The Art of Insubordination, page 14
THE BIG IDEA
We won’t learn much from principled rebels if we think we know enough on our own to arrive at competent judgments and decisions. Fortunately, we can shrink our big heads by cultivating that most precious of virtues: curiosity.
Curiosity helps in all kinds of ways, leading us to superior intelligence and growth. The highly curious among us not only persevere longer during difficult tasks, but perform better and tire less. In one study, having a participant merely describe a past experience when they felt curious led to a 20 percent bump in mental and physical energy as compared with recalling moments of profound happiness. Intelligence, tenacity, and energy all matter when we’re trying to overcome resistance and listen to principled insubordinates. Curiosity also helps us to listen better to others. Often, we fail to truly understand the rebels among us because we spend more time confidently explaining our positions than we do thinking about what they have to offer. Curiosity wrenches us from our self-absorption, leaving us more receptive to new, useful ideas.
It’s not hard to cultivate more curiosity—just ask more and better questions. When you encounter an opposing or unfamiliar viewpoint, begin from a place of open skepticism about your own beliefs, asking: What does this principled insubordinate know that I don’t? What can I extract from their unique knowledge to improve my life and thinking? And if you’re participating in a conversation with someone else, rather than trying to show how smart or competent you are and detailing a rationale for why you’re so unmistakably right and your interlocutor wrong, try asking that person to reflect on and explain how their preferred ideas work. Say the following: “I am interested in what you’re saying. Can you tell me more about how you reached that conclusion?”
So often, we react to new ideas defensively in an effort to shore up our own arguments. But that’s hardly the path to a productive encounter. As philosopher Alain de Botton observes, the exceptional conversationalist is not a good listener but rather a “skilled interrupter.” They don’t “interrupt to intrude their own ideas,” as most people do, but rather “to help the other get back to their original, more sincere yet elusive concerns.” Science bears this out. In one study, researchers had one group of participants focus on their own arguments when hearing someone present an opposing viewpoint, while other participants posed open-ended questions of the speaker designed to help them understand why they believe what they do. “The mere act of formulating elaboration questions was sufficient to change their reactions,” said the study’s lead researcher. Researchers found that when people let go of trying to persuade conversation partners and instead approached time together as an opportunity to learn something new, this led to greater enjoyment, more positive attitudes, and a greater desire to see each other again. Improve civil discourse by clarifying that the goal of conversation is learning, not persuading. Showcase your interest in what someone says with visible gestures such as head nods and tilts, directed gaze, squinted eyes in concentration, and mm’hmm noises. Being a learning- instead of a persuasion-oriented listener might be the difference in being able to profit from the liberating opening of the mind that dissenters stimulate.
In another study, posing a single curious question—an open-ended query posed with the goal of better understanding why someone feels or thinks as they do—altered debates between two people holding opposing views. With a single curious question, the questioner became more receptive to the other person’s views, more eager to continue the conversation, and more likely to view the opposition as warm, open-minded, intelligent, reasonable, objective, and moral. The average person asks no more than six questions during a fifteen-minute initial one-on-one online chat with a stranger. In an online chat, all you can do is write, read, or think. Six questions in this venue offers an opportunity to get to know someone’s personality, interests, and values. Yes, asking more questions helps. But what kind of questions you ask is far more important. Across two studies, researchers found that asking a high rate of follow-up questions led to greater friendliness and a greater desire to learn more about a conversation partner. The partners, meanwhile, found responsive questioners more likable and viewed them as more caring.
Following up on what someone is interested in shows that you are paying attention and seek to understand them. Increase your social attractiveness by asking a high rate of follow-up questions (they say, “I’m craving a freshwater eel sushi roll,” and you respond, “Now, if you could only consume one food forever, what would it be?”). Contrast this powerful conversational tuning with strategies that are less likely to predict likability such as a high rate of topic switch questions (they say, “I regret buying a hedgehog” and you respond, “But do you read graphic comic books?”), mirror questions (they say, “What do you do when someone trolls you online?” and you respond, “I usually send a video of my dog sleeping on a hammock. What do you do?”), or rhetorical questions (they say, “When was the last time you felt really embarrassed?” and you respond, “I accidentally sliced off 22 percent of my tie with a guillotine paper trimmer. Isn’t that a great name for an office product?”). Show you care. Show you are responsive. Let them know you want more information because you feel inspired or intrigued. Signal that what someone cares about is interesting to you. With frequent well-deployed follow-up questions, you give conversation partners an opportunity to flesh out their stories and thoughts with greater depth, and they will appreciate you for it.
Disrupt overconfidence with curiosity. Misconceptions about what makes for a great conversationalist prevent us from connecting with principled rebels, and indeed, everyone else. Most people experience conversations as fraught with decisions about what to say and how to act. Relying on instinct, we admire people who seem witty, tell intriguing stories, and are “smooth” in answering questions. We assume others will view us as great conversationalists if we’re witty and smooth. No, no, no, says modern science.
Most people—ourselves included—crave conversation partners who show interest in what we feel or think—what bothers us, intrigues us, excites us. Be the highly skilled partner you crave by diving deeper into what other people are interested in. Ask questions such as, “What’s on your mind?,” “I want to know more about . . . ,” “What initiated your interest in . . . ,” “Why did that happen?,” “How did you feel when . . . ,” “And what else?” To excel in conversations, stop being so damn egocentric.
Redirect your attention to what others offer. Talk less and ask more. When talking to someone and you follow up their comments by asking “why,” do so with curiosity, not judgment. The curious “why” tries to explore what another person is saying or doing in the present moment for the sole purpose of understanding it. The judgmental “why” criticizes the statement or behavior, pushing it away. If you ask why in the spirit of “Why are you even here?” or “What’s wrong with you?” you’ll not only come across as an asshole—you’ll fail to draw out people around you, including those immensely valuable non-conformists. Curiosity is an antidote to defensiveness.
When it comes to dealing effectively with non-conformists or whistleblowers, asking questions and staking out a posture of curiosity makes all the difference. In Dr. William Fals-Stewart’s case, Cheryl lodged a number of allegations. Although the good doctor had published an article referencing 120 couples participating in a therapy program, Cheryl perused the files and found only three. As Cheryl also noted, Dr. Fals-Stewart preferred not to use checks or credit cards but instead paid work-related expenses in cash, even though funding from government grants requires careful receipts and records. This alone, she felt, was highly suspect. Unfortunately, administrators failed to show a comparable level of curiosity in their evaluation of the facts. Not only didn’t they probe these two issues; they didn’t query the credibility of Dr. Fals-Stewart’s witnesses, nor did they ask why Dr. Fals-Stewart was more credible than Cheryl. At key points, they felt overly confident in the information presented and therefore failed to ask follow-up questions.
Asking tough, even dangerous questions rarely feels good in the moment. A preference for cognitive simplicity leads us to fall back on assumptions. We generalize unduly, thinking that all African Americans are politically liberal, or that all Republicans unthinkingly support Trump. We assume that complex issues revert to binaries. You’re either for open borders for immigrants or against them. You’re either for freedom of speech or against it. And so, we decline to ask certain questions because we presume to know the answer.
To engage better with principled rebels, we must resist the urge to paint everything as either/or. There are few inherently good or bad people. Many of us are a blend of values and a wide range of ethical, unethical, and morally ambiguous decisions that make little sense when pulled out of context. Let’s show some curiosity, people. Let’s explore the novel, complex, ambiguous, and mysterious elements of our world. Let’s embrace complexity and resist the temptation to categorize people or their views in an overly simplified way. Let’s spend more time asking. You can’t always be happy, but you can nearly always be curious.
BARRIER 3: INTOLERANCE
A burglary has taken place at a suburban home, and the police have apprehended three suspects. As the investigator in the case, you have a photograph of each suspect and you know their name, occupation, alibi, police record, what they had on them and how they behaved during their arrest. Reviewing all of this information below, whom do you most suspect of committing the crime?
NAME
PETER ALLEN
MARK MATHER
STEVEN JONES
ALIBI
Was playing bridge with church group
Was walking the dog
Was home alone watching TV
PREVIOUS RECORD
Speeding, 80 mph
None
Spent six months in jail for burglary in 2002
POSSESSIONS WHEN APPREHENDED
$35, deck of cards
Leash, cigarettes, golden retriever, $6 in loose change
$400 in cash, screwdriver, gum
ACTION WHEN APPREHENDED
Complied with officer
Verbally abused officer
Complied with officer
OCCUPATION
Accountant
Real estate agent
Unemployed
You might have noticed that one suspect, Steven Jones, lacked an alibi, had a previous criminal record, and had $400 in cash and a screwdriver on him when the police arrested him. He was also the only unemployed suspect. Everything points to him. He also happens to be the only Black suspect.
A fascinating study put participants in the position of investigators and asked them to consider these three potential perpetrators. Participants took a pen and drew a circle around Steven Jones’s picture, then handed it in. But that wasn’t the end of the experiment. Leaving the room, participants learned that another person in the study had previously completed the same task. Participants received a manila folder containing this other person’s response. Opening the folder, participants found a handwritten note from this person stating, “I refuse to make a choice here—this task is obviously biased. I find it offensive to make a Black man the obvious suspect. I refuse to play this game.” Pretty bold move, right? This other person had accused the researchers of being racist!
How do you suppose participants responded upon encountering this act of moral rebellion? You might have expected them to applaud the rebel who called out the racism, but they didn’t. They loathed them, perceiving them as self-righteous, defensive, stubborn, judgmental, and easily offended. Watching the rebel take a stand they hadn’t considered or had feared taking, the other “detectives” in the study declared they didn’t want to be friends with the rebel, didn’t want them as a roommate, and didn’t want to work on a project with them.
We engage poorly with rebels not simply because their ideas unsettle us or we assume we know everything, but because we resent these individuals for making us painfully aware of our own limitations. If you worked at the Research Institute on Addictions when Dr. William Fals-Stewart engaged in fraud, you might have rejected Cheryl and her evidence because she exposed your failure to spot a criminal. As a highly educated person who spent every workday with Dr. Fals-Stewart, you might have felt embarrassed and ashamed that Cheryl could spot a problem that you failed to notice. So you might have denigrated Cheryl as a strategy to protect yourself from self-criticism.
Recognizing this dynamic leads us to another strategy we can use to become more receptive to non-conformist ideas, what we might call “deliberate humility” or reminding ourselves of our own failings and limitations. Deliberate humility might seem counterintuitive: if we fear self-criticism, why would we make a point of criticizing ourselves? The answer is that when we “own” the sense of intellectual and moral inferiority we feel when confronted by principled insubordinates, we can deem them as a hallmark of strength and feel better about ourselves. We become less inclined to cling to some notion of self-perfection only to have it dashed to pieces by a principled insubordinate. This leaves us more willing to fight for the underdog instead of resisting or cowering in silence. Deliberate humility also helps by making us wiser, since wisdom arises from understanding the limitations of our own knowledge, respecting others’ viewpoints, remaining open and receptive to criticism, and communicating our ideas respectfully. Reminded of how much intellectual humility serves to boost our wisdom, we become more tolerant of people who differ in ideology, ideas, and manners.
Practicing deliberate humility can make us more open to divergent ideas. Choose a moment when you showed a lack of humility and modesty. This could be a time when you couldn’t stop thinking about your good qualities or good deeds, or when someone shared an idea and you ignored them or shot them down. You could have spent more time as a skilled interrupter, asking questions, collecting information, and learning something—but you didn’t. Now re-create this event in your mind as vividly as possible. Consider how you felt and reacted to the event in the days that followed. List the emotions you felt, bringing in the emotion-labeling skill from chapter 6. Scrutinize this event from the vantage point of another person watching video footage of it. How would they see it? What might you have done differently? Finally, consider how you might change your behavior going forward based on recollections of this event. This sort of contemplation and self-questioning really works. Multiple studies have found that people who underwent such a thought process emerged humbler, more forgiving, more patient, and less critical of themselves and others.
In studies conducted at six different universities, scientists discovered that during a disagreement, intellectually humble people showed more interest in the opposition’s view, treated the opposition with more respect and dignity, and reflected more on the accuracy of their own position, all of which helped them acquire more knowledge. The next time you find yourself around someone challenging the status quo, tell yourself that they know something you don’t, and make it your mission to find out what that is. Remember, you’re supposed to update your belief system as you encounter new information. That’s how you grow! How sad would it be if ten years from now you still harbored the same old beliefs. Unless you’re seeking out new information in a spirit of humility, you’re merely proselytizing, not showing real curiosity.
THE BIG IDEA
Society needs fewer street preachers and more intellectually humble thinkers who can bridge social and intellectual divides. Courageously resist simple falsehoods and instead make it your practice to explore complex truths fully and honestly.
EXPERIMENT BETTER
When it comes to improving society, non-conformists don’t bear sole responsibility for convincing us of their truths. The rest of us must receive and assess their contributions with equanimity, so that we can accept ideas and solutions that improve on what already exists. But as we’ve seen in this chapter, engaging productively with rebels isn’t simply a matter of wanting to hear them out. We need to overcome the emotional and mental baggage we carry around that causes us to recoil from new and unusual ideas before we’ve had a chance to evaluate them rationally.
Let’s remember what’s at stake. Whistleblowers, political activists, artists, scientists, and others who dare to “think differently” are agents of social improvement. We need the Cheryls of this world to identify immorality, injustice, inefficiency, irrationality, and malfeasance in our systems where it exists. We need them to shout, “This isn’t right!” and “We can do better!” We also need them to show us what “better” could be by envisioning new solutions we haven’t thought of yet.
