Argument Foreplay
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Highlights
- What is going on here? Randall Collins’ book Interaction Ritual Chains explained this all for me. We humans often want to synch our actions and attention, to assure each other than we feel and think the same. And also that our partners are sufficiently skilled and impressive at this process. The more important is this assurance, the more we make sure to synch, and the more intensely and intricately we synch. And where shared values and attitudes are important to us, we make sure that those are strongly salient and relevant to our synched actions.
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Regarding media articles and sermons, a direct if perhaps surprising implication of all this is that most of us are often not very open to hearing and being persuaded by arguments until speakers show us that they sufficiently share our values, and are sufficiently impressive in this performance. So getting straight to the argument point (as I often do) is often seen as rude and offensive, like a would-be seducer going straight to “can I put it in.”