Doug Noll explains affect labeling, a technique for calming angry people by naming their emotions. He shares a 2004 mediation where reflecting a couple's feelings resolved an $18,000 dispute, and cites neuroscience research showing why it works.
Chapters
One of the core foundational skills that I teach in all of my classes and that I talk about a lot is a concept known as "Athic Labeling," which is really the process of how to de-escalate an angry person in 90 seconds or less. And that's what my fourth book is about. I'm often asked, "How did you ever come across this?" And I'll tell you the story, it's pretty funny. I was called into a mediation in Santa Barbara in around 2004. And I came into the conference room and there's a woman there and a man there. It turns out this couple had once been married, now divorced. The story was that while they were married, they had been involved in a small minor automobile accident and the insurance company had settled for the children's injuries for about $18,000. Under the California law, as in many other places, it's called a minor's compromise and any minor— any settlement for minors, for children, has to be placed into a blocked trust account that the parents can't take and run off to Las Vegas. They have to get a court order if they want to use the money for any reason until the kids turn 18 and then the money is turned over to them as adults. Well, in this case, the ex-husband apparently had not been paying his support, so mom fell on hard times and she called the kids and said— the kids were now adults, the money had never been released, she didn't get a court order. She called the kids and said, "Hey, we got that $18,000 sitting in the account. Can I take it?" to pay my rent. And the kid said, "Mom, take the money, we don't need it." "Absolutely, have at it." Ex-husband finds out about it. He lives 300, 250 miles away. He finds out about it and files a lawsuit for contempt of court for violating the court order blocking the trust. By the time they get to me, they've spent $50,000 in attorney's fees over an $18,000 dispute. Very typical. So I walk in the room, make introductions, and I say, "Okay, tell me what's going on." It didn't take them but 30 seconds and they're up out of the chair going like this, screaming at each other, cursing each other, some of the most vile vulgar language you can possibly imagine. Sit down, quiet down, let's try it again. And they did it again. One person started talking, the other person started getting into it. I finally did my Moses parting the waves thing and I said, okay, sit down. I didn't know what I was going to do. I had no clue about how to handle this because I'd never really encountered people who were so angry at each other they were absolutely incapable of being and civil. But then a thought came to me out of the blue. Listen to the emotions. So I turned to the wife and I said, Susan, what I want you to do is listen to John's story, but I want you to ignore his words and just listen to his emotions and tell us what you think he is feeling. Can you do that? She didn't think she could, but eventually she agreed to try. So John started his story. Susan started to spin, and I said, oh, what's John feeling right now? And she paused and she looked at John and looked at me and said, he's really angry. Well, why don't you tell him that? So Susan says to John, "John, you are really angry." And John starts telling his story again and he'd go for a couple of sentences and I said, "Susan, what is John feeling?" And she would tell him. And finally she started to calm down and de-escalate and she was calming herself down and I could see that John was calming down. No more shouting, no more screaming, no more yelling. All she was doing was ignoring his words and telling him what he was feeling. When she finished, I had John do the same thing with her. When they finally finished both reflecting each other's emotions, John sort of stared at her for a minute with a really funny look in his eyes and then he put his head in his hands and he started to sob. And after that wave of emotion passed him, he looked up at her and he said, "That's the first time you've listened to me in 25 years." And the case settled 5 minutes after that. I walked out saying, "Holy moly, what just happened in there? What did I just do?" I had no clue. And then in 2007, I happened to come across a study, a neuroscience study by neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman. And he, in his study, he had put people on a brain scanning machine showing exactly why affect labeling works in the brain and how it works. And validated there's hard science behind what happens when you listen to people's emotions and label those emotions. And that's how affect labeling got started. I recognized immediately how powerful it was. I have hard science to support. The skills and techniques. So I spent the next 4 or 5 years developing those skills, ultimately teaching them to murderers and rapists and child molesters in maximum security prisons to prove to myself that I could teach anybody how to de-escalate any situation instantaneously. And that's how it all started.
