imported post
hunter9mm wrote:
Have your wife watch this youtube video.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1u0Byq5Qis
Let us know how it goes after she watches it.
It opened my wife's eyes.
That is a great video to have an unsupportive wife/girlfriend/significant other watch and it utilizes the method most effective when dealing with people whom you can't reach with logic.
The human brain has 2 hemisphere's as we all know. The right brain and the left brain. Its physiologically proven that each side of the brain responds to different stimuli. Its also proven that decision making processes in a human being is a result of how we process that stimuli.
The left side of the brain being "logic" and the right side of the brain "emotion".
Everyone utilizes both sides of their brain, but tend to let one side of the other dominate. That is a result of multiple factors from genetics to their life experiences as well as situational variables.
If you are dealing with a person who by and large is an emotional (right brain) dominant person, you can save your breath with leading with facts and logic. It won't be received. They may even acknowledge you are right and the facts are correct but they "still don't think its a good idea" Thats how powerful emotion is. It won't LET people think a certain way. Even if their right brain is saying "hey, thats correct" Think of the girl who dates a guy that beats the @#$% out of her but she still loves him despite the fact that ANYONE not emotionally involved in the situation (which is everyone but her) see's the picture SO clearly. You don't think emotion over-powers logic? It does EVERY day.
The human brain has an AMAZING capacity to justify anything that comes its way in order to make it fit their emotional standing. Abused women convince themselves they are at fault and stay with an abuser. The list of things people will allow themselves to believe if it supports their emotions is limitless.
When dealing with right-brain dominant people you MUST lead with emotion. Logic and facts will be useful ONLY after you have appealed to their emotions and created chemical reactions in their brain that allow them to accept fact and logic based data. It is MUCH harder to make an emotional appeal to someone than a logical one, but thats how you must lead.
That fact and logic based data IS only THEN useful to support their emotional tendency. But fact and logic based data
rarely penetrates an emotional person's thought process.
Its HARD for left-brainers (logic based) people to resort to emotional appeals because that doesn't make sense to them. They don't realize that literally OTHER PEOPLE DON'T THINK LIKE YOU DO. We think the way to convince people is with facts and data... Its NOT. Jeri Bonovia (W.A.V.E.) "doesn't think like we do" thats why our logic and our fact makes NO difference to her. She would find any way in the world to internally discredit the facts and logic we give her because it doesn't fit her emotional standing.
We are all emotional to greater or lesser degrees. Some people are ruled by their emotions, some people temper their own emotions with logic.
Some people are uncomfortable acting on emotion based responses. Some people are uncomfortable acting on logic/data observations because that doesn't satisfy their emotional tendency.
The reason people get frustrated and can't understand why other people don't "get it" when the facts and data CLEARLY support a particular conclusion is that they don't realize they are dealing with a right-brainer.
The logic that works for a left brainer... The logic that is SO obvious and supportive of a particular conclusion won't matter to a right brainer unless their emotional position is affected/changed first, and THEN that logic and data can be used to justify/confirm their new found emotional conclusion. Ironically at that point,for some they don't suddenly like data and facts because they are true and accurate, they like ANYTHING that justifies their new emotional position. For others who tend to usually be logic/left-brainers, but on a specific issue had an emotional view, they will feel relieved that they can now accept what they use to have to pretend didn't exist (or discredit because it didn't fit their emotional viewpoint)
The first key is to recognize who you are dealing with. (and to be honest, the mind is a dynamic thing. Many people think with their left brain for certain topics, but then other topics they revert to emotion-based right-brain thinking) Example, when you are at work, you deal with people and you may be very left brain. Get home, and its a different story, emotion based decisions are more common.
SO to effectively communicate with people, you first have to learn how, on a particular issue or situation, that person is thinking. Once you determine that, then you decide whether to make a fact-based argument or if you must first make an emotional appeal to them in order to open-up their thinking and THEN support their emotional need with logic and data.
In the case of a gun issue. When someone has an emotional conclusion about guns, understand why they feel that way. Ask them why they don't like guns. Sometimes you'll hear they had a bad experience. They know someone that was hurt by one, perhaps they know someone that committed suicide with one. Perhaps its just decades of seeing only negative gun-news on television. All emotion based. You have to listen first. When you think you've listened to it all and you think you understand them, listen more.
If on the other hand you ask someone why they don't like guns and they say "statistically, guns account for blah blah blah" THEN you might be dealing with someone who's a left brainer, but just has gotten bad data. For a person like that, you CAN go directly to providing accurate data (but of course you must be able to provide documentation for the person) Most people who are anti-gun are not anti-gun because they got bad data, they are anti-gun because on that topic its an emotional one and an emotion based conclusion.
So, just like the youtube video posted above, that lady doesn't tell her story with statistics. She tells it with emotion. That is the only effective way to bring emotional right-brain dominant thinkers (when it comes to guns) over to your side.
If you are dealing with a woman who is anti-gun but has kids. Ask her "so if you were at home alone watching TV with your kids and a drugged up lunatic busted through the front door with a machete, and came at your kids, you wouldn't want to be armed to shoot him? You'd rather let your kids be attacked by that madman while you call 911?" TRUST ME, the "mom", protector of her children, will begin to carve out exceptions to her "anti-gun" stance".
But again, it all revolves around being ABLE to make an emotional appeal first. Thats not as easy as it sounds. You have to really understand a person, understand how they think, how they formed their views, what is important to them, and play on all those emotions to begin to change their way of thinking.
People who are capable of making those emotional appeals are effective and dangerous at the same time. If you can appeal to someone's emotions to get them to do the right thing, you sure as hell can appeal to their emotions to get them to do the wrong thing.
So when you make emotional appeals to change people's way of thinking. Once you get them to a new view, its critical to "shore up" that new view with logic. The person will be receptive to logic now. Because NOW logic justifies their emotions, not contradicts them. Of course is also important to get people to then REALIZE that they were making an emotional decision so that in the future, they can learn to temper their OWN emotions with logic and avoid being easy pray for emotion based appeals in the future.
A few more suggestions of examples to make emotion-based appeals to anti-gun moms/girlfriends/wives, or even the anti-gun husband etc.
-If they have a son/daughter away at college. Say "so while your daughter is away at college in Madison and she walks home late one night from the library at closing time, you wouldn't feel safer knowing she could carry a sidearm in her purse" then add some fact "You know a girl was raped in Madison last year when, blah blah blah." You'll begin to carve out exceptions in that persons mind to the fact that guns have no good purpose.
-if they have a boyfriend/husband say "so if your husband was working late and left their office downtown late at night you wouldn't feel safer if they could carry a gun so that they could protect themselves if they got mugged going from their office to their parking garage 4 blocks away? And add a true story "remember that student at UWM who was walking home from class and murdered last month"
If its the open-carry thing only, thats easy. its the only legal way in Wisconsin.
