Occasionally when dealing with irrational people I have found it useful to match their energy level. So if they're yelling, you start raising your voice too. And you take whatever it is they're saying seriously. And if you have an objection, you state that objection. Then you continue the argument until the raised voices seem pointless and you both just calm down.

I had to learn this technique when I was living with friends that had undiagnosed and untreated personality disorders. Remaining calm while they're blowing up simply didn't work, and led them to think I was patronizing them. So I'd start making the same points I was trying to make to them, only with a raised voice. I would get completely invested in the argument, while remaining in full control of myself. Soon they would calm down.

It usually wound up being a cathartic experience for them. They'd break down after the whole thing was over, sometimes even cried. At first I thought I was doing God's work, but eventually I realized that that sort of thing just wasn't ever going to 'fix' them, and they needed treatment. For most of us, major cathartic events happen once a month to once a year and provide opportunities for permanent personality growth.

But when you have a personality disorder, no amount of catharsis will change your behavior, because your brain isn't wired the same way.

One of my sales mentors shared this story with me, but I'm not sure where he heard it originally. Basically what you said, if someone comes to you angry about something, be angrier but not at them. In all but the most extreme cases they end up trying to calm you down.

His example was a tailor of very high-end clothes, think tuxedos that cost as much as most folks' cars, custom women's jackets for formal events, etc. A customer comes in, angry that a button is sewed on with an incorrect thread pattern. Something to fix if you're paying $10,000 for a jacket but not exactly something reasonable to get angry about. The customer comes in, throws the jacket on the counter and demands that it be fixed. Rather than trying to de-escalate their anger, be absolutely outraged that one of your employees would do this. Assure the customer that you will find out who did something so inconceivably stupid, and that you will most certainly fire them on the spot. The expected response will generally be something like "well, it's not that big of a deal I mean if we just fix the threading..."

I'm sure there have been exceptions for other folks but every time I've used this tactic (generally reserved for the most egregiously ridiculous displays of anger) it's worked almost immediately.

I've deployed this approach at jobs before with tempestuous bosses. I can assure you that you don't need to reserve it for egregious outbursts. These sorts think of anger as energizing, any charged-up display commands respect from them.

Eventually they start thinking of you as their protege.

> (generally reserved for the most egregiously ridiculous displays of anger)

On the other end of that spectrum you have Monty Python's "The Restaurant Sketch".

I would worry about coming across as sarcastic. (And I mean me personally, I don't have a good poker face.)

Or must one not worry about the type of person who would become angry over a mis-sewn button picking up on sarcasm?

The weird, 'magic' thing about this is that the capacity to be unreasonably angry about something means that you take it very seriously. You won't detect that someone else isn't taking it half as seriously unless you were also only deploying anger as a technique. The anger itself blinds you. And if you weren't really that angry, well you just got caught out.

There is a concept of persuasion in NLP called "pacing and leading." The objective is to build rapport and then leverage it to your advantage. Essentially you first match what they're doing, so if they are sprinting on a track you sprint and run along side them (rather than trying to walk and expect them to keep up) so you are pacing. Then when you are alongside each other and in contact so to speak, you can either increase or decrease the pace gradually and they will follow you. The running idea is a metaphor here for "energy" or whatever you want to call it.

> I had to learn this technique when I was living with friends that had undiagnosed and untreated personality disorders. Remaining calm while they're blowing up simply didn't work, and led them to think I was patronizing them.

I've definitely had this experience. I have at least one friend who never learned to control her displays of anger at all, and who regards failing to be as angry as her as proof that you're not listening or taking her seriously. The weird result is that dealing with her displays calmly just convinces her you're a patronizing ass.

"irrational people" != people with "undiagnosed and untreated personality disorders"

I just think it's important to iterate that. At the beginning of your comment it seems like you're offering a different general approach to the general approach given in the article.

Hmm. I didn't understand that they had such crosses to bear at the time. I just knew that they were acting irrationally. If they were rational, then remaining calm would have worked. It didn't, so I needed a different approach. I didn't work out until later that they had PDs and what that meant.

Nobody can know that another person has a PD until a pattern of interactions makes it clear.

Also, as you can see further down in the comments to your parent, iterating in that direction leaves the impression that you're being an armchair psychologist. I think it's important to retain the aspect of the narrative that you didn't know what situation you were in when you were dealing with it.

Not that it applies to your case particularly but ...

> remaining calm

is not always right. I know people who see 'being calm' in the face of anger or provocation as being apathetic -- somewhat lifeless and inhuman. Which enrages them.

Anger is a normal human emotion -- don't overdo it and don't underdo it.

This calibration might take most of your life.

Good thoughts. :)

If you had witnessed the interactions you would not have come to that conclusion. They beat themselves up, they didn't need me to do it. When someone is irrational, their verbal violence cuts in both directions.

I am not a psychologist but I see one every week. I did not consider personality disorders until the person in question brought it up, and I had a lot more experience with such things later in life. All I knew at the time was that they were not responding to calmness and I needed to try something different.

When I did phone technical support for a computer company, I received my share of angry customer calls. In addition to keeping calm at all times in response to angry statements, I would try to subliminally impart better customer behavior on all calls. Since this was in the days of Windows 95, I would often have to spell out DOS and Windows commands. If the command included an "I" like "regedit" or "sysedit", I would specifically say "I as in intelligent" for that letter. These were almost all fairly complicated issues like getting a modem to work in the days of Config.sys and IRQ conflicts and "Plug and Pray". Having a customer primed for intelligence couldn't hurt, as I was leading the customer through regedit and sysedit editing over the phone (no fancy remote control software existed).

Oh those were the good old days!! IRQ conflicts, jumpers all around and thinking which device I need less :)

This technique is extremely powerful in parenting. These are exactly the steps you take to reason with a toddler. Before anything else you have to get them out of their temper ta tantrum and articulating why they are angry. Then you segwey from listening to dialog.

But...

If you have to still do this with adults, it means the adults haven't learned to regulate their emotions well enough to listen to a rational argument even while they're upset. It's gotten so bad that some adults never listen to things they don't emotionally agree with, even when they're not initially upset (hearing contrary facts makes them upset). That is a catastrophe for rational thought and discourse.

If an adult or an adolescent routinely requires being engaged on an emotional level before they'll listen to your rational argument, then once you do engage them emotionally they will listen to anything you say, whether it's logic or pseudologic or rhetorical, semantically-null bullshit.

To elaborate a little bit...

Of course humans have all sorts of rational deficits. I never meant to imply they could be turned into Vulcans.

Putting too much emphasis on emotionally positive engagement over rational engagement leads to even worse emotional fragility and dependence than humans normally have. That leads to a constant preoccupation with the emotional side of interactions. And that indirectly atrophies their ability to evaluate incoming communication rationally, because they're constantly thinking about their own emotional state, or even worse the group emotional consensus of whatever groups they primarily identify as. That emotional evaluation interrupts rational evaluation.

I'm not advising people to eschew emotional engagement if they're in the business of persuasion, or in the business of keeping peace, or if keeping peace is a priority in a specific situation. I agree that that is sometimes needed, but I think it needs to be more limited in its application, and not the default approach for handling all disagreements. I don't think it works to create lasting rationally-based changes to concepts in someone's mind; when emotional evaluation (mostly) replaces rational evaluation, anyone who makes the listener feel good can get them to believe anything. All the valid rational arguments you use today can be undone tomorrow by someone else who has no rational arguments but can keep the listener engaged.

>If an adult or an adolescent routinely requires being engaged on an emotional level before they'll listen to your rational argument, then once you do engage them emotionally they will listen to anything you say, whether it's logic or pseudologic or rhetorical, semantically-null bullshit.

So that's fine. They will listen, then later mull it over and integrate it.

Just because anger arose for them in that moment they were interacting with you does not mean they can't be rational.

But more importantly, by creating a positive interaction you may have started to reduce their tendency to outgroup you and 'your tribe'. This can lead to more productive dialogue in the future.

Also, as to why that person is angry. No one can know what life experiences that person may have had. Happy well adjusted people from happy families usually, don't fly into a blind rage that easily.

I get what you're saying, though I've found that handling the emotional part of a discussion first makes the "rational" stuff way easier.

One thing to keep in mind is that many people out there have mental disorders (treated and untreated) that make it difficult on a chemical level to control these things. For example, ADHD destroys inhibition (causing the classic "speak before you think" behavior) on a deep level that's hard to work out even after a lot of training.

The way I see it is that emotional appeals serve first to level the playing field for this kind of state of mind, so that the rational discussion can happen. The Jobsian Reality Distortion Field is a thing, but for the most part I think it's about complementing the rational discussion.

Your note about ADHD completely resonates with a close friend who has adhd is often open in ways that are to his detriment. Any chance you have a resource I could read more on this as it relates to ADHD

Sadly, humans are not rational thinkers. "Never Split the Difference" is a good book about that. I recommend anyone to read it !

Haha, I was thinking about the same book when reading the comment! Highly recommended indeed, but you beat me to it.

I'd say that is more valuable in the post-toddler stage. Toddlers test boundaries to see what works - and using this against a 3 year old throwing a tantrum is showing them that tantrums work to initiate a dialogue, which is not the parenting goal you are trying to reach at that stage. Once they are past the tantrum stage, absolutely this becomes a great way to interact.

This is basically Non Violent Communication (Marshall Rosenberg). First you need to address their feelings (empathy), to make contact, then proceed to reason and find a solution (strategy). Solution doesn't mean that the problem is gone, but could mean that the situation is accepted.

I can totally relate to this from both perspectives (being pissed off at someone, and trying to calm somebody pissed off) and seeing how both approaches work/dont work.

Not too long ago I opened a dispute with Ryanair about what I thought was quite obvious their own issue for which I should be refunded (I provided screenshots and everything). I've reached out to their customer support expecting to raise a simple issue that should result in a quick solution on their end. I was shocked to see their support behaving in a very defensive and completely dismissive way that resulted in a 2 hour long support case that didn't really fix anything (they still have the same bug on their website, and I was not refunded). These guys basically upgraded me from 'slightly annoyed' to 'never again will I fly ryanair' kind of customer.

In another case, I've reached out to an online chocolate vendor to point out an issue I had with their shipping carrier. I knew it was not directly the vendor's fault, but this being their only shipping method I figured they should be aware as it is a constant problem. These guys acknowledged my frustrations immediately and even offered a symbolic gift card as a way of apologizing for an issue that they can't really fix any time soon. I was generally happy to see them even acknowledging my problem, and in turn completely understood that this was out of their hands. I continue to be their customer even though the shipping is still a pain.

I also have a local ad to help my father sell some stuff he makes by hand. As its a hand made thing that he makes in large quantities, mistakes happen every now and then and I get complaints. I try to be understanding of every issue they raise and offer urgent refunds/replacements to anyone affected. Even though people get pissed off they didnt get what they expected, everyone responded much better if I used similar methods of de-escalation.

People are often (and understandably) very impulsive and rude when they feel they are being wronged. We should try to be more understanding of these emotions and work towards solving the issue instead of taking it so personally.

I’ve found, much to my chagrin, that anger seems to be a much better way to achieve what you want than being pleasant and diplomatic.

Cases in point: ecommerce retailer offers next day shipping, but nothing arrives. I chase. “Oh it’s out of stock”. “It said in stock on your site... i’ll have X instead”. A week later, still nothing. “Oh it’s in the post”. A week later, still nothing, still “in the post”. I ask for a refund. “Our policy forbids it.”

So I find the email addresses of the company directors and send them a blistering email full of threats and insults. I get a refund 20 minutes later.

Other case: company installs satellite dish on roof. Stops working very next day. Ask them to come back. “Thursday.”. Three months on they’re still saying “Thursday”, so I threaten court action in a blindingly rude phone call in which I call him names and belittle him. He turns up an hour later and fixes it, apologises.

When I ran my own business, I would always end up giving the shoutiest nastiest motherfuckers the most attention, to the detriment of the people who asked nicely - the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and most people will act to avoid conflict. I certainly do. I’m just as guilty.

I loathe this aspect of human nature, as it just generates unnecessary grief for all parties involved.

A society that refuses the carrot is doomed to the rod.

I agree that it works, but it works better in less personal and less connected environments.

If you do this with people you have to work with constantly, they will start to avoid you.

I've found that contacting directors and explaining politely, but bluntly, why you are upset at the service their employees are providing, works wonders. No need to be rude.

I was polite and pleasant in my first half dozen emails - but after several weeks of being ignored, the gloves came off and I got an immediate resolution. Many business owners don’t give a tiny damn about their customers, but all business owners care about legal embuggerances.

> they still have the same bug on their website, ...

Interesting what's the bug?

I have fallen for some of Ryanair's evil design tricks which have costed me money, but if there's a __bug__, wonder what is it.

Ryanair allows you to change booking for a fee, as long as its not less than 5hrs before the flight. Bug is that this feature is basically broken and I couldn't change the booking even more than 12hrs before the flight. The button for selecting a different flight does not work (you can search for different flights but cannot select one). Because of this I was forced to book a different flight separately, which was more expensive than simply changing the existing flight.

I have friends in politics and I have even run for office (School Board 17 people ran for 5 positions and 4 were re-elections I got 6th :( but my friend I was running with she got 5th :).

My job every election is to go to where the screamers and yellers are. For some reason the election official leaves these people outside that will yell and throw a tantrum if anyone even mentions a different opinion, which lowers voter turnout. So I stand there for either 20 minutes or 2 hours until I can get people to start dialoguing with me. It can be painful but I actually go through these exact steps and until someone is felt heard and emotionally calmed down and they will never care about a single word you say.

I hear how my friend has tens of thousands of dollars spent on his Man Cave in his basement and made all these crooked deals that they have proof of. I stand there and say have you been in his basement? He has a 20" TV a drum kit for 20 years ago and an ugly green carpet. I also want to say that he actually has personal debt and why would he be in the hole if he was raking in the money but ...

People just love to feel like they have superior knowledge to anyone they disagree with. This is why debates never change eachother's mind, because we hold on to certain "facts" when in all honesty they are opinion or speculation at best.

I volunteered for my town Planning Commission last year and have to deal with this all the time now. Residents are constantly ranting on social media accusing us of moving town borders, down-zoning our enemies, holding secret votes, and cutting deals. In reality, the only thing we did last year was approve a swimming pool and do some research on parking.

It's extremely stressful for me as an introvert, but I quietly and patiently explain concepts like due process and open-hearings when I have the opportunity. I stress that everything we do is open to public scrutiny and public comment. I explain that we can't engage on Facebook because it's not an official public forum. I invite people to attend our meetings or read our meeting minutes, but they never do.

Real government is incredibly boring and complicated. Its much more fun to rant and rave about conspiracies on social media.

Every time I've had to deal with the general public in any kind of scheduled gathering for policy discussion, with or without specialists present, someone inevitably says something (loudly and at length) which displays such an utter lack of understanding of what the meeting is for and what it can accomplish that it makes me scream inside. It makes me feel terrible for those who are facilitating. I got so furious the last time it happened that I walked out and left my favorite water bottle behind.

We should have great respect for anyone with even remotely good intentions who is willing to plow through this mess of misguided humanity to get something useful done. I'm pretty sure I can't do it, so if I want to see change happen I have to support those who can.

"This is why debates never change eachother's mind, because we hold on to certain "facts" "

Disagree with the generalisation. Most yes, but not all. I used to be like it, as well, but consciously changed. I still feel mostly superior, though, but I am still open for reconsidering every one of my points, as I still remember really silly points of views I once had and considered superior.

Plus, I also found out, that if I am in fact superior - meaning I really understand the other person's (flawed) point of view even though he maybe communicates it poorly, I am usually able to get important points through if worded and timed right ...

But in general I believe the main problem is, that most people just never learned to communicate properly.

edit: but yes, when people are really angry, they don't listen, so what works sometimes, to ask them, if they also want to listen to my reply ... so that makes them thinking a bit. In one instance I remember getting a plain no. So I told him I go away as this is no communication anymore. And I did and later he came to and said, now he wants to listen - and we calmly sorted everything out, what would have otherwise potentially evolved into a violent fight.

Direct link [PDF] https://www.nasco.coop/sites/default/files/srl/Bystander%20T...

I'd be interested to see how this works in dealing with bad reviews. They often feel disenfranchised/slighted/wronged and not a few, angry.

I've been pretty effective in dealing with bad reviews for our app and lots of this method resonates with me.

As I'm systematizing the company a key area is putting in a process and tools for the team to handle bad reviews rather than me. So far however, it seems each situation and personality makes it difficult to pin down an effective process.

Regarding bad reviews, I feel for you. I am close to someone who is a good person, but seems unable to stop himself from leaving scathing reviews. If it's any consolation, I really believe that 1) trauma he experienced at a young age contributes to this behavior and 2) if he knew the person who produced the product and understood the difficulties they faced during its production, he would not do it.

I don't understand - do you think it's wrong to leave a critical review? Why should be stop himself leaving them if the product was bad? And whatever difficulties caused a product to be bad are irrelevant in a review of the product. People just want to know if it's bad or not.

The tone matters, I think. Think of how teachers leave a critical review of an assignment, versus the rants you see online. Both are often unpalatable, but the scale of the first kind often seems justified.

Often one feels that one aspect of the product underperformed, while the others were on target, but the reviewers fly off the handle.

Is the review for the benefit of the manufacturer in order to improve the product, or for the benefit of prospective purchasers, to inform them of the quality of the thing they are considering?

Whether a review should be constructive depends on which of these it is.

This is a really odd statement. I occasionally leave scathing reviews if I've had a genuinely bad experience. Most recently it was with a smart speaker (the UE Blast) that was obviously rushed to a Christmas 2017 release with major software issues that, according to their forums, are hitting many customers with no or poor response from the vendor.

As a software engineer I can imagine the circumstances around the rushing of the product before the software was finished, and can empathise, but ultimately (pun unintended) nothing will change (and more people will waste their time buying and returning the device) unless the company realises their products are getting worse.

(This does not sound like your experience but) I'm very surprised when a bad reviewer has a resolvable problem, makes no attempt to contact support and simply writes a bad review.

Or, sends a support email and 30 seconds later writes a bad review.

Bad reviews sometimes indicate not a willingness to resolve a problem but wanting to shout and be heard.

I hear this often with restaurant reviews too. Something is wrong with the food but they quietly seethe rather than grabbing their waiter, waiting until the taxis home to write a scathing review. How odd.

> if he knew the person who produced the product and understood the difficulties they faced during its production, he would not do it

So true for many.

One thing I always try to do is go out of my way to make that personal connection. Anonymous hit-and-run reviews are, in my opinion, cowardly. If you're going to scrutinise something publically you should be open to talk to the creator of what you're scrutinizing.

Speaking to these kind of users can be invaluable or it can be an awkward hour of disagreeing.

Either way, putting a human face on it and letting them know where I'm coming from and the impact of their review has yielded good results.

> So far however, it seems each situation and personality makes it difficult to pin down an effective process.

Well, obviously: using one-process-fits-all without appreciating local context is a recipe for disaster, isn't it?

Everything can have a process. A process doesn't eliminate skill and judgement but establishes standards and guidance leading to improvement.

Won't someone, who applies this technique often enough, need some psychological help? So that we help customers here and ruin brains of these who do listen and try to calm down all these angry people? I think there is an analogy of conservation of energy law that could be applied to psychology...

What also gets me angry is if they leave no way for me to get back in contact with the same support-person after chatting with them.

"Can I have your name [again]?"

"Could you please transfer me to [name] as they were helping me out previously with this issue?"

At this point you discover that everyone in the call centre is called "Dave" for professional purposes.

That's difficult to ask when you are kicked out of the session with a "have a nice day, please rate this conversation". Come on, just give me a link to click on or an email address.

When I get connected I always take a note of the persons name, and ask for it if it not given upfront.

Coincidentally on the frontpage together with the rant of Linus Torvalds

I feel that most conflict resolution comes down to finding a compromise - like, you get reimbursed or something. For code and the Linux kernel though, there's little room for compromise - half of a shit patch is still shit. So to speak. It's an effective means of leadership if you're in a position where you don't need to make compromises.

I don't think that's fair on Torvalds.

When he's angry about a major issue in the kernel, he uses curse words to bring the spotlight to where he needs it. He's angry because, in his view, top-tier devs are doing sub-par work on an important problem.

He's not blinded by emotion, he's just being forceful.

I never got the impression that DE-escalation was Linus’ goal.

Isn't it? If you're the unchallenged dictator of a project, it seems to me that saying "I will brook no more of this nonsense" is a better de-escalation strategy than inviting further discussion.

Edit: I hope my downvoter understands the irony in their actions.

I rather believe Linus' goal is to change Intel. Some curse words got it escalated to the Hacker News frontpage and that publicity helps. Why de-escalate?

You're right, but I think he's actually accomplished two things - one is to create useful publicity outside the mailing list, and one is to minimize drama on the mailing list. I guess I assumed the latter of those two meanings.

Also I interpreted it as a more general claim, not specifically about this fairly unusual instance where nerd talk interacts with stuff that's in the public consciousness.

First of all, take a deep breath to take yourself out of "fight-mode". Then when you got your brain back you can take these steps.

Easier said than done though, right?

So is this why when you phone up your broadband provider to complain that the service is down yet again, you get the incredibly infuriating nonsense about how sorry they are and how much it means to them that your service isn't working, before completely failing to do anything about it?

I would not get mad if Comcast didn't feel the need to transfer me 3-4 times before addressing my issue...