You must have been in situations where the conversation does not go well. Awkward pauses hang, the interlocutors lose mutual interest … To prevent this from happening, try one simple trick. Turns out it’s good to be wrong sometimes!
Imagine that somewhere – for example, on the Internet – you come across the question: “Titanic” was captured by aliens, right? The first natural reaction is to snort loudly and roll your eyes. But then some of us will climb to read the story of the legendary crash in all its details in order to refute this strange conjecture as fully as possible.
Why? Because our brain is sharpened to notice and correct other people’s mistakes. According to research, the technique described above can even increase student engagement in learning by 80%. And, importantly, you can use it not only within the walls of universities, but also, for example, to organize an unforgettable discussion.
A mistake provokes active discussion – this is how the so-called “Cunningham’s law” works. The American programmer Ward Cunningham is credited with the following statement: “If you want to get the right answer on the Internet, then the best way is not to ask a question, but to publish a false answer.”
Ask stupid questions to get smart answers
I would agree with Cunningham and Sherlock Holmes, who noted that people do not like to talk about something, but they like to object. So, if you want to get an answer, ask the question in such a way that it initially contains false information. Or answer yourself, but wrong. Most likely you will be corrected. And not because people want to be useful to you, but because they want to be the smartest.
By the way, Socrates did something similar 2500 years ago – he questioned the knowledge of other people, which irritated them a lot.
How to use Cunningham’s Law
Teachers know how difficult it can be to get answers from bored students. So, instead of showing the elephant card and asking who it is, you can explain to the class that it has a giraffe on it. Most likely, more than half of the group will be outraged in unison. All students will know the correct answer, which means that even quiet ones will feel confident. This trick works with adults too.
If you ask an engineer to talk about his work, he may say that he designs systems. You will have to ask a whole chain of additional questions and receive monosyllabic answers to them in order to form at least some kind of picture. If we assume that the engineer simply fixes what breaks, you can hear in response a passionate and extended tirade and a detailed explanation. It will be enough only from time to time to insert clarifying questions in the spirit: “Are you sure?”, “Exactly?”, “But isn’t it …?”.
After trying this method, you will be surprised at how such a simple tool can affect the behavior of the interlocutor. The only drawback is that sooner or later he may consider you completely narrow-minded and begin to communicate arrogantly. But, again, this is what we need: people like to enter into discussions if they are sure that they are right.
To some extent, this technique can be called manipulation, but at the same time the interlocutor feels really good, which happens not so often. So the next time the conversation starts to fade away and be interrupted by awkward pauses, this method can be a way out of the situation.