when they have, can prevent future problems.

For instance, apparently during the first gulf war in the 1990s, a lot of soldiers got eye injuries. Doctors at the hospital treating them tried to find out why so many had, and discovered, surprisingly perhaps, that a lot of soldiers hadn't worn their protective eye goggles, because the goggles were too ugly! ... And people think women are the vain ones! Also, you'd have thought soldiers would put their safety before their looks; but apparently a lot of them didn't. But the doctors told those responsible for army equipment what they'd found out, and soldiers started being issued with goggles that looked more fashionable instead, and eye injuries dropped!

In all walks of life, asking yourself what could go wrong, and thinking through possibilities and what to do if they happen, can sometimes prevent bad decisions made too hastily without enough thought about the future. Naturally not all circumstances can be foreseen, but some can.

Sleepiness Leads to Errors in Different Circumstances

Sometimes, the limitations of the body can be the cause of mistakes. For instance, people are more likely to drive badly if they're sleepy. It can impair driving just as much as being drunk can. And people don't always get warning when they're becoming tired; it's possible to feel alert one minute and drop off to sleep the next, especially when sleep-deprived. Also, when a person becomes sleepy, they'll sometimes be less alert to the fact that they're not functioning as they should.

It's also been found that people who're doing important things like working or driving while they're sleepy are more likely to take foolish risks, perhaps because they're not alert enough to anticipate the problems they might create, or they don't even realise they're taking them because they're not aware enough of what they're even doing, or they want to take shortcuts because they're desperate to finish what they're doing so they can rest. In any case, there's a greater likelihood they'll put themselves and others in danger, so where possible, doing important things while sleepy should be avoided.

Unfortunately, some organisations make their people work such long hours, it's difficult for them to avoid doing things while tired.

Medical errors caused by sleep-deprived doctors at the end of a long shift can cost lives, as can errors made by people doing other things involving concentration and judgment where the stakes are high.

But then, the solution can be more complex than just shortening working hours. What seems the obvious solution sometimes isn't as ideal as it seems at first; before regulating for it, thought should be given to possible unintended consequences.

For example, one American state brought in a law shortening the working hours per week of doctors who were being trained on the wards, to try to reduce errors; but doctors' errors actually went up afterwards. One in four trainee doctors were now admitting to having done something that had harmed a patient, as opposed to one in five before the new rules were brought in. Those inquiring into why discovered that although Doctors' hours had been shortened, no more doctors were available, since in some hospitals, no extra funding was allotted to hire new staff to help with the workload, so they were trying to get exactly the same amount of work done as they had before, in less time. So they were rushing it, leading to less care. And they were expected to get the same amount of training completed as previous classes of trainee doctors had, but in less time. So they weren't being trained as thoroughly.

Also, shorter shifts in a hospital meant there would have to be more shifts, which meant there were a lot more times when doctors would hand over the care of their patients to other doctors at the end of their shifts, - doctors who would be less familiar with the recent conditions of the patients, and sometimes didn't know them so well, so some may have cared about their well-being less. Also, misunderstandings would often happen at those times, because of information not communicated clearly enough, bits forgotten, or not taken in, or other things.

Consulting more advisers - especially those familiar with the field that'll be affected by the change of regulations or whatever else is being done - before changing things, is one thing that can help limit mistakes.

If Unhappy With a Medical Diagnosis, Query it or Get a Second Opinion

Anyone can make unwise judgments, no matter how well-educated or experienced they are.

Even doctors can sometimes make decisions based on judgments that aren't very reliable and have nothing to do with the evidence about the symptoms. For example, there was one woman who took her little girl to the accident and emergency department of her local hospital with severe stomach pains. Normally the doctors would do a set of tests on patients. But since stomach pains are mostly caused by indigestion, a minor complaint, they thought that was the most likely cause, and they thought her mother seemed overly-flustered, given it was probably just a minor thing. So they took the mother to be a hypochondriac. Once they'd decided that must be the case, they interpreted everything according to their idea of the mother's supposed problem. So whatever she said was interpreted as just her exaggerating things or her being overly-worried about something that would soon pass, rather than as a true description of the symptoms the little girl had. So they sent her home with her daughter, saying there was probably nothing to worry about.

She came back the next day, again panicky. But the doctors, having labelled the mother a hypochondriac, saw her stress as further evidence that she was the kind of parent who made way too much fuss about things, and they still didn't do any tests, but just sent her home saying it was probably nothing serious.

The very next day, the mother came back with her little girl again, and the doctors became even more convinced she was over-reacting, until the girl lost consciousness. Then they realised something was very wrong. But by then it was too late. Despite their efforts, the little girl died.

There certainly are people who are excessively worried about their health when there isn't much at all wrong, who go to the doctor so often they become a serious drain on their time; but no one should ever make a snap judgment that anyone is such a person.

And for anyone particularly worried about their symptoms who goes to visit a doctor, it's probably best to always ask for tests rather than just taking their word for it, if they make a diagnosis without doing an examination. If still uneasy afterwards, it's best to seek a second opinion.

Fatal and Other Serious Medical Errors

Research has found that tens of thousands of people die in hospitals each year because they're given overdoses of drugs or the wrong drugs, or drugs that interact badly with drugs they're already taking, and other things like that. But instead of just assuming there must be an irresponsible incompetent or evil doctor in the hospital, and wanting to find out who it is so they can be punished, it's worth inquiring more into why it's really happening. Often honest mistakes can be made, sometimes as a result of a string of people making little errors that end with something disastrous happening. If the particular person who made the final mistake that resulted in tragedy just gets blamed and dismissed with no further questions being asked, it can turn out that other people make exactly the same mistake in future, and more people are harmed. So it's best to investigate the causes of the mistake, looking beyond what that one person who made it did.

One mistake that happened time and time and time again, sometimes with disastrous consequences, was that babies were given a certain drug at a massive dose of ten thousand units per millilitre, when babies were only supposed to be given ten units per millilitre. Sometimes a baby would be given the dose more than once in a day. Some died. It was found that several errors were made:

The labels weren't read thoroughly. But while they should have been, one thing that made the mistake much easier to make was that the vials of the ten thousand unit dose were very easy to confuse with the vials of the ten unit dose, because they were the same shape and size, and both had blue labels, albeit one was dark blue and one was light blue. Steps were eventually taken to make the vials more distinguishable from each other. The high-dose version of the drug was given a red label, fitted with a cap that was more difficult to take off so it would give people a couple of seconds' more time for thought and make it more distinguishable from the low-dose version, and it was stamped with a warning saying it wasn't meant for what the low-dose version was used for. Also the letters were made larger so the labels were easier to read. And one hospital where three babies died at about the same time because they were given the high dose by mistake changed their procedure, so two healthcare workers had to look at any dose before it was given to a little baby.

Other things have been done in hospitals to make things safer. For instance, surgeons apparently have to draw marks on the parts of patients they intend to cut off now before any operation they do, so they won't forget which bit they're supposed to be treating in the operating theatre and cut the wrong bit. Apparently, a study found that one in five surgeons admitted to having cut off the wrong bit of a patient at least once in their lives.

The fact that a number of things can contribute to errors doesn't mean, naturally, that no one should ever be disciplined for making them. But rather than immediately just taking the attitude, "There are evil incompetent people here who should never have been employed", people should want to look further to find the cause of the errors and investigate ways of trying to stop them happening again. Sometimes, after all, investigations might lead to the discovery that there are more incompetent people around than were first thought, and that several need to lose their jobs, rather than just the one who seemed responsible at first.

It's best to put systems in place to try to stop mistakes happening, rather than to expect that people will never make them if they're any good.

Other children and adults have been killed because drugs with similar names but which do very different things have been mistaken for each other. Different drugs have also been commonly called by the same abbreviation, which is almost sure to lead to confusion, for instance when a doctor uses it to tell a nurse to give a drug. Also, drug names can have absolutely no apparent relation to what the drug actually does, so they don't give useful clues to nurses.

Nurses should naturally take care to do the right thing without needing things to be as simplified as possible, but mistakes are more likely to happen when people are tired and feel in a rush because they have competing demands on their time, and the simpler that systems can be made without reducing quality of care, the better.

That goes for many walks of life, for instance one being driving, when taking the eyes off the road for even seconds can lead to disaster.

If people make efforts to find out what kinds of errors are commonly made among people who do what they do - whether it be in a job, raising young children, or whatever, it may often be possible to think up ways of preventing them long before they might otherwise happen to them personally. Trying to imagine what might cause errors even though you don't know if any have happened yet could prevent even more. For instance, it must have been noticed that two drugs that do very different things sometimes have very similar names. If it had occurred to hospital staff that there was a possibility they could be confused for each other before it ever happened, perhaps they could have been separated in some way - maybe in separate boxes with very clear descriptions of what they were on them or something.

The story illustrates that humans are just prone to making mistakes, so changing any kind of systems where mistakes are happening to make them less likely, rather than just blaming the individuals involved, can be the best way of reducing mistakes.

Investigating Whole Systems When Mistakes are Made

Another example of that is that social workers are often blamed when children they're monitoring die. They may often deserve part of the blame, but the background to their mistakes needs to be considered, so as to make possible changes, to try to make it less likely that such things will happen again. For instance, a few questions that are asked could be: Does their training at college or university teach them enough about the signs to look out for, the excuses people are likely to use, how to interview clients so as to make it more likely that significant information will be revealed, and other similar things? Are some universities providing much higher-quality teaching than others? Are social workers having to take on too many cases, or do so much paperwork they don't get the opportunity to monitor each at-risk client enough? Those and other questions need to be investigated by people conducting inquiries, and the findings ought to be acted on. When they're not, there ought to be an investigation into why.

A Tragic Accident That Brought About Major Changes to Increase Safety in the Aviation Industry

In the aviation industry, a tragedy happened that led to changes in a culture that had similarly meant that pilots were respected so much that crew members had often been reluctant to challenge them even when they were pretty sure they were making a mistake. No matter how many years of training a person's had, and no matter how high their levels of skill are, it isn't going to protect them from making mistakes when their judgment's impaired because they're tired, under the sway of strong emotions, distracted, over-confident, complacent about the risks, and so on. No one should feel they're above correction.

A Dutch pilot in the 1970s was so efficient and good at his job, he even had celebrity status among pilots, after he appeared in adverts in a magazine for the KLM airline that showed his smiling face as if it represented the spirit of the airline, with captions like, "KLM, from the people who made punctuality possible!" He likely prided himself on his reputation and status, and the loss of that status and reputation would have been a bit of a blow, especially when it would have been witnessed by so many who might have thought more badly of him because he'd been praised as an expert than they would have done if he'd been an obscure figure who hardly anyone knew anything about. Pride might have also made him less likely to be willing to take criticism, though it was also traditional for the pilot to be considered the one who knew best, so junior crew would often hesitate to challenge them, apparently.

He'd recently been entrusted to lead a six-month training course for other pilots on flight simulators, where they not only trained for ordinary flights, but for what to do in emergencies. So anyone who knew that might well have assumed he'd be about the best person to have in charge if they themselves found their plane in an emergency. But was it possible that all that time on flight simulators, where crashes didn't really matter because trainees could just start again with no damage done, had dulled his mind a bit to the consequences of the risks involved, making him a bit complacent? No one will ever know if that happened. All anyone can do is guess. But maybe it did.

Not long after the safety training course he was instructing on had finished, he was back flying planes again. Then he was in his own emergency, and made a mistake that cost the lives of hundreds. He died himself, so no one really knows why he made it; people just have to guess. But there are several possible reasons, to do with the things going through his head.

He was in charge of a flight of holidaymakers one day, going to an airport on the Canary Islands. Everything was going to plan, when he suddenly got an urgent message from air traffic control, telling him there had been a terrorist bomb in the flower shop of the airport, causing chaos, and the airport had been closed for a while.

The pilot knew that the most important thing to do in such situations was to keep calm. He'd been in drills practising for emergencies including ones of that nature many many times. But perhaps it's much easier to keep calm when you know the emergency isn't for real, or when the drill doesn't put anyone under pressure all day.

The pilot followed orders to land his plane at Tenerife, about 50 nautical miles from the airport he'd originally been going to land at. It wasn't the easiest thing to do; it was a tiny airport, and lots of other planes had been diverted there. There was only one runway, and it hadn't been designed for jumbo jets to land on or take off from.

He landed the plane safely though, parking it on the edge of the runway.

Then he likely looked at the time, and a worrying thought probably came into his head: He likely began to feel under time pressure, since the Dutch government, in an attempt to improve safety, had introduced a complicated system of regulations, that ruled that pilots had to take rest periods after they'd flown for a certain amount of time each day; and the maximum penalty for not doing so was two years in jail. Somehow it didn't occur to him that he was resting right there and then, so that if he flew during the rest period he'd originally planned to take, it was unlikely he'd be faulted for it, and that if he was, he could surely arrange a public outcry on his behalf. He thought it was very important that he managed to leave the airport and reach his destination before the latest time he could legally start his rest period.

The fear of the possible loss of his freedom and reputation for capability and efficiency may have been looming ever larger in his mind, because of the stress of other concerns, such as the fact that if he took his rest period later on, so he couldn't fly the plane out of Tenneriffe airport during the time he was resting even if the other airport had opened, there wasn't a replacement crew to fly the plane, so the passengers would be stranded there overnight, and there weren't enough hotel rooms for them to stay in, so the airline would find it awkward to find them places to go; and such a long delay would mean other flights would have to be cancelled till his plane was available to take the passengers it was supposed to have taken the next day. Given all those concerns, he might well have become anxious for the airport he'd originally been going to land at to open so he could get going. He thought it was up to him to think of a way around the possible problems to prevent them happening, while sticking to the letter of the regulations about resting.

But it was a good couple of hours before the airport where the terrorist bomb had gone off did open again. It seems he spent the time trying and trying to think of a way to save time, asking his crew members if they had any ideas. Two hours after he'd landed, he decided to refuel, to save time at the next airport where he'd originally been going to refuel, so he wouldn't have to do that after he landed before he could take his rest period. Refuelling tended to take 35 minutes. But just after he started, he was told the other airport had just opened. He must have been annoyed at having made the decision to refuel so they couldn't get going, and his frustration might have grown as the time went by, especially when thick fog descended on the runway, only getting worse, which meant every minute of delay made it more likely the airport he was in would be closed, so his passengers would have to stay there overnight, and things would be awkward for them and for the airline, and he might be faulted for deciding to refuel there, his unblemished record gone forever.

By the time he'd finished refuelling, the fog had become so thick the pilot couldn't see the end of the runway from the cockpit window! He must have thought that within minutes it would be too late to go - that if he didn't go right there and then, he would have left it too late.

It seems the frustration at the delay, and the stress of worrying over the arrangements that would have to be made to put the passengers up overnight if they had to stay there, and the inconvenience the delay would cause so many people, loomed so large in his mind that the truly important thing - passenger safety - was almost forgotten. The increasingly strong emotions of frustration and stress may have blocked his ability to think critically to a certain extent, as it does with everybody when strong emotion takes over. He likely didn't realise that that was happening or was in danger of happening, so he disregarded the risk to his thinking skills that the emotion posed. If he'd taken a few minutes to calm down, he might have begun to get things in their proper perspective again, and weighed up the risks sensibly.

Everybody can learn a lesson from his mistakes, whether they hold the responsibility for the safety of many people in their hands or just their own well-being. A variety of strong emotions can block thinking powers: anger, frustration, severe depression, delight even, and other things, - so whatever strong emotion a person's feeling, it's as well to try to remember to be alert to the possibility that it might happen.

From reconstructions made from listening to the last moments of the lives of the pilot and crew on the plane's black box, it seems that suddenly, without consulting the crew, the pilot decided he'd better leave quickly, and revved up the engine, sending the plane lurching down the runway. Perhaps if he'd been sitting in a meeting, feeling calm and under no pressure, and he'd been asked what he'd do if thick fog came down on the runway his plane was on, he'd never have dreamed of answering that he'd take off all of a sudden, without even consulting air traffic control to find out whether it was safe to take off. If someone had told him he might, he might have been offended, and never have believed them. Yet feeling in a hurry under stress and frustration, that's what he did.

When he did, his co-pilot said in alarm and confusion that they didn't have clearance from air traffic control to take off! The pilot replied in a voice that clearly sounded irritated that he knew that; he told the co-pilot to ask for it as he hit the brakes. The co-pilot did so, but there was a misunderstanding; air traffic control assumed he was asking for clearance to stand by to take off when they were told to, and said OK. The pilot thought clearance to take off had been given, and revved up the engine to full power. The co-pilot might have had doubts as to whether the plane should be going, but this time, perhaps because the pilot had seemed irritated with him, and after all, the pilot was supposed to know best, he said nothing.

There was another plane on the runway, taxiing down it to find a place to turn off it to wait for its turn to take off. But the crew of that plane were unsure of their way in the fog, and weren't out of the way when the KLM plane came hurtling down the runway.

Both pilots saw each other when it was way too late, and tried desperately to get out of each other's way. The KLM plane took off early and tried to rise above the other one, which was trying to turn off the runway. The nose of the KLM plane managed to rise above the other one, but the underside of it ripped through the top of the other plane. The fact that the pilot had refuelled made things worse, as an explosion turned the plane into a ball of fire.

All the people on the KLM plane were killed, and all but 61 people from the other plane were. 584 people died in all. It was by far the worst air crash in history.

Shocked and trying to find out what had caused the crash, and what lessons could be learned from it to prevent something like it ever happening again, experts came to the airport from several countries. They examined all the evidence they could find, including the last words of the crews of both planes, and interviewed eyewitnesses. They did the best job they could of trying to work out what had happened, and did make recommendations that have improved air safety ever since.

What they didn't have a chance of finding out though was just what was going on in the KLM pilot's mind that motivated him to ignore all the wisdom he'd gained over the years and his knowledge of correct procedure, and take off.

The Things Possibly Going On in the Pilot's Mind That Might Have Contributed to the Accident

Again, it could be that thoughts of how dismaying the loss of his reputation for expertise would be to the pilot, and impatience to get out of the situation he was in, began to loom so large in his mind, he got everything out of perspective, forgetting that passenger safety was the only truly important thing, the thing he should be considering most.

Perhaps the final decision to rev up the engine was made on the spur of the moment, without careful thought, but just on the impulse of one impatient thought, and a worried feeling telling him that if he waited mere minutes longer, the fog would close in so much that flying would be impossible for the rest of the day, making it awkward for everyone, - passengers who'd miss part of their holiday, the airline who'd have to pay to put them up for the night in hotels or other places they'd have to find near the airport, other holidaymakers and other passengers due to be on other flights who'd have to wait till his plane landed before they could fly in it themselves and some other flights could take off, and himself who might be embarrassed at the loss of his status and reputation. Adrenaline caused by frustration and worry that made him want to quickly do something to get out of the situation probably contributed to his decision.

How Thinking About Foolish Risks Prevented a Woman From Taking One, How a Change of Perspective Made a Man Calmer on the Roads, and a Space Shuttle Disaster

A lot of people try to nip across level crossings after the barriers have gone down, because they want to save that couple of minutes they'd otherwise have to wait for the train to get there and go past; but since trains can come much faster than they can run, and if they get hit by one, they'll almost certainly die, saving a mere few minutes just isn't worth the risk.

A psychologist suggested to a client who habitually became irritated at traffic lights that he solve the problem by changing the way he thought about them: Instead of thinking of having to stop at them as a waste of his time, he could think of it as downtime he could use for his personal refreshment, calming himself while he was waiting for the lights to change by doing slow deep breathing, or something else that was calming, though not distracting him from the road. He found that just that change of attitude and behaviour was enough to make his journeys pleasurable, rather than frustrating.

One space shuttle disaster was caused because the management of a company that supplied one of the parts apparently lost all sense of priority in their concern for their reputation: Engineers in the company warned that the part might fail in the especially cold temperatures they were experiencing at the launch site, and that it would be better if NASA were to wait a few days, rather than launching a space shuttle imminently as they'd planned. Management, faced with the embarrassment of asking NASA to hold up the launch in case one of the parts they supplied failed, and the possible bad publicity their company might get as a result that might have a knock-on effect on sales and profits later, chose to disregard what the engineers said, and not to inform NASA about the problem, since after all, the engineers couldn't be certain the part would fail; they just thought it might. The launch went ahead as planned. Less than a minute later, the space shuttle exploded, and all the astronauts on it were killed.

It somehow hadn't occurred to management that if that happened, the reputation of the company might suffer much more, so focused were they on the extreme short-term concern of preventing their reputation from suffering before the shuttle was even launched, hoping things went allright, so no one outside the company would find out about the problem.

There were changes in the company after the disaster: Engineers were given more power to influence policy.

Far-Reaching Safety Improvements Made in the Wake of the Tenerife Air Accident

After the tragic air crash at Tenerife, not only did the air crash investigators listen to the last words of the pilots of the planes that crashed, but they got hold of planes' black boxes from former accidents and near-accidents, and listened to the last minutes of the conversations of the pilots who'd been in every air crash they could, going back years, and also to what happened when there were near misses. They discovered that 70% of them were due to human error, rather than mechanical failure or something else, and most of those 70% could have been avoided, if only crew members had communicated with each other more readily and freely about what they intended to do and about problems. New training courses were then introduced to help overcome the shortcomings.

Now many air crews are taught ways of far more effectively stopping pilots if they believe they're making a mistake. No longer is it the case, as it used to be, that the chief pilot on a plane is considered to be almost above question - he was in charge and almost considered god-like, according to some, but not now.

In the old days, crews were nervous about challenging the captain if they thought he was doing something wrong, because of his status and perceived superior wisdom. No one would ever imagine, in the clear light of day, that they'd treat passenger safety as if it was less important than the desire not to risk the captain's wrath. It would seem an absurd idea. But on the spur of the moment, some wouldn't think of the bigger picture; but respect for the captain and the anxious emotion they felt at the idea of challenging him, plus their trust in his judgment and abilities to get them out of tricky situations and to know what he was doing even when things seemed risky, led them to keep quiet instead of pointing out problems, with sometimes disastrous results.

Nowadays, pilots are apparently trained to make it clear to their crews what they're about to do and why, and to accept criticism from crew members; and crews are trained to speak up when they think there's a problem, rather than feeling that the captain must know best or worrying about what he'll think of them if they do. When pilots are interviewed for a job, the interviewer asks them to imagine they're in certain situations where communication with their crews will be important, to see how willing they are to work as part of a team, accepting feedback from the rest, rather than just being the one who gives orders.

One captain explained how he took his training a step further by always thinking out loud, so his crew could easily anticipate what he might do and why, so they could have time to raise objections if they wanted; for instance, if his plane was travelling to a destination where there were thunder storms, as the weather grew nastier and he could see worse weather in the distance or on the radar, he'd give a commentary on his thinking, like:

"The weather's getting bad; the wind's getting up and coming from that direction. If it gets worse, let's start finding out more about what it's doing, and looking at alternative airports we could land at if we have to. If we have to stay in the air till there's room to land at one, how long could we do that for with the amount of fuel we have? ..."

Because he knows that if he expresses a strong preference for one course of action, his crew might be reluctant to challenge him, so a mistake could be made without anyone raising objections, he doesn't give any actual opinions on what he should do, but just talks as if he's observing the thoughts going through his head as they happen. Not only does that mean the crew feel freer to express their own opinions, but they also know what he's likely to do, rather than being surprised by anything.

He said that at his airline, they only hire people to work in air crews who are "very friendly and outgoing"; and a crew and captain get to know each other before flying with each other, so they can develop a good rapport. If crews feel the captain is approachable, they're more likely to speak up if they think there's a problem. He said that before he begins a flight, he tells his crew that because everyone makes mistakes, he'd really like them to speak up if they see a problem, reassuring them it won't hurt his feelings.

Crew members are taught ways of challenging their captain; if they see he's doing something that seems unsafe, they have a specific three-step procedure to follow that they'll know by heart:

The first step is to state the facts: "We're too near the ground" or whatever. If the captain takes no notice, the next step is to ask a question, and use the captain's name, which can sometimes get attention when saying other things doesn't. So, for instance, a crew member might say, "Brian, are we going to be safe at this height? Have a look at what the plane's instruments are saying." If the pilot's distracted by other things, or something is looming larger in his mind than passenger safety at the time, that might bring him back to the reality of the present moment. The challenge needs to be done in a way that won't come across as offensive in any way though, or some stupid argument might start, where an angry impulse flares up and makes the desire to put the crew member down become somehow a more important priority than passenger safety for just a bit too long, and when the feeling dies down, it'll be too late.

If the captain still doesn't pay attention after the crew member's spoken up for the second time, they can feel authorised to "take action": If the plane's near an airport, the crew member can say something to air traffic control over the radio that alerts them to the problem, so they can step in and direct things, or cancel permission for an attempt at landing. That way, it avoids possible conflict in the aircraft, such as fighting over control of the equipment, should there be the risk of such a thing. But almost always, the first two steps are enough to alert the chief pilot to the problem and have it dealt with.

Those strategies were inspired by the mistakes that had been made. Instead of just thinking about culpability, the focus of the authorities was on trying to find out how to prevent accidents happening again.

Having said all that, air accidents are very rare, and were rare before the problems that led to the upgrade in training.

Better Communication Can Avert Mistakes in Other Settings

There are a lot of other work and other group settings where benefits would be gained by taking more notice of the opinions of more junior staff, other family members and so on.

In fact, the communication training developed by the aviation industry has been adapted for other settings: Medical teams are often trained to communicate better now, with those in charge in such places as operating theatres being taught to be willing to accept observations from more junior staff, and junior staff themselves being trained in ways of speaking up effectively. People in some nuclear power plants, offshore drilling operations and other industrial settings have also been trained in communicating effectively as a team, so as to reduce the possibility of nasty accidents.

But listening to more people's opinions can stop less dramatic mistakes too, such as bad business decisions being made that end up losing a company money. In fact, designating a person to actively look for problems with ideas that people - including the top bosses - have come up with, and to suggest alternative ones for discussion as part of their job, can eliminate the problem of everyone failing to raise useful objections because they're reluctant to come into conflict with the authority figures/bosses.

It also makes for a happier, less stressed workforce in all kinds of work settings if the management explains their decisions to their subordinates if they're going to be affected by them, and in fact consults them to see if they have some good ideas; research has found that workers tend to be much more satisfied with decisions, even ones they disagree with, if the reasons for them have been explained to them so they understand what's going on, and their opinions were at least taken into account, rather than them feeling as if things are being done to them that are beyond their control and no one cares.

Part Two
Reducing Anger and Bad Arguments

Communicating differently, and understanding the likely intentions of others more, can make it more likely that arguments will have favourable outcomes or won't happen.

A Few Communication Mistakes Often Made in Relationships, and Better Ways of Getting Points Across

I remember something I read about communication in relationships. Someone wrote a book, in which she described the mistakes she used to make when she was communicating with her husband. She said one thing she used to do wrong was to just hint instead of speaking straightforwardly, for instance saying something like, "Isn't that a lovely flower vase! A bit expensive though!" when what she really meant was she'd like it and she was hoping her husband would say it was fine for her to get it if she wanted it, and buy it for her. But naturally, her husband didn't realise she was really saying she wanted it, so he didn't do anything. Then she thought he was being mean not getting it for her, and would sulk, and her husband wouldn't know why.

Sometimes, even simple things can help improve a marriage or other relationship. For instance, even just the way people phrase things can make a difference to how many arguments there are.

For instance, if instead of just hinting, and then being grumpy with her husband because she'd attributed motives to him that he can't really have had, and because he hadn't bought her something she hadn't actually said she wanted, the woman had said something instead of hinting, like, "I love that vase! Can we afford it, or do we have too many pressures on our finances at the moment?" her husband might well have said she could have it, or else he would likely have explained his reasons if he'd said she couldn't, so she would have been satisfied and understood things better.

Another thing the author said was that arguments can start because accusations are made like, "You always do this", or, "You never do that". It might not be meant literally, but the other person can think it is; or it can happen that someone really does think that their spouse "never" does something they'd like them to do, such as the housework, or "always" does something they don't want them to do, such as leaving their dirty socks lying around the bedroom floor. It might be genuinely true, but often, it can be that times when they do the undesirable behaviour or don't do what it would be nice if they did are more memorable, because they arouse emotions of anger, and also can mean extra work for the other spouse, whereas it can sometimes go almost unnoticed when a person does do something they're supposed to do, or doesn't do something wrong, because they're simply doing what's expected of them.

So the times they did something disagreeable will stand out, and can lead to the impression that that's what they always do, simply because the times they didn't were quickly forgotten.

If it isn't strictly true that the person always does the thing that's a nuisance, or never does the thing the one making the accusations wants them to, then they'll likely object to being accused of it, and the conversation will likely become about whether the accusation is really true, rather than being about what the accuser would probably much rather it be about - trying to persuade them to change.

The author of the book says making angry accusations isn't a good way to have a conversation in any case. She says it's far better to request that someone does something in future, rather than to have a go at them for something they didn't do in the past, expecting that to make them do it from then on. Requesting something might not always work, but sometimes it does and can resolve a situation that's been making a person angry, without even a hint of an argument.

If someone is accusing another person of doing something they haven't done at all, the instinct of the person being accused will often be just to immediately deny it, to get angry or surprised and want to defend themselves. But they might uncover more of the faulty reasoning or misinformation that led the other person to make the accusation sooner if instead, they first ask them questions about how they came to think such a thing, or where they heard it.

Waiting For the First Flare-up of Anger to Calm Before Responding

Just as depression and anxiety can, anger can get worse and worse because people keep thinking of something in one particular way - which might not necessarily be the correct one - rather than trying to think of it from others' points of view, or trying to put their angry thoughts on hold till they've asked one or two questions to try to find out the truth about what's really happened. When people are angry, they don't feel sympathetic enough towards the person they're angry with to take the time to find out more about why they're behaving the way they are. But being aware that anger makes it easy to over-react to things could help people realise it's as well to be a bit cautious and wait a bit before responding.

When anger first comes on, it flares up, and anyone who reacts within those first few seconds can do something far more hot-headed than they might do even minutes later when the feelings have died down a bit. So even waiting for a matter of seconds for the flare-up of feeling to die down a bit can mean reacting more sensibly; and in the days to come, an angry person might be very glad they did wait. Sometimes what's done on the spur of the moment in the heat of anger can be remembered by another person for years and years, and they can have resentful feelings whenever they think about it.

Complimenting Along With any Criticism

If you're going to criticise or even just disagree with someone, sometimes situations can become surprisingly hostile or argumentative surprisingly quickly. it can decrease the likelihood of that happening if even if over something intended to be very minor, compliments are given as well as what might be taken as fault-finding. It's not always easy to anticipate that something will cause offence, and when taken by surprise by someone's attitude, or in the heat of discussion, it's easy to forget to try to modify what's being said with a compliment related to it; but it can smooth things over a bit if it's remembered.

In fact, a relationship can improve if people look out for things they like about each other, and things about what they do that they can be complimented on, and compliment them as much as they can between arguments; it could make for a happier relationship, and then maybe fewer arguments will develop, because people will often be in a better mood with each other.

Reading More Into Things Than Was Intended

One reason people can get unexpectedly offended is that unbeknownst to the one bringing up an issue, the other one can be reading more into what they're saying than was intended, and becoming offended because of what they're reading into it, rather than because of what the person actually said.

One way that can happen is to do with the way people assume it must be making them look to others: For instance, if a person seems to be getting more annoyed than is reasonable, it's worth considering that it might be because they think the criticism strikes at their competence or decency as a person, or abilities, or something like that, and that it could seem to them that their reputation is being damaged; so a compliment to do with their abilities in something related to what they're being criticised about can reassure them and calm things a bit, as can assurances that what's being said isn't meant as a character assassination, or a sign of dislike, or meant personally, or whatever.

It's difficult to know just how the person getting annoyed is interpreting what's being said; but reassuring them that you still value them as a person, or something like that, can sometimes help.

In fact, considering before bringing up an issue that it might come across as a challenge that will make the other person want to argue on reflex, even if it's only a minor issue, can prevent arguments arising, because it will enable people to plan for what to say to stop the person taking things so personally and getting defensive, since compliments or reassurances about related things can be given at the same time the issue is raised in the first place, where it's possible, to try to forestall any problems that arise because the other person's read too much into what's being said, or feels shown up or whatever.

Bringing up the problem you have with them privately, rather than among others, can help too, since even if there was no intent to show them up in front of others, if they feel shown up, perhaps because they feel embarrassed or ashamed that others are listening in while they're being criticised, they might argue more than you expect, and you might wonder why.

For example, if a couple are entertaining guests, and the wife has cooked quite a nice meal, but the husband thinks the meat's a bit dry, he might suggest the wife cooks it for a bit less time in future in front of the guests. Some people on the receiving end of such a comment would be fine with that, but some would feel shown up, so they might refuse to just accept that there was something wrong with the meat, especially if they thought it was allright. They might, for example, respond by asking the husband if he'd prefer to risk food poisoning because it hadn't been cooked for so long, or sarcastically comment that it wouldn't take much brain power to just decide to put more gravy on it. The wife might be less offended though if the husband compliments her for the way the rest of the meal turned out at the same time as he suggests a change, and takes longer complimenting her than criticising the one bit that wasn't quite up to standard.

After all, if the only comment you have about a dinner is criticism for something you weren't keen on, it can give the impression - albeit unintentional - that you didn't think much of any of it.

If someone says or does something you don't like, but you can tell their intention was good, it's well worth trying to remember to tell them you recognise that when you disagree with them.

Being Selective About What's Worth Arguing About

Also, picking the battles that are really worth fighting and not engaging in the others can be a way to calm things; sometimes a person might have what seems to them to be a very good point, and they're dissatisfied about something, but if the other person gets upset at the mention of it, it's worth considering whether it's worth risking losing good relations over - the costs of arguing may be more than the costs of keeping quiet. Still, that can only be done a certain number of times before real resentment sets in. But if and when a person feels as if it just has to be mentioned, There are at least ways of arguing that make long-term bad feeling less likely.

Don't Consider One or Two Arguments a Sign of Bad Character in a Person

There was the man who criticised a woman as having had disputes with almost everyone in the place; ... but she'd come in and it was a place full of argumentative people; it was very likely she was going to end up arguing! It would have been more surprising if she hadn't.

So it can be a mistake to single out one person for blame; it's better to look at the way everyone interacts with each other to find out where the problems are. It's probably in almost everyone's personalities to over-react to things when they're angry; anger just makes people do that. So it's best not to judge people's personalities because of what they've done on one or two occasions, unless it's way out of proportion to any provocation that set them off, in which case, it might be safer to avoid them from then on. But otherwise, reserving judgment can be best. Not holding something against them doesn't mean forgetting all about things that happen; it just means keeping an open mind to the possibility that they're not too bad really, and having a forgiving attitude for a while.

If you're going to accuse someone of having an actual personality trait where they deliberately shout people down, or such a thing as that, you need to prove they have an intent to shout people down, rather than just raising their voice under provocation as many people do, in a way that just results in you feeling as if you're being shouted down. It's the same with lots of other things - people might often get angry with others because something they've said or done has made them feel a certain way, and they assume the person must have intended them to feel that way. But chances are that it wasn't intentional, and the person has no idea how what they've done has made others feel. Why would they, until at least after the person has started feeling it and they can tell it from their body language?

If Frustrated Because Someone Isn't Backing Down in an Argument, Consider Whether They're Entirely to Blame

"You never admit you're wrong". That's an accusation sometimes made. It can sound like a strange one. Sometimes it's true, but those who make it ought to ask themselves whether they have actually done a good job of proving to the other person that they are wrong. If they haven't, why should the person ever feel the need to go back on what they said and confess that they were mistaken?

To really be convincing, it's sometimes necessary to ask a person you disagree with questions to find out the reasons for their point of view, so you understand it and can tell why they think what they do, and then discuss the reasons they have, or at least explain reasons why you believe their point of view is wrong, rather than getting frustrated because when you insist you're right, they just insist that they are with equal feeling. After all, why shouldn't they, if you haven't given them a good reason to doubt what they think; after all, they probably wouldn't think it in the first place if they didn't hold a firm opinion about it. They may sometimes in fact be right, while you're wrong.

Once they understand your reasons for thinking the way you do, they may be more willing to compromise anyway, - at least if it's a matter of you wanting them to do something, and them refusing. People are far more likely to change their minds if others use persuasion, and give them a good reason to doubt what they think, and more likely to compromise to please you if they understand why you feel the way you do and can tell you have valid reasons for your opinion.

Or you could ask just what evidence they have for believing as they do, and when they give some reasons, point out flaws in them and ask them whether they've considered them.

Also, the way you say what you say will make a difference - if it sounds like an order or a sneer, they will likely argue on reflex because they object to being sneered at or bossed about.

People aren't always conscious of the way they sound to others, because people tend not to monitor the way their tone of voice is sounding - their attention is on thinking of what they want to say, - and it might not be their intention to sound as if they're giving an order or sneering. Talking that way can be a habit. But they might become more aware of it if they stop to think about it.

Some Behaviour Can Either be Interpreted as Hostile or Harmless

Some information and behaviour is open to several different interpretations, and people tend to quickly interpret it in the light of what they already know, and in particular, what they think is most likely, based on what's uppermost in their memories about the things they know. For instance, something can be judged as friendly teasing when it's said by a friend, and an insult if said by someone who doesn't like them, because they're judging it on the basis of what they already know about the person's feelings towards them. Tone of voice will help them decide too.

To give another example, a headline that reads, "Mayor says bus passengers should be belted" is likely to be taken to mean the mayor thinks seatbelts should be put in buses, rather than that bus passengers should receive beatings, since a respectable person wouldn't be likely to say such a thing in public, and people will generally assume a mayor is respectable.

So people will tend to interpret things in line with their view of the way the world works.

It's essential to use judgments when taking in what people say; it reduces the possibility of making serious errors, although the judgments made are sometimes wrong.

One extreme example is that the Bible says Jesus told the listening crowds that if their eyes enticed them into doing something sinful, they were to cut them out. If people took that literally, there would be a lot of blind people walking around. People tend to assume he was using hyperbole to emphasise the point he was making; and in fact that was a common form of speech in his day, and apparently still is in that part of the world.

But sometimes, information is not all that easy to interpret. For instance, it might take a while to be able to judge well when a certain person's teasing and when they're being serious. If a person takes a comment too literally, because they assume the one who said it is more hostile than they are, or they don't realise they're joking, it can lead to disputes. And if the person who feels offended Refuses to alter their opinion of what the other person's trying to say, even if they say something that can be taken as evidence that their comment was meant the way they claimed it was, it can lead to worse problems, especially if the person who took offence responds in a hostile way, which will likely make the other person want to be hostile if they weren't before. And then the more heated the argument becomes, the less likely it is that either person will want to stop to consider the other's point of view.

That's not to say people should give each other the benefit of the doubt and assume offensive comments probably weren't meant that seriously if there's any doubt; it might be quite common for some people to say unpleasant things and then claim they were joking or not being serious, just to try to get away with it.

Another thing is that some argumentative people who annoy people a lot by insulting them may well feel as if they're actually being victimised, because quite a lot of the people they antagonise may respond with anger, being unpleasant to them. If the argumentative people don't make the connection between their own behaviour and that of the people being unpleasant to them, they might draw the conclusion that the world is full of nasty people who are always victimising them. They might think some people are bullies, when others might think of them as good-natured people. The truth will likely be somewhere in between - those people may be good-natured when around friendly enough people, but might sometimes be unpleasant when provoked. They might come across more as bullies when someone provokes them and they retaliate by saying something nasty.

Retaliating to Insults With Angry Words Tends to Only Lead to Retaliation in Response

Some people think it's only fair that if someone says something nasty to them, they should say something nasty back. They think it'll teach the person a lesson. But the opposite often happens. One thing people who think like that often don't take into account is that instead of realising that what they say is meant to be fair retaliation for what they said, the person on the receiving end of it is likely to think they've just been on the receiving end of an unreasonable and nasty verbal attack themselves, and respond by saying something nasty in return, especially if their intention wasn't to be nasty in the first place, so they don't understand why the other person is being nasty, and even more if they made their point via email and have half forgotten what they even said.

Then in turn, the person who responded to the original remark in the nasty way, thinking it was the right and fair thing to do, will likely not understand or care that the reply that the person who made the original comment then makes is being sparked off by anger, fuelled by feeling provoked by them, but will probably think of it as just another nasty verbal attack; and that might be especially true if they're on an Internet forum or something similar, so there's been a delay between responses, and they've half forgotten what they said themselves, or if they can't relate what the other person's saying to what they said, for instance if they said the other person's insane to speak to them like that, and they responded by saying something like, "You can talk!", and told a story from the past that makes the other person look a bit crazy, but has nothing to do with the issues discussed a minute earlier.

If they both in turn respond by just being insulting, each person in turn is likely to see the other's behaviour as just unreasonable nastiness and respond in a similar way, and the cycle might continue on and on, with the ill feeling between the two just increasing.

Such a situation can sometimes be avoided if instead of responding with insults, each one explains how the other one's behaviour is making them feel, or tries to keep calm as they explain why they don't think the other's accusations or remarks are justified. It's harder to do, because in the heat of anger, all people tend to want to do is retaliate, and they'll likely do it with something the other person's bound to be offended by.

Also, anyone who holds the view that people are usually out to get them won't want to make themselves seem vulnerable by saying they feel hurt by something, or explaining how they feel or asking the other person not to talk to them like that, in case that suggests they can't handle it. They might think the strong and tough thing to do is to insult the other person more. But then they might end up feeling victimised after the other person responds in a nasty way, and their view that everyone's against them will be strengthened even more, even though what's really happening is that when people are insulted, they will often get angry and say something unpleasant back in the heat of feeling provoked.

Naturally, things are different where a person genuinely is trying to be malicious; if someone like that hears someone say their feelings are hurt by what they've said, they'll be pleased to know they're getting to them, and will likely say worse things to have more of an effect.

People Can Feel Insulted and Victimised When They're Not Being Really

It can also happen that someone who provokes an argument can see the other one's responses as an inability to take insults from them, completely oblivious to the fact that what the person is saying is designed to make fun of them, or actually trying to reason with them, or raising issues they're seriously concerned about, albeit perhaps making a few sarcastic quips along the way.

And if someone gets into a mind-set where they see responses to them as evidence of bullying or mental instability on the part of the person responding unless they're as polite as can be, their anger at feeling insulted can cloud their judgment to such an extent that they can see increasingly vitriolic responses as evidence of what they imagine they are, rather than as a reaction to their own increasing nastiness; and they can see good-natured teasing responses or attempts to communicate seriously as just attempts to be spiteful. They might not even make sure they understand them properly.

Such an attitude can backfire on them. A person who doesn't think their concerns are being taken seriously, or who is increasingly frustrated that their attempts at humour that might lighten things up with another person are being seen as spite, might eventually resort to more extreme language in order to be heard, and the person who thinks others are out to get them might see that as evidence of more extreme bullying or mental instability, rather than what it really is.

So hostile people can become more and more paranoid and convinced the world's full of aggressive people out to get them, not realising their own actions are provoking the hostile responses.

Someone said something on an Internet forum which may or may not have been appropriate for the person they were talking to, but was a good description of how hostile people can be confirmed in their opinion that people are out to get them when they're not:

... you're so caught up in your own victimisation complex that you can't tell the difference between what you're perceiving and what is actually being said. You're allowing your perception that you're being "attacked" to rule your responses completely.

Looking through your post history I notice you have a tendency to get upset about "being insulted", which seems to be short-hand for you being ruled so thoroughly by your own perceptions that many things that people say are immediately twisted into the "insulting" category by you even if it's a general statement that unless taken personally isn't actually insulting. The conversation is not solely about you; I'm talking general psychology; no amount of complaints of how it's "insulting" or claims that I'm talking "nonsense" is really going to change [my belief].

... (Of course, that person Might genuinely have been being insulting, and just making excuses and slurs. It's impossible to be sure just from what they said.)

It's Easy to Make Assumptions About Another's Motives, But Asking Questions is Better

Making automatic assumptions about people's motives can lead to angrier exchanges than there would be if questions were asked first to find out what they really are, especially if both sides are making assumptions about each other's motives.

For instance, a mother might throw away a child's favourite mug because it's a bit cracked and chipped. The child might protest, and first of all assume that the mother's thrown it away simply because it doesn't look so nice anymore. So the child might complain that the mother must be a snob to have thrown it away just for having a little crack. The mother might protest that she isn't snobbish, and say she threw it away because bacteria can live in cracks, and also dirt can build up in them without people realising, because they can't see it. The child might suggest that washing it up with extra care could at least reduce the risks of harm, which surely couldn't be that high anyway; and they might come up with the idea that the crack could have had extra washing-up liquid rubbed on it.

Then other family members might think it sounds as if the mother's being criticised, and join the conversation, telling the child not to question the mother's ability to wash up and tell her how to do the job better, since after all, she's good at it; and they might scold the child about how they shouldn't question her judgment in deciding what needs throwing away.

The child might wonder what just happened, wondering how the conversation is suddenly all about how good or bad the mother's washing-up skills are, when all they'd been thinking when they started the conversation was that they were upset their mug had been thrown away, and they wish there was some alternative that could have prevented it.

People respond to the last thing that got said, rather than thinking of the bigger picture, which, after all, would take a bit of thinking, which is harder to do in the middle of a fast-flowing conversation.

Trying to Listen and Understand More and Talk Less at First

Some people can be offended by what others say because they take it too personally, because they read something different into it than what was meant. It can help if when someone says something that doesn't seem very nice, anyone who doesn't like it asks them questions to really draw out their point of view, to find out why they feel the way they do and what they really mean, only then responding. Otherwise, unpleasant situations can develop, such as where people are complaining behind others' backs, causing offence to spread, because they accuse people of saying things they didn't quite say, but which they have misunderstood them as saying.

Giving priority to listening and asking questions rather than talking back can mean coming to a better understanding of a person's views, which can sometimes mean problems get resolved much sooner, whereas if a person starts to talk back to defend themselves or to express their own views as soon as a person says the first thing they take exception to, and then gets carried away airing their own point of view, because they feel sure it needs to be heard, they can say things that aren't really relevant to the other person, because they haven't in reality understood the other person's point of view, although they assume they do, and they're missing a lot of what they would have said; so the same issue can arise again and again, because the person who raises it might give up trying to get a word in edgeways for the time being, but feel angry all over again after they've mulled it over, or just carry on feeling angry from before, and raise it again at another time.

Then if the same thing happens again, their point of view might still not be understood, so the problem isn't resolved, and might be brought up yet again sometime.

It isn't easy to just listen when what's being said sounds like a personal attack, especially if an accusation comes as a surprise. Anger and pride can flare up, giving a person an impulse to defend themselves quickly, especially if they worry that the longer the other one talks for, the more their reputation will be damaged in the minds of anyone listening. But controlling their impulse for long enough to be able to understand what the person has to say better can help resolve things better in the long term.

One reason for misunderstandings is that people can sometimes misinterpret something that's said; sometimes it's possible to interpret just one little phrase in very different ways, and that can change the perception of the entire meaning of what the person who said it says.

For instance, if someone said she was feeling down because a friend of hers had said she didn't want to go to a party with her, someone who cared about her might be annoyed because they assume the friend must have said it in a hurtful way and that was the problem, so they might have a go at the friend for being unkind and tactless, suggesting ways they could have phrased what they said better. But in reality, the person who was upset might have just been worrying that if no one she knew was going to the party, she'd feel awkward if she went, because she didn't know anyone else there so it might not be much fun without her friend.

So asking for more information, or asking a person who you suspect of having done something offensive for their version of events before finding fault with them, can sometimes throw a different light on things and spare an argument.

Trying Not to Jump to Hasty Conclusions

Some people who jump to hasty conclusions can think they understand a situation, and talk and talk for minutes because they think the other person will benefit from hearing their point of view, or they can get annoyed with a person for apparently not understanding what they've said, perhaps repeating the same thing again and again, thinking that eventually, surely the other person will get it, when in reality they've misinterpreted a situation or haven't got a good grasp of the reason the issue has arisen, so what they say is all irrelevant to the other person, because none of the talking addresses the concerns they have that are causing the problem for them. So asking questions to find out their version of events or point of view before talking a lot can help a lot.

Even if it seems the issue has been resolved because the other person isn't arguing after all the talking, in reality it could simply mean they're fed up of listening, so they want the conversation over, but will complain behind the person's back to others afterwards.

Trying to Phrase Criticism in a Way That Sounds Kinder or More Light-Hearted

Because there's a tendency to interpret criticism as being more hostile than it was meant, whenever there's an opportunity to plan how an issue's going to be raised before it's brought up, to guard against the possibility of giving offence where none was intended, and also to try to pacify the person, compliments can be given them about things that relate to the issue being raised to reassure them; for instance, if someone's annoyed with someone else for throwing something away instead of trying to mend it, and yet in the past they have mended some things well, that fact can be brought up, because it's human nature to take things as personal slights when that wasn't the intention.

It's best not to over-do the compliments to the point they sound like smarmy flattery though, naturally, or they might sound insincere, and also the other person might feel restless while waiting for the actual point to be made.

It's not always possible to anticipate what people will take offence at. But mistakes can be learned from: If a person has experience of someone else unexpectedly taking offence at something they said, they can plan to try and say any similar things they want to say in ways that hopefully won't offend in future, for instance trying to reassure the person that they don't mean what they're saying personally.

If an issue can be raised in a way that makes it sound quite light-hearted, as long as it's not done in a way that'll lead to the other person thinking it's not really meant seriously, it can sometimes cause less offence. Also, if it can be phrased in a way that makes it sound less personal, it sounds less like a verbal attack. For instance, instead of saying, "It really annoys me when you leave your dirty socks on the floor instead of putting them to the wash", maybe it would work better phrased something like, "I don't know why, but it bugs me to see any dirty socks on the floor. I suppose I don't like the idea of a cheesy floor. Please can you put your own ones in the wash in future?"

It's as well to bear in mind that when a person reacts, just as you might make mistakes when having to respond on the spur of the moment because you have no time to think things through, so they might make wrong assumptions about why you're saying what you're saying and read more into things than they should, because they haven't got time to think things through; if they had, they might respond differently. It's worth trying to remember that if things go wrong.

Arguing With People it Would be a Particular Shame to Offend

If arguing with someone who's generally on your side or favourably disposed towards you, it's worth trying to remember that, so as not to get carried away; it would be a pity to alienate someone who normally does good in your life. When a person's irritated, it's easy to get things out of perspective, forgetting that they're not just an irritating person you'd like to argue with, but someone who's mostly good to have around.

Also, if they're generally on-side, they might well have been well-intentioned even while doing whatever it was that you disapprove of. Remembering their usual attitude can abate annoyance with them.

Phrasing things in ways that don't sound like a verbal attack, but that if possible, actually give reasons for the complaint that are intended to make the person sympathetic to your point of view, can help. Naturally that shouldn't be over-done, or trying to soften their heart can seem like fishing for pity, or accusing them even more than was intended.

Giving reasons for what you're saying can help the other person understand why you feel it's a problem as well, so they won't just feel attacked. At least it's good to explain your intentions in bringing up the issue when you begin to talk about it, so it sounds like a concern of yours, rather than an accusation.

Things to Bear in Mind Before Being Critical

Before bringing up an issue that might lead to an argument, it's worth considering things such as:

• Is it possible the person's intentions were good and I could be giving the impression I suspect them of bad or silly motives unfairly if I don't phrase things carefully?
• Is it possible that raising the issue when someone else is there with us could lead to them thinking their credibility's being undermined in front of others so they might get more offended than they would if the matter was raised privately?
• Is it possible there's been a misunderstanding about the reason why something's happened, and things could be said that assume a faulty reason when in reality it would be better to ask questions to find out the truth before complaining?
• Timing can be important. For instance, sometimes, people will be more relaxed about discussing issues when they're contented after a meal, or relaxing with a cup of tea and so on.

Things will likely still go wrong, even with the best of intentions, because provocative things are often said that the person who raised the issue simply can't anticipate, and also it's hard to remember to do things that make the argument more likely to be as friendly as possible when the mind's preoccupied with responding to what the other person's saying, and there isn't time to think things through.

Still, whenever things go wrong, they can be taken as learning experiences; people can ponder on what might have made them go wrong afterwards, and think through how things could be done differently in future to make it more likely that discussions will be amicable. And after all, the same issue can likely be raised again with a possible different outcome next time.

There's a Saying: You Can't Reason Someone Out of a Position They Didn't Reason Themselves Into

It's easy to assume arguments are just about discussion of the merits of the actual facts, and that the one who makes the best case should surely win. But in reality, there are a lot of things that make arguments more than just discussion of the facts: One is that if a person doesn't want to believe what's being said to them, it doesn't matter how convincing the facts are, they won't be persuasive.

For instance, once two people were having a discussion on an Internet forum, where one was arguing that religion had done nothing but harm throughout the centuries and would only be dangerous as long as it existed. The other person was disputing some of what he said, giving reasons why it couldn't be true. But he didn't seem to take notice of a word she said, not trying to persuade her by reasoning that anything she said was wrong, but just sticking to his position no matter what. She became more and more frustrated with him.

Then he put a message on the board about the real reasons he hated religion so much - how he'd been born out of wedlock, and people calling themselves Christians had told their children not to become friendly with him because he was a bastard, the product of adultery. Children made fun of him. It was worse when he grew up and realised he was gay. He blamed religion for giving people the attitudes they held, and his grudge against it was what fuelled his desire to argue that it was no good. After years of bullying and rejection that he blamed on religion, rather than on the cruelty of several people who claimed to be religious and their children, he wasn't about to accept any arguments that contradicted his attempts to prove it shouldn't exist.

So sometimes when an argument's getting heated, and frustration's mounting because no matter how carefully one side tries to explain their point of view, the other side doesn't seem to be taking it in at all, instead of trying harder and more fiercely to do what clearly isn't working, as is the temptation, it's worth trying to step back and try to find out what's causing the other person to hold the point of view they do. If they're not listening to best efforts to reason, maybe they feel it would be unpleasant or inconvenient to listen, or else maybe they never intended to have a reasoned argument in the first place, but just wanted to knock the other person's beliefs down, confident they're in the right, and having no interest in listening to what their opponent has to say from the start.

It's difficult to do when in the heat of emotion, but it can save a lot of frustration if a person who doesn't feel they're getting anywhere changes tactic and starts asking friendly questions to try to find out why the person's behaving as they are and what they're hoping to achieve, although it doesn't always work, since an opponent can object to feeling psychoanalysed, or feel annoyed that their opponent won't accept their point of view at face value.

Try to Avoid Being Tricked or Sidelined Into Getting Sidetracked

Sometimes you might be trying to argue a point or explain something important, and a person who's basically not much more than a heckler might interrupt you to ask an irrelevant question, or to say something provocative that makes you angry. As tempting as it might be to put him in his place, the very thing he may be hoping for is that you'll have a go, so he'll get to argue with you, and the conversation will become all about him, giving him attention and an adrenaline boost from being in an argument. When you try saying something aimed at putting someone in their place, it's actually likely to have the opposite effect - rather than feeling humbled by the comment, they'll be angered by it and argue. Before you know it, what you wanted to say about the topic you were intending to talk about originally will have been forgotten in a conversation that's all about them and their behaviour.

Or sometimes a person will be wanting to divert you from what you're saying because they don't want to hear it, because it seems to threaten their interests or beliefs in some way.

Sometimes an attempt like that can begin in ways that are so subtle that it's difficult to predict that it could lead to a divertion at first; for instance, they might say something that sounds as if it's related to what you're saying, but really they're nit-picking about little details, and if you're not careful, the discussion will become an argument about those little details, and you won't get the chance to make the main points you wanted to make. So it's as well to be alert from the start that that might happen, and try to remember not to be diverted from keeping the argument on the track you want it to be on.

For instance, if a person said, "I don't think they should sell fireworks that make big bangs to just anyone; a lot of animals are scared of them", someone who opposed the idea of restricting their sale might pick up on the words "a lot" and dispute them, by saying something like, "What is your evidence that 'a lot' of animals are scared of them? How many animals have you even seen during firework displays? Do you know of squirrels who quake under trees or foxes who cower in their dens? Before doing something as drastic as getting fireworks banned, you need evidence! Have you ever been at a zoo and calculated what percentage of animals are distressed at the fireworks? That's about the only way you've got a chance of making the remotest claim that 'a lot' of animals do anything. But how many zoos are anywhere near places where they do firework displays anyway?"

The conversation might get to be all about zoos and squirrels, and how many animals would have to be scared for a person to be justified in saying there were 'a lot'; and the real issue might be completely forgotten - the person concerned about animals being scared might even forget to say what made them raise the issue in the first place -that they know several families whose pet dogs become distressed on evenings when fireworks are used - and not just on the main evening, but for a couple of weeks, because people let them off all around those times, and people don't just stick to official firework displays, but let them off in their own gardens, or even in the streets; and they've heard stories of dogs who've been startled and run into the road and been hit by cars after hearing loud bangs. They didn't even originally say they'd like fireworks that make loud noises banned altogether; but that bit, too, might get forgotten in the discussion, and people might go away with the unfair impression they wanted them all banned for a silly reason.

So when raising a point, it's best to make the best points right at the beginning if possible, to minimise the chances of being diverted and forgetting them before you've had a chance to make them. It's also worthwhile making a mental note to try to remember the important things, and to try to use precise language that can't be challenged by those trying to drive the discussion further off track, at least when you're first bringing up a point so there's time to think about that kind of thing.

And if the conversation turns into an argument about something you didn't originally intend to talk about, it can be best if it can be brought back to the important points as quickly as possible, even if it means conceding that some minor details of what you said are open to question, or letting opponents win some minor points because to correct them would mean the discussion gets off-track.

Naturally that doesn't mean your argument will be less likely to be challenged, but hopefully it'll mean that if it is, it'll be challenged in a more useful way that'll lead to something worthwhile coming of it.

For instance, if the person talking about how they thought fireworks shouldn't be sold to just anyone had managed to ignore or had conceded the irrelevant challenge, and brought the conversation back to what they really cared about - scared dogs, then although others might not have accepted their view that fireworks shouldn't be sold to some members of the public, it's possible the discussion might have got onto how best to protect dogs from distress around the times people buy fireworks, and how possible it is to do that, so they might have come away with the view that there were some good alternatives to restricting their sale.

The person who drove the argument about fireworks off track might have done it not because they genuinely thought the person's argument was bad, but because they enjoyed letting off fireworks themselves and hated the thought their sale might someday be restricted.

When Someone's Argument Seems to Threaten an Opinion Their Opponent Holds or Could Compel Them to Give Up Treasured Beliefs if They were Persuaded

When people oppose you in an argument, they won't necessarily be doing it because they simply think your argument is a bad one, but sometimes because they feel their enjoyment of life or security in their beliefs or something else is being threatened in some way by what you're saying.

For instance, they might worry that if you had your way, their enjoyment would be restricted, for example if they're a smoker and there's a chance you might be able to influence people to get smoking in a place they enjoy smoking banned; or they might feel you're challenging their self-image or reputation, for instance if they're a parent and think of themselves as wise, and entrust a certain person to baby-sit, and you don't think they should, and criticise that person; admitting that person isn't suitable for the job after all might feel to them like admitting they're not so wise after all if they could hire them, and they might resist that because that wouldn't feel comfortable, so they might argue with a passion that that person is suitable for the job really, not properly listening to what you have to say.

If you can anticipate that that kind of thing might happen because it's human nature, you might be able to think of ways to raise the issue in a way that prevents them looking bad - even though making them look bad wasn't your intention before. It likely won't always be possible to do that. But specifying that you understand that they couldn't have anticipated the problem, or something like that, that separates them from blame, if that's possible, can help.

Or if someone raises an issue with you, and you yourself are immediately tempted to leap to the defensive, it might help you calm down and respond in a more thoughtful way if you first consider whether your emotions are being stirred up not because their argument's a bad one, but because you fear it's making you look bad. If they actually have a point worth discussing, it's really only fair to discuss it. And you might consider whether you really have any evidence that the person's argument is going to make you look bad - or if it does, whether it's likely to for long enough to be worth bothering about. People usually quickly move on to thinking of other things; and grace in accepting the other's point of view might come across as respectable maturity, not weakness.

Also, while a person might think they're saving face by sticking to their point of view no matter what, it can seem very different to those around them; unbeknownst to them, they might be coming across as stubborn, rude, ignorant and not very bright because they don't seem to be able to see reason.

A college professor was reading a book about effective teaching, when she came across a chapter about how research had found that a certain teaching method wasn't very good, and that in fact it was even harmful to learning. It was one of her favourite teaching methods. Instead of accepting what was being said, she grew defensive and angry, refusing to believe it, muttering to herself that the author was wrong and he just didn't understand because the method was good. She had no good reasons to believe what she was saying; it was just an instant reaction, probably because she liked the method and didn't want to believe it could be wrong. She subconsciously wanted to preserve her own self-image as someone competent to judge what was right, and felt that what she was reading undermined that self-image, whether it really did or not. Saving herself from the embarrassment of accepting that she'd been using a bad method became more important to her than finding out the truth. Then she realised what she was doing, and forced herself to examine what the book was saying fairly. But she said she didn't enjoy doing so, and it was tempting not to.

So when people oppose you in an argument, they might not be doing so because they've had a good think about the issue and come to the conclusion that their point of view is best; they might be doing it simply because what you're saying seems to threaten something they hold dear in some way, such as their social standing among others, or their right to do something.

For instance, someone who often smokes near others, including his children, might get angry if anyone tries to tell him smoking's harmful, and even give a few reasons why he thinks it isn't that bad; but he might not really be doing it because he's carefully considered the issue, but because if he accepts what's being said to him, he'll have to start living with the shame of having done something around his children all their lives that might have been harming them, and he might feel pressure to give up, which he doesn't want to do.

So in an argument with someone who won't accept evidence no matter what, it might be worth asking them if they have personal reasons not to willingly accept it.

It's best not to do that at first, till after decent evidence has been rejected, even where there's a strong suspicion they only have the point of view they have because it suits them; otherwise it can just come across as insulting, and spark an angry quarrel, because they might think you won't accept that they can reject an argument on its merits, but that you instead assume without evidence that they must have ulterior motives; and in any case, your suspicion might be wrong.

Much as it might be unpleasant, it's best to listen till you know what the arguments people with the opposite point of view have are, if possible, since otherwise you might not say anything in contradiction of the real reason they have for believing what they do that they find convincing, so your own evidence won't persuade them. If it's an argument about a hot topic of debate, rather than something personal, To be better prepared, it's good to read up about why people who believe what they believe do so before talking to them about it if possible, so you can prepare what to say better.

And if your opinion has any common ground with theirs, it's best to talk about that at the beginning, since then they're less likely to feel immediately on the defensive and irate, thinking of what to say to oppose you, but they're more likely to stay calm and listen properly to what you have to say.

Arguing More Amicably

It can be aggravating trying to think of ways to phrase things tactfully before saying them, and keeping some things back so as not to offend, since anyone who feels strongly about something will likely just want to express the way they feel and get it said, and it can be frustrating hiding some thoughts and feelings for the sake of the other person's feelings. Still, before you disagree with a person's point of view, or tell them something they won't want to hear, think about what your goal is in doing so: If it's just to show up how stupid you think their point of view is, you can feel free to ridicule it all you like; but if you actually want to persuade them to change their mind, it's best to try and think in advance of how to say things as tactfully as possible so as not to hurt their feelings, since otherwise they might be thinking more about their hurt or angered feelings and what they think of you than they are about what you're saying.

Also, it's best not to exaggerate or say anything that isn't quite true to make your case sound better; if they catch you out, they might think it discredits everything you're saying, so they'll think they have a good reason not to believe you, thinking what you say can't be trusted. And where there's a little uncertainty in your position, it can help to be willing to admit it, since it'll likely make them feel less defensive, and you might gain respect by seeming to be giving a little.

Also, if they do make a good point, it's best to be willing to acknowledge it, and maybe change the arguments you're using as a result; you might feel as if you're losing face because conceding that they're right about something makes your own position weaker, but the more common ground they feel there is between you, and the more they think you're open to reason, the more likely they might be to be willing to think about the possibility that there is something in what you say, and to think it's possible to come to a friendly agreement with you.

Part Three
Sometimes What Seems Like a Good Explanation for Something At First Isn't One at All

People should be cautious about attributing something to what might seem an obvious cause without looking to see if there are other possible explanations.

For instance, if crime goes down a little bit locally after a new crime-fighting policy is introduced, it might be assumed that the crime-fighting policy is beginning to work; but really, more analysis will be necessary, because it might be that, but it might be simply that the amount of crime is bound to vary a bit anyway just by chance, or there might be other factors influencing the rate of crime, such as a few families who were responsible for a lot of it in one neighbourhood having been evicted from their homes and going to live elsewhere.

That kind of thing's worth bearing in mind in all kinds of areas of life.

For instance, a university where all the students get good grades after a new set of staff are employed might have been turned into a fantastic university by them - and that might be a lot of people's assumption; but alternatively, the statistics about grades might mean the staff are giving people better grades than they really deserve, because they want to attract paying customers to the university as students so the university can grow wealthier, so they want it to appear successful; or it could mean a number of other things.

Some strange superstitious beliefs can be generated when people give too much significance to things, or attribute them to a more narrow range of factors than would be wise. For instance, a great sports performance might be expected to be followed by another one, because a team that's become good's expected to carry on being good; but what if part of the reason for the great performance the day it happened had been the wind being in a particularly favourable direction, helping them to score goals by blowing the ball in a way that made it more likely to go into them, and away from their own goal, and that several of the team had had a particularly good night's sleep the night before, making them feel more energetic? Their next sports performances might not be so good because those things don't happen to help them.

Something similar might happen to several other teams too. Maybe people from all those teams will be interviewed on the radio after their great performances. Then, when they all fail to do so well in the coming weeks, they'll likely look for a reason - not necessarily in the right places. It might be assumed by some of them that being interviewed on the radio gives them a jinx that stops them performing so well, since they all stopped performing so well after that. They might not consider that their particularly good performances were better than they did normally, and that those factors that made them perform better, - which they might not even have realised were happening at the time, - had a lot to do with how well they did, so that when those things weren't happening, it was simply likely they wouldn't do so well.

Anyone who already has a superstitious/type belief system, combined with a lack of knowledge of scientific methods, can start to believe that totally unlikely things have great significance; and other people's lives can be affected by that, sometimes seriously. In some parts of the world today, where health services are primitive and the general public has little understanding of scientific explanations for things, tragedies such as deaths from disease are still blamed on witchcraft, and people can be killed because someone starts suspecting someone's guilty of causing them.

In another example, the author of the book How We Know What Isn't So says he was in Israel when there was an unusually high number of deaths by natural causes in a certain part of the country. It wasn't clear whether it was just a random chance fluctuation in numbers, or whether something was contributing to the deaths. But some Rabbis attributed them to the recent admission of women to funerals; women hadn't been allowed to go before. Perhaps the rabbis thought them being allowed to go might be making God angry. Women were stopped from going, and at about the same time, the number of deaths went down. Chance could have done that, or perhaps a warming or cooling of previously extreme temperatures or something; but the rabbis may well have been confirmed in their belief that stopping women going to funerals had solved the problem.

In fact, the number of beliefs that might have been confirmed in people in the area might not have stopped there; they might have drawn conclusions about the ability of religious authority figures to stop unfortunate events, the status of women compared to men, and even the existence of God. So a whole range of beliefs and assumptions might have been built on a conclusion about something that was wrong to begin with.

Mistakenly Seeing Significance in Coincidences and Other Things That Are Really Random

Some coincidences seem so significant it's difficult to believe there's nothing more to them than mere coincidence. Also, sometimes, people can develop scientific-sounding beliefs on very shaky evidence that just seems to makes sense.

For instance, apparently, a lot of people in basketball believe that if they've made a successful shot, it gives them confidence and then they tend to make lots more successful ones straight afterwards. Fans often believe it's true. It certainly sounds like a reasonable and common sense belief. But a study was done that found that players were no more likely to make one successful shot after another one than they were to make a bad one. Certainly it might sometimes seem that the confidence that making a successful shot has given them is helping them make more, since players can sometimes make as many as six or so successful ones in a row. But the study found that it was just as likely that they'd make bad ones just after a good one as that they'd make successful ones.

The people who did the study thought the reasons that both players and the public assumed that players could get on a roll of good luck, or that their confidence bred further success, were that a run of successful shots might stick in the mind more than less spectacular success, and that people just don't expect a run of success to happen randomly, when in fact such things do happen just by chance.

That's not to say that the success of the players would have happened just by chance; there were other factors influencing it, like the skill of the ones making the shots and of the opposition. Failure might also have motivated them to try harder next time. Confidence, though sometimes possibly helping their poise, wasn't nearly as important a factor as they thought, it seemed. But it seemed to be just a commonly-believed myth that confidence alone would give players the lift they needed to play better, and also that if there was a run of good shots, there had to be an especially significant reason, rather than it just being random chance, or a less significant or totally different reason that the good shots came in the order they did.

Mistakenly Assuming Major Problems Must Have Had Serious Causes, or Disregarding the Real Causes

A psychologist has made the point that people tend to expect something big and significant to have had a big and significant cause, in lots of different areas of life, but that won't necessarily be the case; big things can sometimes have small beginnings.

Oh yes, I've discovered that. I'm thinking of a massive argument on an Internet forum I found recently that was started when people took great offence because of something that was said that was really just a silly little quip. Some people thought the person who made it was victimising someone else, and a massive heated row started, where some people were saying things that were much worse than the quip that was made originally, and others were commenting on how ridiculous it was that such a little thing had caused all that drama. Much worse things were said about the person who the people who'd started the argument had rushed in to defend than would have been said if they hadn't piled in with accusations and started the row. Not that they should have anticipated that that would happen.

I've heard it's quite common for trivial things to be blown out of proportion in massive arguments. Actually, it happens a lot on that forum. I think when people are angry, they want to keep pushing their point, and haven't got a clear perspective of the situation that would show them that the whole thing is actually quite trivial. I bet that happens a lot in marriages too.

But the book that mentions the thing about how people tend to expect anything that seems significant to have had a cause of equal significance says people tend to judge by what they expect to happen, rather than looking more deeply into a cause, being open to the possibility that unexpectedly tiny things can cause big effects, and vice versa, and that simple things can have complex effects. It's not people's fault; under many circumstances, something big or complex will have been caused by something equally big or complex; so people grow to expect that that's what'll happen; and the assumption is often helpful, because it means that things that are usually the most likely causes are more likely to be thought of first.

But it's not always valid to expect causes to have similarities with their effects, as people do; for instance, people are quite likely to assume that heartburn will be caused by spicy food, since they can imagine spicy food putting fire in the belly, but it's more difficult to imagine something with a mild taste doing it. But nevertheless, there might be ingredients in some mild-tasting foods that aggravate it, so it's best to be cautious about assuming too much.

It must have been very difficult when germs were first discovered for many people to believe that serious Epidemics can be caused by things so tiny they can't even be seen normally!

Equally, something that seems significant can often not be significant at all, just a random coincidence. For instance, if a coin is tossed a large number of times, it might well come down on each side roughly the same number of times, which is what many people would expect it to do by chance. But when it's tossed a smaller number of times, it might sometimes come down on the same side several times in a row, leading people to think something extra must be going on, when it really is just doing it by chance. Of course, it is always possible that some kind of trickery's being used or something; but things can happen by chance that might not be expected.

People also tend to assume they can predict things based on something that's happened previously, which is a good assumption a lot of the time, but can sometimes lead to problems, especially where causes aren't looked into enough, such as when a business that's done well one year later fails because the bosses became over-confident, which led to them assuming it would succeed just as well the next year, so they weren't careful enough to take factors into account such as whether someone who'd done well in one department would be equally qualified to do a good job when promoted to a more responsible position, where he could do more harm if he took decisions based on greed, or where he wasn't knowledgeable enough about the factors that can lead to good or bad performance to take all of them into account when making decisions.

It may also be that market conditions were particularly favourable for the business one year, which helped it to do well. If all its good fortune is attributed to the skill of those in charge, insufficient attention can be paid to other factors, and those deemed the best for the job may turn out not to be, when they show a deficiency in things such as their ability to adjust the business plan as changes in the market environment occur, such as a new product coming on the market that people prefer to the things they're selling; astute business owners will look out for that kind of thing, and sometimes change or improve their own products a bit to compete. Failure to adjust because the previous year's success has made bosses over-confident or complacent can lead to business failure.

Thinking about things in a superficial way, rather than giving careful thought to things, can lead to all kinds of errors, some serious, some not so.

An Example of Unintentional Bias

That applies just as much in our personal lives, such as to judgments that are easy to make about those around us.

For example, putting people into categories quickly in our minds, such as troublemaker and so on, might mean things that it would be worth taking into account get missed. Even where there seems to be a pattern of bad behaviour, so it's easy to conclude that one person's unpleasant or something because they've behaved that way before, it's not always that simple, because the behaviour can be misinterpreted if someone thinks about one person's behaviour in isolation, rather than thinking about the ways the people around that person are interacting with them, which might be provoking them. One person might be blamed for a dispute because they're argumentative, but they may be responding to provocation that's less noticeable. The one making the most noise isn't necessarily always the one doing the most to cause the disruption.

To give an example, on a certain Internet forum, people with unpopular views often used to join, but people like that were temporarily banned from it a lot more often than some people who'd been there for years and often said abusive things, but had views that lined up with those of the moderators. It seemed that the moderators must be biased. But examining more closely, it turned out that there was indeed bias in the system, but it was most likely unintentional. Here's what seemed to be happening:

While some of the new people who joined were in fact especially offensive and disruptive, and probably deserved to be temporarily banned, both they and others were subjected to a lot of petty bullying - there were a dozen or more posters who seemed to like nothing better than to hound people with unpopular views and post masses of one-line sneers. Some of them might post dozens a day. Yet because each individual one was only a line or so long, the moderators looked at each of them individually, and none of them seemed all that offensive. Sometimes they'd remove them from the discussion, but those who put them there were rarely punished beyond that. Some must have had thousands of their posts removed over time, and yet were never really punished.

But while the moderators were continually not taking their bad behaviour that seriously, because it was like a drip-feed - only one line at a time, for the person on the receiving end, it would feel like a deluge - dozens of little sneers from some people a day, and a dozen people sneering. So they'd be bound to get angrier than those doing the sneering; and in their replies, they might respond to a dozen sneers all at once, which would simply be bound to mean their post looked far more offensive than those of all the others, simply because it was longer - it might contain the same level of offensiveness as the messages of the others, but it would appear to be multiplied a dozen times, simply because they were responding to several people at once. And a moderator might consider just one or two of those posts to be offenses worthy of temporary bans.

If the sneering people had written all the day's sneers all at once, rather than bit by bit, their own posts might have looked just as offensive, and might have been considered banning offenses. Or if the moderators had thought to look at the pattern of their behaviour, rather than taking each individual post of theirs on its merits, - if they had imagined what a dozen sneers altogether might look like, they might have considered a lot more of the sneerers deserving of a ban, and realised who was most responsible for making the forum a much less friendly place.

Bullying in general is a pattern of behaviour, where sometimes each individual incident might seem too trivial to worry about, and anyone who reports it might seem like a troublemaker or overly-sensitive; but if the behaviour's going on and on, their build-up of frustration can lead to genuine stress. And what might seem like a gross over-reaction to one thing might be a result of anger that's finally reached boiling point after several little incidents. Things are not always what they seem.

Word Play

To take a more trivial example of how false immediate impressions can sway thinking, sometimes, the answer to some playful questions might seem obvious when it isn't really. For instance, when asked whether there are more words that begin with R, or have R as the third letter, a lot of people will likely say there are more with R at the beginning, because it's easy to think of a lot. But actually, there are more with R as the third letter, like street, care, borrow and so on. But the ones at the beginning will come to mind much more easily, so lots can come to mind before any have come to mind with 'R' as the third letter. After all, it's necessary to first work out whereabouts in a word an 'R' comes if it's not right near the beginning or end, before the number of such words can even be thought about, so the ones with 'R' at the beginning come to mind more quickly, and that will give the impression there are more of them.

In reality, no one who hadn't been told could possibly know how many words there are more of, so the most sensible answer would be to say it was impossible to know just off-hand; so the correct answer for most people would be 'I don't know'.

People apparently often make similar mistakes when asked the question, Are there more words ending in 'ing' than words where the second to last letter is 'N'? It'll be very easy to think of lots of words ending in 'ing', since after all, it's put at the end of most words that describe something we're doing. But what seems correct at first isn't necessarily; in reality there simply have to be more words where the second to last letter is 'N, because the second to last letter of words ending in 'ing' will be 'N', on top of all the other words where the second to last letter's 'N'. First impressions and outward appearances can be unreliable. In everyday life, people can assume one thing is the case, when the reality is something quite different.

Likewise with much more important decisions: Sometimes by far the best thing to do is to conclude that there simply isn't the information available to make a good decision, so it's either best not to make one, or just not for the moment, till more facts are found that would help. Making a decision without sufficient information, because a person thinks it's good to be decisive, or for a similar reason, is likely to lead to problems. Of course, it's possible to go to the opposite extreme and hesitate to make a decision for far too long, for fear of making a wrong one.

There are techniques that can help a decision-making process if it's difficult, for instance writing down all possible decisions that could be made, and then thinking through the pros and cons of each one, to decide which is best.

Trick Questions

At the beginning of his book Irrationality, the author asks several trick questions that he says catch a lot of people out, because the answers that seem the most obvious on the surface are actually wrong; he says several of them caught him out when he was first asked them. He says wrong answers can illustrate the errors in thinking people can make:

One question is, Smoking increases the risk of lung cancer by a factor of ten, and of fatal heart disease by a factor of two. Do more smokers die of lung cancer than of heart disease?

Because ten's the bigger number, it might be tempting to feel sure that must mean more smokers die of lung cancer. But that isn't necessarily true; if a lot more people in general die of heart disease to start with, then just doubling the risk of it might mean more people are at risk than would be at risk of lung cancer, even if that was increased ten times. For instance, just suppose everyone between the ages of 50 and 65 has a one in ten chance of dying of heart disease: Doubling it would mean a one in five chance. But suppose they have a 1 in 100 chance of dying of lung cancer: Increasing that by a factor of ten would still mean they only have a one in ten chance of dying from it.

But anyone who doesn't know the statistics on how many people die from lung cancer and how many die from heart disease should answer the question by saying it's impossible to tell without more information on the statistics.

Another question is, Which is more dangerous, cycling or riding on the Big Wheel (the fairground attraction)?

Some people might instinctively think the Big Wheel must be the most dangerous, because people go so high above the ground that they'd have less of a feeling of control on that, and would have a lot further to fall than they would on a bike, so any fall they did have would almost certainly be fatal. But just as air crashes are far less common than car crashes, and yet it seems a lot more people fear air travel than travelling by car, fairground accidents are rare, whereas cycling accidents are a lot more common; and though cycling wouldn't usually be described as dangerous, cycling on a busy road is clearly more risky than cycling on - for example - a track across a deserted field, so the risks of cycling are greater in some places than others. And being closer to the ground doesn't make it safer if there's an oncoming vehicle powering towards you; nor is the additional control you have while cycling necessarily going to help you when people do unpredictable things, all of which wouldn't happen on the Big Wheel.

But anyone who doesn't know anything about the statistics on cycling accidents and accidents on the Big Wheel should really answer that they don't know which is the most dangerous, rather than making a snap judgment, based on what their first instincts make them feel as if the right answer must be.

Another question is: Consider two maternity hospitals, one averaging forty-five births a day, and the other one fifteen. In which hospital is it more likely that on any given day, 60 per cent of births will be boys?

Some people might be tempted to say it's the bigger hospital, because their first instincts, based on the snap judgments the subconscious mind makes, make them feel as if the 60% figure goes with it because it's bigger. But in reality, it's impossible to decide for one hospital or the other, because we're talking about percentages, not absolute figures; it's just as possible to get 60% of fifteen as it is to get 60% of 45.

With a lot of things, the snap judgments the subconscious mind often makes will be right. But it won't necessarily be the case with everything.

Another question is, Are you a better than average driver?

Most people might be tempted to say yes, since examples of other people's bad driving, which might even have put them at risk, will stick in their minds, and they'll be comparing themselves to those people when they say yes. But then they'll be making the mistake of disregarding all the decent driving that generally goes by virtually unnoticed, because it isn't causing them a problem. Also they'll likely be disregarding their own bad habits and errors, which might also mostly go unnoticed by them. To be better than average, they'd have to be better than half of all drivers on the road, not just the worst ones, and it would be impossible for most people to know whether they were.

Making Decisions

Similarly, sometimes in everyday life, people simply don't have enough information to make a decision, and it's far far more sensible to reserve judgment and delay making a decision till you've discovered more facts, or not to make one at all, than to make a risky one with too little information.

That's unless there are genuine pressures that can't be overcome, such as time pressure, or when the decision's pretty trivial, so a wrong one won't matter all that much, so thinking about it for ages wouldn't be a good use of time; in that case, it's reasonable for a person to make the best decision they can, given the knowledge they have, even if they can't be so sure it'll be a good one. After all, taking time to seek out as many facts as possible might mean taking forever.

Important decisions should never be rushed though, naturally, except under the most intense time pressure. Tragedies have happened through some people making hasty decisions, rather than taking time to explore all the options when they did have enough time. When it's politicians or generals doing it, the results can even be catastrophic for millions.

It'll sometimes be difficult to remember everything it's worth taking into account when making a decision, so writing everything down, making lists of the known pros and cons of each possible option that could be tried to resolve a situation, will save the anxiety of trying to work things out in a less systematic way.

Part Four
Outward Appearances and Biases Can Give a False Impression, so Take Time Before Judging Where Possible

The Error of Judging by First Impressions

It's easy to assume that the way a person comes across at first is what they're always like as a person. For instance, if someone first encounters a person who is feeling grumpy or depressed or angry when they meet them, it's easy to form the impression that that's the way the person is. But if they're in reality behaving in a way that isn't normal for them, it might still take a while before the image of them as bad-tempered or depressed goes away. Their moods might well be a part of their personality, but they might only come on for a day or so every three months, for instance, whereas first impressions might lead to the belief that the person's always like that. So people shouldn't be too quick to judge, though the reason people do so is partly an important survival mechanism; if people had to form an impression of what others were like every time they met them, or were reluctant to judge them till they really knew them, they might ignore danger signs they picked up on the last time they met them, and walk into risky situations.

Still, people should be alert to the fact that what first comes to mind about a person isn't necessarily correct. Sometimes reserving judgment for a while is best. For example, someone who forgets something once or twice isn't necessarily a forgetful or thoughtless person; they might have had a lot on their mind when they forgot. Someone involved in an argument when you first encounter them isn't necessarily an argumentative person. Someone who makes an offensive comment isn't necessarily a nasty person; there may be other explanations. And so on. That must sound like common sense to everyone, and yet it's easy to form impressions of people based on little evidence.

It's actually just as bad to form good impressions on little evidence as it is to form bad ones; for instance, there was someone who felt lulled into trusting someone she hired to do work on her house because he had the same accent as a dearly-loved great grandmother of hers and it gave her an instant good feeling, because it reminded her of how nice she was; but he turned out to be a conman, who didn't do a good job and defrauded her of money.

The consequences of judging by first impressions can sometimes be quite serious. A boss, for example, might see someone not performing very well, and from then on give them the simplest tasks in the office. Then the person might not get the opportunity to display any talents they have, so they never do anything impressive. The boss might assume it's because they're not capable of it. But it might simply be that they haven't got the opportunity. It may be that they performed badly when he first saw them because they were doing one of the few things they did find difficult, or because they hadn't had much sleep the night before, or that something stressful had just happened and they couldn't concentrate, and so on. Given the opportunity, they might develop unexpected talents, and be of real benefit to the business. So sometimes, depending on the seriousness of their original bad performance, people ought to be given another chance, or asked what they think might be hindering their progress.

It's also the case that people can interpret behaviour differently according to what they think of a person. For instance, if someone who seems friendly and likeable steals some paper from the office at the end of the day, it might be tolerated well by those watching, and dismissed as just a little indulgence, whereas if someone considered selfish and grumpy steals exactly the same amount of paper, it might be seen as confirming an impression of their bad character, and frowned on.

Suspecting Children and Others of Doing Wrong Before Knowing All the Facts

It seems that once someone puts another person in a particular category in their mind, such as 'old grump', 'bitter old maid', hypochondriac', etc., they'll likely interpret things from then on according to their idea of how people in that category behave. A lot of the time, they might be right to do so, but in some situations, it's easy to make mistakes.

So, for example, if parents decide one of their children is a bad child, always causing trouble, perhaps because of a few very unpleasant incidents, and quite a few aggressive tantrums, then whenever there's trouble and that child's around, they might often blame them because they think they're bad, rather than examining each individual situation on its merits, which is much fairer; so they'll likely tell the child off automatically even when often the child might be provoked, or not have done anything much to cause the problem at all.

And even if the child does something affectionate like coming up to try and snuggle up to one of their parents, the parent might assume they've come to be disruptive, and talk to them angrily. Keeping an open mind and not labelling the child will probably result in happier parents and a more mentally healthy child over the course of time.

When you're looking for evidence of something, feeling sure you'll find it, it's easy to interpret something you've found as evidence of the thing you're looking for, rather than keeping an open mind to the possibility that there might be a completely different explanation for it.

To take an everyday example, if a couple has two children, two years or so apart in age, if chocolates go missing from a box given them for Christmas, they might suspect the younger, less responsible one of taking them. If they one day catch the younger child with a chocolate in hand, they might think they've been confirmed in their suspicions, and punish them. But in reality what might have happened is that the older one's the one who's been taking them, and the reason the younger one had one was that they were in the room when the older one took one, and to be friendly, and not to seem greedy, they gave the younger one one at the same time, and then quickly disappeared into another room when they heard the parents coming, leaving the younger one in the room where the chocolates are, eating one.

The parents might not even think to question the older one about what happened, even if the younger child tells them what really happened, because it contradicts what they've felt sure must be true for some time, and they think of the older child as more responsible. So they might punish the younger child regardless.

Also, punishing children on the spur of the moment in the heat of anger can often mean they're punished more severely than they deserve. The punishment can have more to do with how hot the anger is than what they really deserve. How hot the anger is isn't a measure of how much they deserve punishment, since after all, the heat of the anger can die down within minutes. Does that mean they deserve to be punished any less, simply because those minutes have gone by? Also, anger can come on for other reasons besides what the offence was: It can come on because of what the parent assumes about the child's motives, which might not actually be right; it can be worse because the parent was in an irritable mood anyway, for reasons completely unconnected with the child. And there can be other things. It's as well to wait a little while till anger has cooled before deciding on a punishment if possible, since better judgments can be made when not under the sway of strong emotion.

Prejudices

I knew someone who years ago had worked as a cleaner, and she told the story of how one day she'd been walking past the home of her rich employer, when his wife saw her and turned her back on her. She got the impression that she must look down on her because she was a cleaner. It's possible; but maybe in reality, the wife was thinking something like, "Gosh I haven't done my make-up this morning and my employee is walking by; what will she think?!!" But if it was because she was prejudiced, why? It can't have been fair.

Putting mental labels on people, like, 'grumpy', 'unskilled' and so on, can distort the way we think of people. For instance, my own mother worked as a cleaner/home help when she was pregnant with me. In one big house, she got chatting to the family's son, till the father told him not to associate with her because he didn't want him talking to the cleaner. It's possible that was just because he didn't want her being distracted from her job, because he thought that then she wouldn't do it so efficiently, which might have been true. But she got the impression that he was prejudiced. He might have assumed she'd be uneducated and a bit vulgar or something, perhaps. But actually she was college-educated; she'd trained as a teacher, but then had children and stayed home looking after them for a while, and just wanted a job for a few hours a day when she didn't have to look after them herself.

But even if a person is uneducated, it doesn't necessarily mean they're unintelligent or anything else; it could simply mean their schooling was disrupted, for any one of a number of reasons. It may be that they'll make up for it in later life.

Perhaps class prejudice is partly just a protective mechanism the brain has evolved over time, to prevent people ending up in dangerous or unhygienic or laborious or low-paid jobs. But still, before looking down on anyone, people could really do with asking themselves questions like:

• Just what is it that's making me take this attitude? Is it sensible?
• Do I really think I'm more intelligent than these people? What, all the thousands and millions of them there are? How could I possibly know that?
• Even if it's true, is that a reason to look down on anyone? Even if I could beat the lot of them in a logic puzzle contest, - and could I? - what does it really matter? Aren't qualities like kindness, generosity, wisdom gained through experience and other such things more important than intelligence anyway? How could I ever know I had any more of those?
• Doesn't intelligence have a lot to do with educational opportunities and the amount of care parents take to nurture one's abilities anyway? How can I feel superior if I was simply destined by birth to be more privileged than others?
• But surely there are other reasons people do jobs I'd consider undesirable because they don't give me the opportunity to use my skills as I'd like? For instance, some people work as cleaners because the working hours are so convenient; they have little children, and these hours enable them to come to work after they've dropped them off at school and leave before it's time to pick them up again. There might be loads of different reasons people have the jobs they do.
• What if I've got the wrong idea of the job, and parts of it involve far more skill and brain power than I imagine, for various reasons?
• I don't know what they do in their spare time; perhaps sometimes it's something pretty impressive that would contradict the image I have of them because of what job they do.

Then again, just knowing intellectually that a prejudice isn't wrong won't necessarily stop prejudiced emotions coming on when encountering someone from a group you've been prejudiced against for a while. Opposite emotions might though: Thinking of ways to understand things better from their point of view, and developing empathy for some of them can help, for instance by finding an Internet forum where several of them talk about their experiences and problems, so you become more familiar with the way some of them think and feel, and they seem more like just ordinary humans.

Naturally, the same thing goes for all kinds of other prejudices too.

There will always be the risk that you'll come across something nasty that confirms you in your prejudices; but try to remember that anyone who does such things can't possibly represent the entire group.

Judging All Kinds of Things by Mistaken Preconceptions

People judge things by their preconceptions in all kinds of ways. One example is that experiments have been done that suggest that ugly people are more likely to be thought guilty in court than good-looking ones when the same evidence is presented, as if without really thinking about it, a lot of people's instincts make them automatically assume that attractive people are less likely to commit crime, or that criminals are more likely to be ugly than good-looking.

Also, apparently, black clothing might give the impression that the wearer is more aggressive or has more sinister intent than if they wear another colour, at least in some circumstances. The book How we Know What Isn't So says an experiment was done where the same footage of some rough play during a football match was shown to referees, but sometimes the players were wearing white uniforms, and sometimes black ones. The referees thought it was aggressive and deserving of a penalty more often when the players were in black uniforms. The author says teams wearing black uniforms tend to get penalised in real life quite a bit more than teams wearing other colours.

Even highly educated people can be influenced by biases and things they really should know better than to be influenced by. An experiment was done where examiners were sent two answer papers for exams; the papers were exactly the same, except that one had a male's name, and the other a female's name. The one with the male's name was given higher marks by several of them, as if perhaps they somehow just expected them to do better, or had more respect for them.

A similar experiment was done, where twelve scientific journals were sent papers that had been originally written by well-known psychologists from prestigious places like Harvard University. The experimenters changed the names of the authors, and slightly rewrote some passages that could identify who they really were, but kept the rest the same, and sent them to the journals that had published them before, telling them they had come from people at a place where the name made it sound as if the place wouldn't be particularly respectable.

Staff on three journals recognised that they'd published the papers before, but the rest didn't. The papers had been published when the scientists responsible for reviewing them for publication thought they came from Harvard, and yet, all but one of the journals where the papers weren't recognised rejected them when the reviewers and editors thought it came from the less respectable place. All the reviewers at the journals where the papers were rejected criticised parts of them, and said they weren't fit for publication. A lot of the criticisms were valid.

It seems the reviewers looked for problems more closely when the names on the papers weren't known and respected, and perhaps gave the authors the benefit of the doubt more when they were well-known, or hesitated to criticise such apparently learned and respected people. In reality though, for science to progress as much as it can, no one's work should be considered immune from criticism.

Worse will be if the finding signifies that little-known geniuses with great ideas are less likely to get them published, and thus things that could really benefit humanity are often not publicised in the way they should be, simply because someone makes a judgment that they can't be of much worth because after all, they come from an unknown person, studying at a place that isn't that prestigious.

It's also been found that even in a subject like physics, where it might be thought that the highly educated nature of those involved, and the scientific procedure they'll be familiar with, would ensure they'd follow it far too rigorously for anything as unscientific as bias/favouritism to creep in, people are far more likely to get articles published if they come from an in-group of people with theories that are currently in favour.

Also, journals can publish information on what seem to be nice positive scientific breakthroughs, but then not publish papers by people who have found that the breakthroughs weren't so good after all. They might have found that because there was a flaw in the research, or for some other reason. So readers can end up with a more positive impression of some findings than they should have.

There was a book by a respected author that actually won a famous prize for fiction writing, which was retyped by someone several years later under a false name with no title, and sent to lots of publishers, including the one that had originally published it. Not one recognised that the book had already been published, and all of them said it wasn't good enough to publish. It seems the author's name had influenced people to look on the book favourably before.

Advertisers use people's tendency to make judgments based on what seems favourable on the surface and at first glance to their own advantage. For instance, a celebrity who advertises a product will get it more sales, whether it's genuinely a better product than others or not. People will tend to assume it must be good if a celebrity has staked their reputation on it, but in reality, the celebrity might just have felt a bit short of money or recognition, and taken advantage of the opportunity of work. Or if they do genuinely believe in the product, they might be wrong. Celebrities aren't any more likely to be a good judge of things than anyone else.

Also, attractive packaging can sell a product, and apparently even keep people coming back for more, because, for instance, if a loaf of bread has a picture of a comfortable little kitchen on it with a motherly-looking woman baking, even though the bread may have been mass-produced in a big factory, it might remind some people of enjoyable times with their family, for example, and they might even enjoy eating it more because it has feel-good emotions associated with it because of the advertisers' picture. Advertisers know that kind of thing, and use it to their advantage.

People Can Be Just as Biased When Thinking About Themselves

Another way people's thinking can be distorted and biased is by attributing their successes to themselves and feeling proud of their achievements, while attributing failures to outside circumstances. Naturally, success will often have a lot to do with a person's efforts, and failure to do with outside circumstances; but lots of studies have found that people often put far more of the blame on outside circumstances than they should when they fail, and credit themselves for their achievements more than they should when they succeed.

For instance, someone who ends up in an influential position might become very conceited, thinking he must be great to have got where he has. He might be very proud of himself, but not take into account the fact that a large part of his success happened because he came from an elite family that was able to give him good schooling, and introduce him to people he could never have got to know otherwise, and that his parents' money helped him go to other places where he learned skills and met people he wouldn't have otherwise. He might have a lot of success with women, and think it's all due to his skill, charm and good looks, when in fact they're drawn to him because of who he is. But then if he starts to fail at things, he might blame people and things around him, getting angry with them, failing to see his own role in his setbacks.

That won't always be the way it is though; people can sometimes take some time mulling over what they themselves have done wrong.

But I can think of an amusing example of how something like that seemed to be happening. My mum heard my dad talking, and said, "Whenever one of the children does something good, you refer to them as 'your' child, but whenever they do something bad, you refer to them as mine."

Similarly, when children do well at school, some teachers might feel proud of themselves for doing a good job; but if their class doesn't do well, the children might be thought to be lazy, stupid and so on. So they don't give as much credit as they should to the children when they do well, and they don't analyse their own teaching methods enough when the children do badly. Just how often teachers really do think like that, I've no idea. But there probably is a slight tendency for everyone to think like that.

But the reason for teachers thinking like that could well be that teachers will be aware of the huge amount of effort they put in to help the children, so when the children succeed, they can congratulate themselves that the children succeeded; but if the children fail, they're still aware of all the effort they put in, and think the results should have been better, so they think the reasons they aren't must be to do with others.

That reminds me of another story. I can't remember the details, but a child in a Communist country gave thanks to God for the food before eating a school dinner one day. The idea of thanking anyone at all for school dinners seems a bit strange; but then, maybe they've improved.

People Tend to be Biased in Their Attitude to Information

Being biased, even though a person has no idea they're being biased, holds risks, which can be serious in some situations. For instance, a teenage boy who was doing well at school and could have gone on to have a good career tried experimenting with drugs. He had more and more, claiming he used them because they helped expand his mind. Unfortunately, one day he took something that seriously disagreed with him, and he died. His mother said she hadn't been happy with his drug taking, but that he'd said he knew what he was doing and that he was well-informed on the subject.

He might have known a lot of what there is to know. But he might in reality have only been well-informed on what some pro-drug websites said, which perhaps played down the risks, or didn't inform sufficiently of the dangers of accepting drugs from people without really being sure what was in them, or about all the possible - even rare side effects they might have. Who knows! But if he didn't know he needed to know all that, he might have genuinely believed he was well-informed; he might simply not have been aware enough of the seriousness of possible complications to know he needed to be informed about them. If you don't know certain problems exist, you're not going to know you don't know about them.

But he might have got to know about them if instead of just relying on the sources he wanted to believe most for his information, he'd looked for information about possible downsides of what he was doing, even though he knew he wasn't going to enjoy reading it.

Or perhaps he did read it, but just felt apathetic about it, reasoning that since only a minority of people die, the risks of it happening to him were low. Everybody probably does that to a certain extent with various things. For example, a person might think, "Yes I know in theory that eating too much fatty food will make me obese, and then I'll be at risk of heart disease, but I like it so much, and any problems for me will likely be years away and I might not even get them, so I can't motivate myself to give up, and don't see any urgency about it".

That's probably how a lot of people think, but then some do go on to get problems. And no one can be sure it won't be them. So though understandably no one likes the idea, choosing to eat fatty foods only in moderation years earlier might spare a lot of people from early disease and death.

One mistake people can make is to assume that the way things are now is the way they'll always be, or at least will be for a long time. So, for example, a person might think, "I've been smoking for ten years and I'm as fit as I was before I started, so it doesn't seem to be doing me any harm, So I don't feel the need to stop." But who knows what'll happen ten or five years down the line, or even months away! Who knows what damage might already be accumulating, though not as yet causing noticeable symptoms!

People Are More Ready to Believe Information They Want to Hear

But as for people automatically looking for information that confirms something they think seems to be true, rather than them thinking to try to disprove it, it can especially happen when people want to believe a particular thing, such as if it's a religious belief they've had since childhood and they're attached to it and have had personal experiences that have made them feel sure it's true, such as feelings of awe they were so impressed by they feel sure they were caused by a supernatural being.

They might not deliberately ignore evidence that would make them doubt the belief, but in looking for evidence to prove it's right - perhaps in response to a challenge someone makes to it, they can focus entirely on finding that, rather than taking the step of trying to find evidence that would suggest it's wrong when they don't believe for a minute that it is wrong. They might not think it's the least bit necessary to look for evidence that it's wrong, assuming there couldn't be any good evidence anyway, when in fact there might be a lot of good evidence they won't find because they don't want to look and don't think it's worth looking.

Naturally, that's equally true of people who feel sure religion and supernatural practice is all false; If they want to back up their beliefs, many will look for evidence that confirms them, rather than allowing themselves to take time to consider the possibility that there's something to the supernatural and looking into that. So people on both sides tend to just become more convinced they're right. Any evidence they're wrong that someone presents will likely be treated as something to be disproved, rather than something worth looking into, so evidence that the other side's views aren't true will be looked for, rather than evidence on both sides. That's just human nature. People do what seems most obvious.

People will tend to look for information from people they think of as trustworthy; and unless they've got a good reason not to, they'll likely automatically trust people who think the same way as they do more, because they're saying things they're already sure are true, along with things they think are likely to be, rather than saying unexpected things or things that contradict beliefs they already hold.

Also, if the first bit of evidence a person comes across supports a belief they want to hold, they can feel satisfied they're right and stop looking; but if it doesn't, they can keep looking for evidence that does, till they find something satisfactory.

For instance, if a student didn't do well in an exam, and thinks the exam was unfair, they'll likely ask student after student if they too thought it was unfair till they find enough who say they think it was to confirm their opinion, rejecting the opinions of those who say they thought it was allright. In searching for more evidence they're right, it's possible they might become convinced they're incorrect; but if opposing views just cause them to argue more heartily, and look more enthusiastically for evidence to support them, they might just end up all the more convinced they're right.

Anyone who realises they have a tendency to do such things as that, and would like to be more open-minded really, could talk themselves into looking at opposing points of view when they catch themselves doing them.

The Good Side of Bias

It isn't always a bad thing to dismiss claims that contradict a long-held belief. Some will be so unlikely as to be not worth looking into. Some will contradict well-established scientific data. Looking at every claim in life that came along would leave no room in life to do anything else. It's reasonable to just dismiss claims if years of experience or study have consistently led to different conclusions, although that does depend partly on what you've studied.

Still, keeping an open mind to some claims even if they're unlikely is best, because sometimes something does come along that challenges widely-held beliefs, and leads to new ones among scientists and so on.

Still, bias isn't always bad; it can help us get along in life sometimes. For instance, if someone's on the way to work, and someone says they've heard an astrologer say it's an inauspicious time to travel, investigating how many of the claims of astrologers have come true and thus the probability that travelling to work isn't a good idea would cause quite a few problems. Having a bias against astrology because you've heard several people with good reputations for knowing what they're talking about say it doesn't work, even though you've never looked into it yourself, can be a shortcut to making a good decision, a decision to go to work anyway in this case.

So biases do make life easier, and help us get things done. But it is generally best not to dismiss anything out of hand and refuse to accept even the possibility there's something in it, at least without a good reason.

Part Five
Things That Seem Counter-Intuitive

Some things are not what they seem.

For instance, a woman became disabled and could no longer stand up for any decent length of time. Most of the time she was in a wheelchair. Naturally she was upset, especially because she was a mother with young children.

She said that one thing she'd love to be able to do was cook for the family again. But it turned out that it wasn't cooking she enjoyed so much; what she really wanted was the self-esteem she'd lost by becoming disabled and having to give up doing a lot of the things for the family she'd done before; she wanted to feel useful and worthwhile again, and she was thinking that cooking might help her achieve that.

So sometimes, people can say they want one thing, when it's not so much the thing in itself that they're hoping for, but the fulfilment of some underlying need they have, that they hope will be met by what they're asking for.

Individuals Can Sometimes Make Better Decisions Than Groups

It might seem surprising, but individuals on their own can sometimes make better decisions than they can if they're making them as part of a group, where it might be supposed that they'd be helped to make better ones because of many brains working together rather than just one. It's partly because if there are people in the group who are enthusiastic for a particular point of view, and others back them up, others can feel persuaded without making the effort to think through whether the people are right; or the people promoting their point of view can sound so confident that it can be assumed by some that they really know what they're talking about, so their views must be better than any opposing ideas that they themselves are just wondering about.

Also, the ones enthusiastic for one particular course of action can say things in discussion that some of the others hadn't thought of and wouldn't on their own, but that seem on the face of it to be good sensible points. So positions in favour of one idea can even become more extreme, because they're not being opposed by anyone, because others are less sure of themselves. Some members of the group who feel critical of it or who would prefer that the group decided on another course of action will often keep quiet, for fear of confrontation or ridicule, or because they're worried they might be wrong, or because they're introverted and not used to speaking up, or they don't feel strongly enough about the issue either way to give it real thought and speak up and disagree, or because they like the others and don't want to seem awkward but would prefer their approval, or they're confident the others are capable of making a decent decision.

Some people don't speak up when they should, not because they're timid about what might happen, but because they feel in awe of or deferential to a person because they're an expert, or a lot more senior. But anyone can make a mistake or have a wrong opinion, whoever they are.

The effects can be worse if some group members think they have the chance of benefiting in some way from backing up a group leader, such as the chance of promotion; they can be especially likely to keep quiet about what they disagree with, and say what they know he'd like to hear, convincing him of it all the more. Group leaders and their supporters might even say things that discourage disagreement. Also, when people know the decision will be made by the group, so if it's wrong, no one individual will be held culpable and called to account, people can be a lot more content to go along with decisions they don't think are all that good than they would if they were making the decision on their own, and knew they would personally be held responsible for a bad decision.

So people can keep quiet or not object too strongly as decisions are made that they wouldn't have made personally, especially if whatever consequences may come from the decision for whoever it affects won't be too dire for them personally if the decision's bad.

So for all those reasons, a decision made by an individual who will put thought into it can be better than a decision made by a group or committee.

The problem is that individuals are often unlikely to be able to think of so many possible options about what to do as a group can if several people have ideas. In a group where active efforts are made to discuss pros and cons of all the possible options people can think of, decisions can be better than they might be if they're made by one individual. Discussing pros and cons of ideas people come up with isn't always the natural thing to do, since anyone enthusiastic about a particular idea likely won't fancy being critical of it, or putting up with criticism of it from others. But it's best if people can try and think of their ideas as being like theories that they think are correct, but might not be, so they need to be tested by having their merits and disadvantages discussed.

If a group of people are discussing a problem, it can be best if everyone takes turns suggesting a solution if they can, before any have been discussed and critiqued. Otherwise, one or two people might hog the discussion with an idea for a solution that turns out to be the only one discussed, when other people who aren't confident enough to speak up - especially if it means disagreeing with what others think is a good idea - or don't care enough about the issue to bother, have better ones.

People Can See What They Expect to See Rather Than What's Really There

Most people probably assume that if they make a point, for instance in an argument, the person they're communicating with will take in what they're saying and think about it before responding. Actually, especially in the heat of argument, people can miss the subtlety of what's being said, and see or hear what they expect to see or hear, not having listened that carefully, but interpreting it according to what their past experiences have made them think is likely to be being meant.

For example, two people were having a conversation on Facebook. One seemed to have some pretty extreme views on things, one of which was music. He said:

"... There's almost no fun, no celebration in modern music if you ask me. Think it's a problem since that curse called Rock and Roll came along. There were afew good songs recorded in the 60s, and one or two later on but to me real music died with the 1950s. ... One thing that annoys me is that most singers seem incapable of actually singing. ..."

He then got upset with the person he said that to when she heard some of the music he liked and laughed, because he'd suggested it must be much better than the average, and she didn't think it was at all. It later turned out that the reason he'd got so upset was because he'd assumed she was laughing because his music was far more old-fashioned than most people's, and he was self-conscious about it, thinking anyone who laughed would be laughing at him for liking it. So he took it very much more personally than he should have done. She hadn't said the reason she was laughing was because it was old-fashioned.

Not long after that, he was talking about his views on art, and she herself read mmore into a comment than was there. He said he thought it was stupid that some art was sold for huge amounts of money and yet a two-year-old could make better pictures. She thought, "Here we go again! You're rubbishing all art now!" And she got irritated with him. But some time later, she read what he'd said back, and realised he hadn't been rubbishing all art after all, just some of it.

Rewards Don't Always Have a Positive Effect

It can be just assumed that if you reward someone for doing something in some way, even just with praise, they'll be encouraged to do a better job from then on. It's not always the case though.

I know someone who was upset because she thought someone she knew had been taking advantage of her generosity. He'd helped her out with some things in her home, and she would give him food whenever he came to see her. One day, she overheard him say he wondered if she'd give him food if he went and helped her out again. She thought he must have only been helping her to get a nice meal all that time, and she was upset. But even if that had become his motivation, it might not have been in the beginning.

Some psychologists did an experiment where they gave nursery school children some attractive drawing equipment to use one day. The ones who were interested in drawing were later split into two groups, and the members of one were promised a nice-looking certificate for drawing, while the others weren't. The next time they were given the equipment, they were all just told they could draw if they wanted to. The ones who'd been given the certificate before showed much less interest than the rest, as if not being promised a certificate this time was a bit of an anticlimax, a bit disappointing, and that made drawing seem less attractive, even when they'd enjoyed it before.

So sometimes, rewards can reduce people's motivation to do things without them from then on.

When praising children, it can be best to make a mention of what skills you think they must have to be able to do what they do, and to show appreciation of the effort they must have put into it, as well as asking about where they got their ideas, and encouraging them with enthusiasm to develop their skills, explaining how they themselves will benefit in future if they do, rather than giving them a treat as a reward. That can increase their confidence in their abilities, and help them develop a mentality where they think that effort is worthwhile because it can lead to achievement.

That's not to say that children or anyone else should never have treats in reward for things. It can sometimes be nice. And also, it's been used as a strategy, where badly behaved children have sometimes been offered a little treat for a day's good behaviour, with every hour of good behaviour being rewarded with a sticker or something, that encourages them to carry on working towards their goal of the promise of a treat at the end of the day. Bad behaviour means no sticker for that hour. A few stickers forfeited in one day will mean no treat.

It has helped to change children's behaviour when it's been done over the course of several weeks, along with other things, when parents have tried to buoy their children up with enthusiasm for working towards getting the treat, and when the parents have stuck to the rules, so the children don't start to think there's something unfair about it, for instance if a parent lets one child get away with more bad behaviour than another one before losing the prospect of a treat, or if they let the same child get away with more bad behaviour one day than another before they have to forfeit it, which means the child might get angry on days when better behaviour's expected of them before they can get it, because they'll know they weren't expected to live up to such strict standards before getting the treat before, so they'll feel as if they're not being treated fairly, even though what really happened was that the parents were more lenient with them sometimes than they started out intending to be.

The technique would be unlikely to change behaviour for very long by itself, because as soon as it's stopped, behaviour can go back to the way it was, since there's no incentive for it to be better anymore. But it can work as part of a whole strategy, where several things are being done to change the child's behaviour, including the parents trying to behave more calmly and considerately themselves, to both try to ensure that the child doesn't get worked up with tension and adrenaline because of the way being shouted at and so on makes them feel, and to give the child a better type of behaviour to imitate, since a child will often pick up habits from the parents, so if they often shout, the child is likely to often shout, and so on, so their behaviour will likely become worse.

Rewards or lack of them can have just as much influence over adults. Receiving an immediate financial or other reward often changes the way things are thought of by them, and not always in a good way; for instance, people asked to give blood in an emergency blood donation drive, when told they'll get a small amount of money for it, are likely to immediately think, "Is a pint of my blood really worth so little money?", and many might refuse to give blood. But when asked to give blood just because more blood is needed because people are injured and have to have it, people will think about the need, and that will make them more likely to give it, for free. The need is the same either way, but the offer of money can push it to the back of the mind, as feelings of being insulted at the small amount of money offered, or questions of whether it would be worth it for the money on offer, come to the fore.

The same kind of thing applies in lots of different circumstances. Even when people start out with good intentions, the promise of a future reward for certain types of behaviour can change the way they think about things, to the disadvantage of the one offering the reward and others.

For instance, if someone asks a friend if they'll spend Saturday morning helping them move house, they might not like it, but they might agree to go as a favour for a friend. But if the friend moving offers them £2 for helping, immediately their mind will likely skip from thoughts of how much the friend could do with help to whether £2 is a worthwhile reward for a morning's heavy work shifting boxes and things, and they might very well say no, even though the friend still needs help just as much as before they made the offer, and receiving two pounds would be at least better than nothing.

Naturally if the amount offered is seen as a good price, the answer might well be yes instead. But then if the friend asks a favour without offering money a few weeks later, it might seem a cheek, and the lack of money might put the person off agreeing to help, whereas if they'd never been offered money, they might agree to help out of goodwill.

Penalties Don't Always Work as Expected

Penalties can have the opposite effect from the desired one, just as rewards can. There was a playgroup in Israel that experimented with introducing small fines for parents who came late to pick up their children. Before, parents had tried not to be late out of goodwill towards the teachers, since they knew being late would inconvenience them, because it would mean they had to stay on after they were supposed to have finished work. Also it was just considered the done thing to come on time. After the fines were introduced though, instead of improving the punctuality of parents, more came late than had before!

It could be that some parents stopped bothering to make the effort to get there on time out of resentment; before they'd tried their hardest to come on time, yet now they were going to be penalised for coming late whether it was their fault or not! Also the goodwill between teachers and parents was being damaged, because it might have seemed to some parents that the teachers were no longer appealing to their better natures, but treating them no longer as friends, but like people who needed to be controlled and punished to ensure their obedience.

It could also be that the thought of the fine they might have to pay made the consideration of whether the teachers would be inconvenienced fade to the background of their minds, so parents just assessed whether they could afford the fine when thinking of how much effort to make to get there on time.

After a while, the rule was changed so parents would no longer be fined. But latecoming didn't reduce to the level it had been before; instead, even more parents came late. It might well have been because they thought, "Great, we're not being fined anymore!", so those parents who had made an effort to come on time because of the fines no longer did so; and meanwhile, goodwill towards the teachers wasn't going to be restored quickly, because the parents would still feel as if they'd been treated like petty criminals rather than equals, and the memory of that would linger, so they wouldn't feel obliged to make as much effort to please the teachers by coming on time as they would have done before.

In other situations, it can sometimes be better to make appeals to someone's better nature if they're behaving in a less than desirable way, than to penalise them, which might make them angry so they do something worse, or harbour lasting resentment.

Financial Incentives Can Have the Opposite Effect Than the One People Assume, Even When it Comes to Major Decisions

Switzerland began a nuclear program in the 1940s. Much of its electricity comes from nuclear power nowadays. But that means they have a nuclear waste problem. In the early 1990s, the government decided a couple of towns would make good sites for storing it. But they didn't know how the people of those towns would react - whether they'd be angry and protest, or whether they'd think the risks were worthwhile in support of Switzerland's electricity program. Two researchers from the University of Zurich were also curious, and decided to investigate: They called the people of each town to a meeting, where they asked them to just imagine that the government decided to store nuclear waste in their town. They asked if they'd accept it. A lot of people were scared by the idea, not surprisingly, but just over half agreed to put their lives at risk for the good of the people of their country.

But since almost half had said they'd oppose the idea because the risk was too great, the researchers decided to try a new idea: They called together a different group of people from the towns, and asked them too to imagine the government wanted to dump nuclear waste in the towns, but also to imagine they'd said they'd compensate them by giving them each an amount of money equivalent to about one and a half thousand pounds, financed by all the tax payers of Switzerland.

It might be assumed that consideration for the need for electricity of the people of Switzerland plus the offer of money would make a higher percentage of the people agree to the idea of nuclear waste being deposited in the town. But the opposite happened: The percentage who said they'd accept the idea fell by half! Only a quarter said they'd be willing for it to be there. The amount of money they were asked to imagine being offered was doubled, and then trebled, but only one person changed his mind and said he'd accept it after all.

What probably happened is that as soon as an amount of financial compensation was offered, it stopped people beginning to think of their patriotic duty to support their country's efforts to be self-sufficient in its energy supplies, and they began to think about whether risking their lives was really worth as little as a mere month's wages or so. And a lot of people concluded that it wasn't. It seems that then, less immediate, more abstract considerations like patriotic duty, on top of that, weren't powerful enough to change their minds.

The Way People are Motivated Can Make a Difference to Behaviour

Financial incentives can change the way people behave in far less dramatic situations too, and again, not always for the better.

Psychologists did an experiment where two groups of people were given a difficult multiple choice test. One group was asked to take it for the sake of the experiment, while those in the other group were offered the equivalent of about a penny for every right answer. Both groups' scores were fairly similar, but the paid group scored less, and several in the paid group scored zero - twice as many as in the unpaid group. Such low scores surely must have been deliberate. It seems they thought the payment for each question was so derisory, they rebelled against it and showed their disgust by not bothering to try.

Maybe they would have felt they had more incentive if instead of being told how much they'd be paid per question they got right, they were told how much they'd get if they got every question right, since that would sound like more, even though in reality it wasn't. If they'd been offered lots more money, adrenaline would likely have kicked in, and then they'd have been spurred to try harder, because of the anticipation of reward. If they'd been offered a very high amount though, they might have felt enticed to try and cheat, in whatever way they could. Possibly.

But perhaps if they'd been offered something that was worth about a penny for each right answer, but that sounded much more enticing, such as a chocolate button, the people who refused to try when they were getting pennies would have tried for all they were worth, because their mouths were watering, and they were feeling a sense of longing at the thought of eating chocolate! So their attitude could have been completely changed at no extra cost. That's even though, looking at it logically, it could have occurred to them that if they'd tried their hardest and got a number of pennies, they could have bought several chocolate sweets of their own with them if they'd wanted.

A School Where the Behaviour of Teachers Changed a Lot, and Not for the Better, When Financial Incentives Were Introduced

A high school was started in America by people with a vision of how good an alternative style of education could be. They encouraged pupils to develop their own individual strengths, with opportunities for creativity. Discipline was relaxed, with pupils having the freedom to decide what to wear, whether or not to attend classes, and other such things. Teachers were paid a fairly low salary, and yet they were willing to put in a lot of work to make the school a success.

After a while, schools were given the opportunity to become independent from the state and its regulations; but to achieve it, they had to show they were starting some new and interesting projects, to try to make sure student performance would be improved. Teachers and school administrators got together and thought about it. They decided to try and increase the enthusiasm of unmotivated students; students seemed to fall mostly into two categories, those who liked school and were highly motivated to learn, and those who weren't keen and would take advantage of the relaxed discipline to skip classes. They decided to try to improve student performance by trying to improve attendance rates, so more students would be there to learn things. Attendance rates were no worse than in other schools, but still, they thought it would be good to improve them, by both stopping so many students giving up courses they'd started, and getting them to attend more lessons.

They decided that attendance rates would be calculated on a random day during the last week of each term, that teachers wouldn't be informed of in advance, and those teachers who had more than 80 % of pupils attending their classes on that day would receive a huge salary bonus.

A few years into the new system, inspectors calculated that those pupils who had actually finished courses had gone up from 51 % to 72 %. The policy seemed like a great success; not nearly as many students gave up courses as had before. But on closer examination, it was realised that the program wasn't the success it had seemed to be: For one thing, even though more students were actually enrolled on their courses till the end, they weren't attending any more of the lessons and ending up with good grades; in fact, average grades had fallen! It seemed that had to be something to do with the new system, because the school still had the same kind of students, teaching standards were the same, and a nearby school's grades hadn't fallen, so it couldn't be assumed that exams were getting harder.

So it seemed students weren't actually learning as much as they had before.

Researchers investigated, interviewing staff, and studying the calculations. They concluded that teachers simply weren't working in the way they had before; they were trying to entice students to attend their classes so they'd get their bonuses. So they were doing what they hoped would be most effective at enticing them, rather than what would help them learn the most. Instead of trying to increase their attendance by trying to fire them up with enthusiasm for the course or inspiring them to achieve more, which may or may not have worked, they were doing things that would definitely entice the students to attend, though not necessarily to learn anything: They made their courses more interesting and fun, by including more field trips and in-class parties. It wasn't that they'd given up the idea of encouraging achievement, but just that the enticement of their bonuses pushed other considerations like improving grades - the very things they'd been so enthusiastic to try to achieve at first - more into the background.

Cravings for Rewards Can be So Enticing They Can Overpower Higher Motives

When feelings of excitement over gaining some kind of reward kick in, they can overpower any honourable thoughts of doing good for the long-term gain of others. It's not just money that can produce such an effect, but anything that can bring on a feeling of pleasure at the anticipation of a craving for it being gratified, such as temptation to be unfaithful to a spouse, though some people are more likely to give in than others.

The reward centre in the brain just wants more and more of what's rewarding; it doesn't automatically work together with the thinking reasoning part of the brain to calculate how much it's worth being motivated by the anticipation of a reward, and how much other things should be considered. It's like when someone eats chocolate and then wants more; thoughts of how fattening it is are unlikely to come into the brain till some time after the craving for more has made the person act on it and have more. It's worth bearing that kind of thing in mind.

But what happened at the school shows that sometimes, trying to think of ways of motivating people other than financial ones is best. Anticipating a very pleasurable reward can create an addictive adrenaline buzz that causes it to seem like the most important thing to consider in the effort to get it. And people won't want to risk losing it.

Businesses can actually suffer when they offer creative employees who've been given the task of coming up with winning strategies performance-related pay. It might seem logical that the more a person's offered for increasing profits and making the business healthier, the harder they'll work on thinking new ambitious ideas up. But actually, if a person will only get the extra money if their ideas work, they likely won't suggest anything that, though it may be exciting and could make the company a lot of money and give it more status if it works, has its risks. They'll likely stick to leading the company to carry on using the strategies that have always worked in the past, - possibly even if there are reasons they might not work so well in future, such as other companies starting out and making the product more cheaply, causing a drop in sales for the first one, - because they're worried that their pay might really go down if their new ideas fail.

Some parents try to entice their children to do housework by offering them pocket money for it. The system can work well, yet if the child thinks that's the Only reason for helping the parents, it might be harder for the parents to persuade them to help for no payment than it would have been if the child had got used to the idea of helping their parents just because they thought it was the right thing to do and it made the parents pleased with them.

There Are Circumstances Where Rewards Work Well

There are some kinds of rewards that do work well though. For instance, there was a television programme where a dog trainer showed women how to build better relations with their husbands, by using techniques similar to ones she used when training dogs: she showed them how she could teach dogs to do things by giving them a scrap of food every time they did, till they learned what was wanted of them. The wives practised doing that, in preparation for using a similar technique on their husbands. The dog trainer also gave them some advice, such as trying to get out of the habit of nagging their husbands about things that weren't in reality of all that much importance, so they'd be creating a more pleasant atmosphere that their husbands would find more attractive to be in.

The women went home after the training and tried treating their husbands differently, rewarding them for being near them, being friendly, doing little helpful things and so on, with smiles, compliments, little caresses, and that kind of thing. They also tried not to say critical things to their husbands when it wasn't really necessary; one woman commented that there were times when she'd been just about to nag her husband when she remembered she was trying not to, and soon she'd even forgotten what she'd been going to say.

Soon, the husbands wanted to do more fun things with them and spend more time with them, and became more helpful around the house.

Rewards like that would have to be fairly constant though; it would have to be a whole new pattern of behaviour, because if things went back to the way they used to be, things would just get back into their old routines eventually. But the behaviour might not be hard to keep up, since both husband and wife would be getting more enjoyment from it. Keeping it up would help bring lasting affection into the marriage.

Bringing lasting change for the better is really what this whole article is about.