Handling People: Eager Want

February 2011

in Self-mastery

This is the third post in a series that goes through How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and summarizes the key ideas.

Selfishness

Carnegie begins Chapter 3 by reiterating some of the ideas presented in Chapter 2 about people’s wants and desires.

“Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something. How about the time you gave a large contribution to the Red Cross? Yes, that is no exception to the rule. You gave the Red Cross the donation because you wanted to lend a helping hand; you wanted to do a beautiful, unselfish, divine act.”

An implication of this, then, is that people are primarily concerned with what they want and not what you want. Just like you’re concerned with what you want more than what others want.

“Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absured. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.”

Eager Want

Therefore, to get anyone to do something we want or listen to something we say, the solution is not to carefully explain why we want it to happen or be heard. The solution is to make them want to act or listen.

“Harry A. Overstreet in his illuminating book Influencing Human Behavior said: “Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire . . . and the best piece of advice which can be given to would-be persuaders, whether in business, in the home, in the school, in politics, is: First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

For people to do something, they must want to do it. Even selfless acts like genuine donations or personal sacrifices happen because the person wanted to do it, at least on some level.

“Tomorrow you may want to persuade somebody to do something. Before you speak, pause and ask yourself: “How can I make this person want to do it?
That question will stop us from rushing into a situation heedlessly, with futile chatter about our desires.”

Obvious, Yet Easy to Forget

“Here is one of the best bits of advice every given about the fine art of human relationships. “If there is any one secret of success,” says Henry Ford, “it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.
[…]
That is so simple, so obvious, that anyone ought to see the truth of it at a glance; yet 90 percent of people on this earth ignore it 90 percent of the time.”

It is easy to forget because our brains don’t think that way be default. We need to remind ourselves constantly about these key ideas.

“If out of reading this book you get just one thing—an increased tendency to think always in terms of other people’s point of view, and see things from their angle—if you get that one thing out of this book, it may easily prove to be one of the building blocks of your career.”

Manipulation?

It’s easy for this to sound like manipulation of a person, but is it?

“Looking at the other person’s point of view and arousing in him an eager want for something is not to be construed as manipulating that person so that he will do something that is only for your benefit and his detriment. Each party should gain from the negotiation.”

You’re not ‘manipulating’ their wants or ‘putting your wants into their head’. Rather, you are making them aware of wants that they can have. You are saying that by the other person helping you or agreeing with your, you are fulfilling a want that they actually have. So, both sides benefit.

Summary

Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want.

People do things because they want to.

People are more concerned about their wants than yours (same for you).

Give people reasons to want to help you, listen to you.

If both sides aren’t benefiting, you’re probably manipulating.

///

Handling People: Appreciation

February 2011

in Self-mastery

This is the second post in a series that goes through How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and summarizes the key ideas.

Want and Appreciation

Carnegie starts Chapter 2 with an important idea.

“There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think about that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.”

There are many ways to get people to want to do something, like sticking a gun to their gut. You can manipulate them and toy with their beliefs and emotions. There is also a third and better way: showing appreciation.

We constantly have reasons to appreciate people’s thoughts and actions, though it is common to ignore these reasons or never act on them.

Importance

Carnegie brings in a second important idea: we all desire to be important.

“[John] Dewey said that the deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important.” Remember that phrase: “the desire to be important.” It is significant. You are going to hear a lot about it in this book.”

We have many wants and needs. Arguably the highest, most important one is the desire to feel important, to have meaning and purpose in our lives. Not only does this drive our actions and gives us meaning, it is a defining part of who we are.

“If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are. That determines your character. That is the most significant thing about you.”

Appreciation to Action

The ideas that you only do anything because you want to, and you desire to have importance and meaning above all else, are very connected. If having meaning is the most important thing to people, then giving someone meaning is the most effective way to get them to do something.

The best way to give someone meaning—and get them to take action—is to show them appreciation.

Flattery Sucks

Appreciation is not the same thing as flattery, which Carnegie takes great care to explain.

“Of course flattery seldom works with discerning people. It is shallow, selfish and insincere. It ought to fail and it usually does. True, some people are so hungry, so thirsty, for appreciation that they will swallow anything, just as a starving man will eat grass and fishworms.
[…]
The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other is insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other is selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.”

Summary

Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation.

Appreciation that is not sincere or honest is pointless flattery.

Appreciation fulfills a person’s desire to have importance and meaning.

Appreciation is easier when you keep in mind that “Emerson said: ‘Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn from him.’”

Appreciation is easier when you constantly remind yourself of all the things that already deserve it; you shouldn’t have to look far to find reasons to give it!

///

Handling People: Never Criticize

February 2011

in Self-mastery

This is the first post in a series that goes through How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and summarizes the key ideas.

A Classic

What better place to start reading about communication and interacting with other people than one of the all-time international best sellers? How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is as famous as it is old (it was originally written in 1912). With all the hype and despite a book title that always makes me cringe slightly, I think there is value to be found in it.

Personal Blame

Carnegie quickly raises important points that people do not blame themselves for anything, and therefore they don’t take criticism well. He doesn’t use much more than an array of stories to illustrate this happening, though this does agree with what I have read to date about cognitive dissonance and things like confirmation bias.

Of course, it is possible to blame yourself for something, but the key is that it is extremely unlikely. People have a very hard time changing their mind or admitting they were wrong.

Useless Criticism

Criticism is very unlikely to be effective, because it will just put people on the defensive. As Carnegie says,

“Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”

Carnegie then presents several examples of criticism going bad, and follows it up with saying,

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain—and most fools do.
But it takes great character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”

He ends the chapter with the following paragraph,

“Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing that criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.”

Summary

Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

Why? Because it won’t accomplish anything. Criticising may feel good to do, but it will hurt your chances of getting the person to realize their mistakes, let alone change their ways.

This isn’t to say that we should only praise people, regardless of what they’ve done. We’re only talking about the day-to-day interactions we have with other people.

All three of these things we should not do (criticise, condemn and complain) are actions that, in my experience, easily happen ‘automatically’ or out of habit, and so it can be hard to catch yourself doing them until it’s too late.

Still, simply being aware that criticism can be counter-productive will hopefully help me catch myself when I do it.

///

A Case Against How to Make a Case Against Vegetarianism

January 2011

in Self-mastery

A friend sent me this article from wikihow.com that lays out ten arguments a meat-eater can use when debating with a vegetarian. I agree with some of them, and others may be good against a raging irrational vegetarian.

Overall, though, I don’t think they are very convincing. Here are the ten arguments, and my thoughts about them:

#1 Question its effectiveness: One popular Utilitarian argument is that even if I, a single individual, were to stop eating meat, this would not reduce the number of animals killed at all. The meat market is far too large for the meat producers to register a single person’s consumption or lack thereof.

Bad argument. Why should I bother voting, when it is just one vote? Because by voting I support the ideal of everyone voting. By living your values with regard to what you eat (and everything else), you encourage all people to do the same. The fact that you are living your values will increase the probability that others will be exposed to information and reasons why they should be vegetarians. Having a growing number of people who are vegetarian will make it more “normal”.

#2 Don’t let emotional appeals sidetrack you. A vegetarian might ask ‘Well, how would you feel if you were slaughtered and eaten?’ How you would feel may not be comparable to how a lower life form feels.

Agreed. Can’t compare exactly, but can probably at least get an idea.

Similarly, using excessively graphic descriptions (‘misleading vividness’) to evoke a negative reaction is a fallacy.

‘Excessive’ is somewhat subjective. A video of cows being slaughters isn’t ‘misleading evidence’, but reality. If you react morally to such graphics, maybe you should treat that as an indication of what you should think about it? We are coddled by social norms to accept mass animal slaughtering and ignore whatever ‘silly’ feelings we get from it. It is fallacious to only appeal to negative reactions to make a decision (they may be ill-founded, like fear of spiders for example), but they can still count as evidence that should validly influence our views.

#3 Don’t let overly-broad generalizations stand.

Agree, of course.

You may be forced to admit that some farms or slaughterhouses treat the animals with unnecessary cruelty. But not all do.

I get the sense from the author that s/he thinks it’s a small portion of nasty slaughterhouses. I doubt that. Even if it’s a low percentage, wouldn’t we still want to get rid of them? “Forty-three percent of the world’s beef is raised on factory feedlots, and more than half of the world’s pork and poultry is raised on factory farms.” [http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1495]

There are plenty of ways to make sure you eat well treated animals. What if you just ate free-range chickens? Why isn’t that okay?

Animal rights arguments aside, I’m totally okay with that.

#4 Consider less extreme measures. This is related to previous step. Consider: It’s widely accepted that most Americans eat more meat than is healthful, but this does not mean the best option is to eat no meat at all.

Agreed. This is determined by health science. Eating too much meat is clearly bad. The middle-ground is less obvious.

What if we just ate half as much? Or a third? Having too much of something doesn’t mean you should have none; just that you should have less.

Again, animal rights aside, I have have no problem eating meat if it’s part of a healthy diet and lifestyle.

#5 Attack tenuous hypothetical arguments. Consider the point that the grain it takes to feed one cow can feed a hundred people. With all the starving people on the planet, it would make sense to have them eat grain and not meat. The problem with this statement is that those people aren’t starving because there isn’t enough food–they’re starving because they don’t have access to the food. When the vegetarian says ‘We could feed all the starving people with the ‘, respond with ‘but would we?’ One recent study found that half of all food in America goes to waste.”

If the vegetarian really thinks that by having grain left over because the cows don’t need it, and that we can just ship that overseas to solve hunger, then yes, they are being silly. But then again, if there was a way to get this food to people, wouldn’t it be incredibly obvious to eat less meat? If the author agreed to that, then why wouldn’t they want to at least try and see what happens, rather than shrug his shoulders and say, “meh, world hunger… probably wouldn’t work.” The scale and scope of the world hunger issue is huge. Failure to imagine helicopters dropping bags of cow-grains to starving people doesn’t mean we shouldn’t let the issue impact our food choices.

Not to mention the environmental impacts from growing grain period. Growing less, if it was possible, would very likely be a good thing overall in my eyes. Less fertilizers, less soil erosion, less green house gas emission, lower probability of E.coli entering drinking water etc.

If we had twice as much, wouldn’t we simply waste the increase too?

This argument is just awful. “But if our gas tanks were twice as large, wouldn’t we simply fill them up and spend 5 hours per tank drivingaimlessly to use up that extra gas?” I know I would…

#6 Use the “circle of life” argument. When you get down to it, most animals, including humans, are naturally suited for eating other animals. It is clearly possible to have a healthy diet without any meat,

Agreed. Though, the fact that we are able to eat other animals isn’t an argument that we ought to.

but it’s often a lot harder.

Kind of agree. Society is growing more ‘vegetarian-friendly’, but still anti-vegetarians seem to think that to be vegetarian you must struggle day in and day out to find sources of protein, cook all those vegetables, etc. I’ve found it pretty easy, you just have to be willing to try some different foods.

#7 Blow apart the animal rights argument. When a vegetarian claims that you’re violating animal rights, remember them that many researches can prove us that plants have some level of awareness of their environments. How can one argue about animal rights without knowing how much does a single plant can feel(or how much is a plant aware of what it feels) at all?

Uh.. we can be pretty darn certain that plants do not ‘feel’ pain in a way remotely similar to what a higher animal experiences. Moral dillema: if you were forced to choose between killing someone in a coma and someone alive and healthy, which would you choose? Or a rat vs a dolphin? Or a clam vs a monkey? There are obviously degrees of consciousness and ability to ‘experience’ pain. In this regard choosing a plant over a cow seems obvious to me.

Comparing the ‘conscious awareness’ of a plant to a cow is like comparing the technical complexity of a spoon and a space ship. (Maybe too strong of an analogy?)

#8 Point out their use of other animal products. Most vegetarians still use animal products in things like leather, glue, gelatin, and some pharmaceutic capsules. Question their hypocrisy in using some animal products despite claims to the contrary.

Depends on your motivations as a vegetarian. If you are trying to reduce impact by eating less (or no) meat, then yeah, you should at least consider using less glue, gelatin, etc. Just because you’re trying to save money doesn’t mean you should spend money on nothing, not even food. If the vegetarian places a lot of emphasis on the moral issues with eating meat, then they probably should be made aware of where animal products are in their day-to-day lives.

It’s usually about decreasing impact, not eliminating it. The only way to eliminate it is to kill yourself; not a fun option.

#9 Be holistic. Argue that human beings are the dominant species on the Planet Earth and that all of the Earth’s resources are at our disposal for our responsible use and enjoyment. Consider where humanity would be if trees were never cut down for their wood to be utilized in everything from the construction of homes and water vessels to the manufacturing of bookshelves and paper. The responsible thing to do is to ensure that future generations are able to be afforded all of the advantages and luxuries that we currently have access to.

Yeah, of course I agree. That’s why I’m vegetarian. Also, the idea that Earth’s resources are “at our disposal” is a dangerous ideal that must be handled with caution. Yes, we do need to use it responsibly.

#10 Describe the biological case for eating meat. If we were made to eat only plants, wouldn’t we have multiple stomachs, like cows? Our stomach’s production of hydrochloric acid, something not found in herbivores. HCL activates protein-splitting enzymes. Further, the human pancreas manufactures a full range of digestive enzymes to handle a wide variety of foods, both animal and vegetable.

I agree that you would be wrong to say that humans are not naturally meat eaters, or were not ‘made’ to eat meat. As far as I know we definitely did evolve to be able to eat it. However, an argument that we can eat meat is not an argument that, given our circumstances, weshould eat meat.

If we were made to eat only plants, wouldn’t we have multiple stomachs, like cows?

We’re not ‘made’ to do anything. Read up about how evolution works. Also, do all plant eaters have seven stomachs like cows? Don’t think so…

—

Thoughts?

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →