How To Make An Aggressive Person Respect You

Sometimes arguments can get heated and spiral out of control.

How about the more than a billion people who aren't fanatical, who don't punch women, who just want to go to stores? Wait a second.

And while we all want to win our arguments, not making an enemy in the process can be even more important. Which is why today we're going to be looking at Trevor Noah and what you can learn from him about coming out of verbal scruffs. Not only on top, but looking cool, calm and collected feeling. First off, Trevor has a simple but effective habit to prevent emotions from getting too heated. His sub communications indicate that he isn't there for a fight. To see this principle in action, take a look at this exchange from his debate with Tomi Lahren and notice Trevor's tone of voice compared to Tommy's.

That's not fair, and that's true.

No, no, no, no. It is fair, Trevor, because the shooter said point blank shooter said he's doing this because of Black Lives Matter.

Yes, and there are many things you can say.

As people get more frustrated, they have a tendency to raise their voices and talk faster, like Tommy does here. In this case, both. Both sides ability to change their mind completely shuts down and they dig into their positions to prepare for a verbal sparring match. You can tell that this is beginning to happen when both people rush to talk over one another. Like, here I go.

I saw people and race as chocolates.

I wouldn't use that.

I would use that.

I'm that color in these sorts of situations. No matter how good your point is, it's not going to be well received. So the first order of business is simply to slow things down and indicate that fighting isn't necessary. So as Trevor gains control, you can see him deliberately pause in these situations, which reduces the tension and opens the other person up to his perspective.

When I grew up, I believed that all people were chocolates.

A very basic but tried and true method when this starts to happen to you is simply to take a deep breath as you are about to speak. It helps to slow things down tremendously. Now, another key element that indicates Trevor isn't looking to fight is his inflection. In last week's Harvey Specter breakdown, we talked about how a downward inflection can be a powerful tool when. When you're giving commands. And that may have given the impression that upward inflections are somehow bad. This is definitely not the case, though. In fact, upward inflections are excellent for de escalating conflict because it reassures others that you're not commanding them or trying to control them, which is what gets most people upset in arguments in the first place.

Because you're the first person I've met who said this. I've seen this message online. I'm not labeling you as the bad person. I just want to know if you've ever thought of the how. That's all I want to know.

The last key piece you see from Trevor about sub communicating that you're not there for a fight is simply the ability to crack a joke. It might seem counterintuitive to slow down the flow of debate with moments of levity, but this actually makes you more persuasive since you're sub communicating that you are on the same side as someone when you can laugh with them. Now, there's obviously tons of ways to crack jokes, but it can be as simple as misinterpreting a word like here.

And then I got closer to the campaign and I started seeing some of the things he was saying and I started seeing the effect he was having on people and the things that he was saying that was touching people and.

Making them feel like he was touching people.

Yeah, he was.

He really was.

Or just about any argument. You can just poke fun at the fact that both sides typically want to demonize one another, like here.

And so I one of the you one of the good ones.

Cracking jokes like this will help release some of the tension that comes when you're debating fiercely held beliefs and hopefully move you towards a more constructive outcome. However, keep in mind that if you are going to make jokes, you need to also be willing to take a joke and to laugh at it, even when that joke targets your side. Like here.

He's really partially crazy. Partially crazy. Hey, that works in Washington. You got Bernie.

This should give you a good base of sub communications. But the literal words that you use are important too. And that's why the next point is that whenever possible, ask questions instead of making statements. The reason this is so significant is that questions tend to come across as less confrontational than statements, provided that they're not provocative, accusatory questions. Now, there's two general kinds of questions that Trevor uses. First, you see genuine questions aimed at better understanding the other person's viewpoint. Again, note the upward inflection in this next clip that indicates he's seriously curious.

And now I would like to know from your side, genuinely, as someone who's won, do you believe that Donald Trump will follow through on his promises?

The goal of these type of questions is to fully understand the opposing position. So many people get into debates with the straw man of the person that they're debating, assuming that they believe things that the Democrats believe or Republicans believe or Christians believe or atheists believe or whatever. You must recognize that you do not know any individual's beliefs simply by knowing one of their affiliations. You need to get to what they believe as an individual. And genuine questions are the only way there to make sure that you're actually understanding someone correctly. A fantastic tool is to try to state back to them their own beliefs in your words and to not proceed until they confirm that you've actually got it. You see this right here?

We're saying that populism, both on Trump's side and on the left are. There's a danger of that hurting America's mouth.

That's right.

Look, there's nothing wrong with a little populism.

Keep in mind though, it's not simply about using the word. So you're saying and then putting words in the other person's mouth. We saw that in the Jordan Peterson, Cathy Newman debate that you need to make a genuine good faith attempt to rephrase the other's position. Not like you see here.

You're saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters.

Now, once you have a good grasp of someone's beliefs, you can begin to ask the second main type of question. Questions that probe for inconsistencies in beliefs in a non accusatory way. A very recent interview with Republican Senator Rand Paul has a few great examples of this from Trevor.

If two people do a bad thing, does it cancel each other out? Then I'm saying that most people, people go, look at what happened in Venezuela socialism. Then I go, does the corruption not count at all? You know, credit default swaps, that's capitalism running rampant. That's people going, you can buy a thing that doesn't exist and nobody understands it and you don't have to regulate it. And then all of a sudden the markets crash, people lose their houses. Isn't that also capitalism?

This questioning style of conversation is known as the Socratic method, and it's the reason that Socrates is the most famous philosopher ever. So use it. It works incredibly well. In short, you're first attempting to understand people's positions as best you can and then frame your disagreements in the form of questions. That gives the other person a chance to respond without feeling cor and it makes them much less likely to be offended. Moving on to the next point, let's have a look at what to do when the positions are reversed and you're the one who is having your beliefs challenged. But let's say it's in a way that you feel is unfair. Your main goal here is to confidently defend yourself without coming across as antagonistic. And there is a surprisingly effective way to achieve both at the same time. And it's something that I like to call yes. But now, you've probably heard of yes, end where you agree and then build upon someone's statement in order to develop on a joke, like an improv comedy in an argument. The same principle of finding agreement is very important. The only difference is that you're gonna follow your agreement up by showing where you disagree. That's the but part. Now, for instance, in this next clip, Trevor says, yes, that he is splitting hairs, but then goes on to say, why that's the right thing to do. Take a look.

You're splitting hairs here. No, but that is exactly what we should be doing. Because what you're doing is creating. I'm not sure I would say you're creating. I'm not sure I would say, no, you're creating monoliths.

It may seem subtle, but finding any area of agreement can be critical to moving forward without making enem. People's egos get tied up in their arguments. And oftentimes when you rebut someone completely, they feel personally attacked. Even if your position is perfectly logical. So find a way to validate them by saying yes to something about them or their argument. It could be recognizing the value of one part of what they said.

I'll give you that. I'll give you that. That was. That's pretty. It's nice to hear somebody say that the religion is not the problem. These crazy people.

Or when you think nothing they've said makes sense, simply recognizing that they probably have positive intentions and believe what they're saying can be really great way to move forward.

Here's my thing. Like, all these points that you make are great, and I do believe that you believe them. And I don't believe anyone is actively trying. There are a few people are trying to be bad from their point of view. But when I look at what you're.

Saying now, in order to do this technique effectively, you need to know specifically where you agree with someone and specifically where you don't. So identifying hidden premises is critical. Hidden premises are unspoken assertions baked into a question or a statement. When someone creates an argument that feels wrong, but you can't quite explain why, sometimes, sometimes that's because you can't Find the hidden premise. And sometimes it's because you're experiencing cognitive dissonance. But we'll leave that for another video to focus on the hidden premise. Here's one quick example. See if you can spot it here.

What do you say to people who say, like, the Daily show can be an echo chamber?

Did you catch the implied hidden premise? It's that being an echo chamber is a bad thing, something that you shouldn't be. So watch how Trevor responds.

Everything is an echo chamber. I think that's a term that people use to try and justify what a group of people are saying in and amongst themselves. I think for myself, you will always have an echo chamber because people who watch your show are people who like your show.

This is a perfect example of yes. But in this instance, by saying, yes, the Daily show is an echo chamber, he's validating Charlemagne, but then saying that it's natural to be so, he roots out that hidden premise that it shouldn't somehow be an echo chamber. And that way he is able to agree, but defend himself elegantly. And we discussed this topic further in our Ben Shapiro video. If you'd like to play this game a few more times. But for now, let's get to the mindset that ties all of this together. Because every everything in this video can move from a simple technique to a natural way of being. If you adopt new mindsets, and there are three keys. First off, in every argument, you are not necessarily right. And this is especially true if you've never amended your belief system, be it political, religious, or otherwise. In those cases, chances are you're operating from conditioning. So genuinely trying to understand other perspectives can help you towards a more accurate view of the world. Now, this is obviously very hard to do because your ego gets involved. So the second key mindset is that adjusting your beliefs, changing your mind in the heat of an argument, does not diminish you at all. As my freshman year philosophy teacher said, the goal of argument is not to be right, it is to get it right. So be proud of yourself when you change your beliefs in accordance with new evidence, even if you technically lost an argument for it to happen Now. Third, if in fact you've taken the time to understand the other person and they're still wrong, it's almost never because they are evil. It's because they are somehow ignorant. Dialogue can help to lift that ignorance, but only if you don't trigger their defense mechanisms by attacking them as people. Now, Trevor summarizes this well on Hot.

Ones, I don't want to destroy you. I want to engage with you and I think a lot of the time as people, if you have ideas you believe in, you should be willing to engage or you should be willing to test those ideas against somebody that you don't agree with.

If you allow these mindsets to sink in, everything from the sub communications to asking the Socratic questions to the yes but technique will come much more naturally as you jointly work with the people you're talking to to find solid and true common ground. To be honest, I find that that principle of seeking first to understand is very sparse in the modern media, and that's part of why my co founder Ben and I started a podcast on it. We discuss things like the news and cultural events, but really the podcast is about digging into the hidden psychology and philosophy that drives our lives and all of those events. And of course, hopefully learning to become better people as a result. The initial feedback on the podcast has been heartwarmingly fantastic. So if you are a fan of the channel you could get a ton from the podcast. We get to go deep on ideas that just don't fit here, so if you want to check it out, you can click on the page right here to subscribe or listen wherever podcasts are. It is called the Charlie and Ben Podcast. Still working on that name. Also, one final announcement. We have had lots of success in partnering with foreign language channels for Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Italian and other foreign languages and we're actually looking to expand. So if you're interested in becoming a foreign language channel manager for Charisma on command in dubbing our videos into your native language, running the channel, we are offering 50% of all revenue that the channel managers earn to them. Some of whom of these people, like the Spanish and Russian channels in particular, have been able to go full time, even starting teams to run their channel. So if you are capable of the translation and interested in running German, Hindi, Japanese channels, or one that I have not yet mentioned, we would love to hear from you. And in order to apply you can just click the link in the description and find out more. Anyways, I hope that you guys enjoy this video. I hope that you check out the podcast as well and I very much look forward to seeing you in the next video.