The Trouble with Great Advice
It’s like this… You have just offered a young adult some great advice and it has fallen flatter than asphalt at a steamroller convention. So, you do the logical thing and tweak your approach. You try being firm. You try being empathetic. You keep trying until you are convinced that you have formulated the most salient piece of advice since Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations… and once the conversation ends, the young adult goes off on their own and does the exact opposite of what you just advised them to do. Tell them that they should break up with their boyfriend, and they sneak off to spend the night at his house. Tell them to quit smoking, and you find a new vape under their mattress. Tell them to stop playing so many video games, and they get sore thumbs from playing even more video games.
There are few things in life as frustrating as this. And the worst part is that you know, deep down, in your heart of hearts, if this young person would just take your advice, things would actually get better for them.
Welcome to the weird world of the righting reflex – the place where the physics of interpersonal communication no longer seem to make any sense, and you find yourself on the precipice of ripping your hair out in the name of good intentions.
First coined by the geniuses behind Motivational Interviewing, Dr. William R. Miller and Dr. Stephen Rollnick, the Righting Reflex involves “the belief that you must convince or persuade [a] person to do the right thing. You just need to ask the right questions, find the proper arguments, give the critical information, provoke the decisive emotions, or pursue the correct logic to make the person see and change.”
What’s so bad about that? Well, pretty much everything.
First of all, the righting reflex undermines effective communication by tipping the conversational scales into an oppositional mode. Even though you may be offering Aristotelian counsel, between the lines of all advice is a hidden message – I know what’s best for you. Translation: You think that you know what’s best for me, which means that you think that I don’t know what’s best for myself!!??
Now, some of you might be reading this and thinking, wait a minute, isn’t this sort of defiant reaction just teenagers being teenagers? Possibly. But, let me ask you this… How many times have people given you decent advice that you have completely ignored? Does this make you a defiant teenager? Perhaps, or perhaps there is a universal psychological phenomenon at play that is true of all humans, teenagers or not. This is known as Reactance Theory, which stipulates that “when people feel coerced into a certain behavior, they will react against the coercion, often by demonstrating an increased preference for the behavior that is restrained.” This psychological phenomenon, also known as the boomerang effect, essentially explains that the more you push, the more they pull away.
Next, consider Ambivalence — the paradox around which the great world of our bad habits spin — I really want to start eating healthier, but pizza sure sounds awesome tonight! I should really get out of this toxic relationship, but I don’t want to be alone. You catch my drift, but what you might not know is that the young person you are trying to give advice to is likely already in the throes of ambivalence regarding their habits, good and bad.
I like to think of it like this: inside every young adult (and person for that matter) is a very small, and immensely powerful Roman Senate. And when it comes to bad habits, these senators regularly cast votes both for and against the habit. Thus, when you show up with advice, what you are essentially doing is donning your sandals and submitting a vote. Vote against the bad habit, and some of the little senators smile and agree with you while some of the other senators frown, disagree, and wink at Brutus. Thus, the votes keep piling up, and real change never happens. By casting a vote against a bad habit, we do little more that perpetuate the cycle of voting itself. This bears repeating: by casting a vote against a bad habit, we do little more than perpetuate the cycle of voting itself.
“Argue for one side and the ambivalent person is likely to take up and defend the opposite. This sometimes gets labeled as “denial” or “resistance” or “being oppositional,” but there is nothing pathological about such responses. It is the normal nature of ambivalence and debate.”
Now, aside from paradoxical boomerangs and fickle senators, there’s still another factor to consider — the ownness bias. Like opposable thumbs and upright posture, this phenomenon is known to all Homo sapiens, and it stipulates that we are fundamentally more convinced by our own words than the words of anyone else. How painfully true this is. Have you ever found yourself uttering the words of someone else’s advice, but for some reason, when the conclusion feels like your own, you get the sensation of a lightbulb going off rather than a shove in a particular direction?
What this means is that your words of advice, thoughtful as they may be, are bound for deaf ears until the person you are talking to formulates their own reasons for changing in their own words. To put this another way – until a person formulates their own reasons for changing in their own words, the change is simply not going to happen.
So where does this leave us?
Righting Reflex + Reactance Theory + Ambivalence + Ownness Bias = Your Advice is Bound for Deaf Ears
Herein lies the rub: Your good intentions are not the problem. The problem is the manner in which your good intentions are being delivered. It is the How, not the What that is to blame.
When it comes to the righting reflex, the malady is the prescription itself. Which is exactly why parents give the best advice that children never want to listen to, students shun the wise words of their teachers, and best friends often ignore one another’s breakup advice.
Unfortunately, this is a reflex that we all have, and it constantly undermines interpersonal communication between everyone, everywhere, all the time.
So, what can be done?
We can become more aware of this reflex – how it triggers reactance, perpetuates ambivalence, and ignores the ownness bias – and then we can accept the fact that when we give into our righting reflex, we do little more than rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. Don’t rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. Find a door that floats and resist the reflex!
This is the first step in truly helping the people we love. Then we can learn Motivational Interviewing techniques, which side-step the righting reflex altogether and give us an opportunity to actually help a person change for the better. To find out more, please check out my post, “The Conversational Key to Unlocking Change in Young Adults.”