How to not win a debate and more debate mental models

Psychology

Mar 11

Debating can sharpen your thinking. It is not a destructive process — it is constructive and helps you shape your mindsets, capacity to think and speak, and open-mindedness. Debate professional Bo Seo discusses the topic of debates and arguments with organizational psychologist Adam Grant in this podcast episode. This article presents some key definitions and mental models around arguments and debates. Those are fundamental—yet often underdeveloped—components of our life.

The art of debate helps you become articulate. That is the ability to think, write, and speak clearly and sharply like a new expensive handcrafted pen you just bought. Understanding debates and arguments at a macro level can shed the light on their relevance in our everyday existence, and unlock the inherent inner debaters within ourselves, which we sometimes shut down to avoid the short-term discomfort of conflict.

Avoiding debates can lead to negative consequences because you are avoiding the elephant in the room. Elephants in the room are big, unspoken, uncomfortable truths that many individuals can feel and no one has the courage to address openly. People will respect you for speaking up the truth. You will respect yourself more for speaking up about what you see. What you see may also be a cognitive distortion sometimes, and that is ok. Speaking up allows you to get feedback from others around you, which can help you measure—and keep—your sanity.

What is a debate

Debating means making your thinking visible and legible to the person(s) in front of you. Laying out what is going on in your mind to make your point crystal clear to the other party. It’s the process of letting go of the self and losing your ego in order to pursue the truth in front of you. The best conversations or debates are those where you drop your insecurity to lose your face in favor of your self-confidence to get closer to the truth of a specific situation. That is the goal of a debate—or any serious conversation.

Debate mental models

There are some valuable debate mental models that professional Bo Seo shares in the conversation:

Make yourself legible (vulnerability). Your goal is not to protect your reputation and ego (i.e., your sense of self). Your goal in a debate—if there needs to be one—is to get a step closer to the truth of the matter. You are not playing to win; you are playing to uncover the reality and its neutral characteristics. The process of uncovering reality requires complete openness and letting go. Making yourself legible means speaking up about your points without concealing them or playing short-term political games to avoid feeling psychologically hurt.
Address the other side with empathy. Listening is more important than speaking in a conversation or debate. Listening puts you in the position of the speaker. It is only through listening that you can make yourself legible and clear in your argumentation. Listening requires letting go of your preconceived notions and truly seeking reality as is, as opposed to how you wish it was.
Why is your argument true, and why should we care? These are fundamental questions of a debate, as Bo Seo points out. What makes you believe that we must listen to your argument? What is the impact of the topic? How did you come to your argument? What needs to change in order to pursue your argument?
The 4 Ws of debates. It is good practice to use these when developing your argument, according to Bo Seo:
1. What is the argument? What is it exactly that you are addressing? Narrow down the scope of the argument as precisely as possible, because it is often very challenging to discern interpersonal debates from topic-specific debates.
2. Why is it true? What makes your argument true? How did you come to your beliefs?
3. When has it happened before? Providing examples is pivotal to making yourself understood and making your point come across as intended. Examples are stories, and stories connect deeper than theory.
4. Why should it change our behavior? Behavior change is a powerful and highly-resisted force in human nature. What makes your argument so compelling that we are motivated to change our behavior?

A good argument feels like you would do it again when you walk away. It is a feeling of openness, relief, and closer connectedness to the other party. It is the ability to put aside your sense of self for becoming a bit less ignorant on a specific topic, in the grand scheme of existence.