How to argue without hurt feelings

Have we become more disagreeable in the 21st century? Has social media made it harder to change people’s minds?

We have been getting more “disagreeable” for centuries as our societies have become steadily more egalitarian, diverse and disputatious. But the internet and social media have accelerated these trends at warp speed. They give every one of us the power to say what we think instantaneously and globally, and they bring us into contact with many more opinions and controversies in the course of an average day than we have ever faced before. We live in a world that is primed for heated disagreements and neither our culture nor our evolution has prepared us for it.

Have we become more willing to state our case because our societies are generally less top-down? Does this mean respect is harder earned?

Some have moved at different rates than others, but most societies around the world have become less hierarchical and less bound by tradition. What that means is that what we believe and what we think are much more down to each one of us than they used to be. Naturally, this produces many more differences of opinion, even in the course of daily life. In a marriage, for instance, each partner’s roles and responsibilities were once determined by culture. Nowadays, everything must be worked out almost from scratch. With more egalitarianism comes more disagreement and more negotiation.

Rows can actually be productive?

One of the most striking findings in the science of relationships is that couples who don’t argue are not necessarily the couples who stay together or stay happy. Auckland psychology professor Nickola Overall told me that “negative directness” – heated, even really quite angry rows – can be healthy for relationships. Obviously, if you have too many, or if they get nasty, they are destructive. But in proportion, they reveal to each partner what the other really cares about and what they really think. Once the storm is over, they feel closer to each other.

You write about creative tension in the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. What is the right amount of disagreement in bands and companies?

According to organisational psychology, groups and teams have an optimal level of conflict and it isn’t zero. If there is no conflict, no tension in the group, then the energy levels get very low and that’s bad for collective intelligence and bad for innovation. Obviously, if the group is arguing all the time, that’s not great, either. But there must be a level of conflict and it should be played out in open disagreements rather than submerged into passive-aggression and office politics. I looked at this in the context of normal workplaces but also through the prism of rock bands. The most successful bands are not the ones that always agree with each other, they are the ones that have found a way to channel their inner conflicts into something creative.

In the book, you talk about how conflict makes us smarter.