Why Do We Get So Upset Over Little Things?

January 15, 2009

Interview with Deborah Tannen, author of The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words

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Mike Carruthers:
Today more than ever we live in an argument culture.

Deborah Tannen:
It's the tendency to approach everything in an adversarial frame of mind - the way to show you're really thinking is to criticize and attack.

Deborah Tannen, author of the book The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words

Just to give an example: I put my seat back on an airplane and the man in the seat behind me began screaming at me and threatening me, instead of stopping and asking himself, "Is this really the best way to get her to put the seat up?" How about assuming that she was someone not really thinking of attacking me but just trying to get comfortable and if I told her it was a problem for me maybe she'd put it up - and I would have.

Another common example is the driver who cuts in front of you or doesn't move when the light turns green, we assume that person is an idiot unless of course that person is us.

We all give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. If we say something rude or lose our temper we think we're nice people who were provoked. If somebody else does something we don't like we think that that defines them as a person - that's a terrible person who does this because that's the kind of person he or she is. So what we're really talking about is thinking of each other as people and when we feel that we're approaching each other in an adversarial spirit assuming that the other person is a villain out to attack us, we can really stop for a minute and reframe it. "Do we have to demonize everybody we disagree with?"