Why instincts fail us in risky conversations
- Mar 13
- 6 min read
Ever seen an inspirational post that says something like: ‘Always trust your instincts, they’ll never lie to you.‘?
Our instincts may not ‘lie’ but they can be a major drama queen and that’s not always the part of yourself you want driving in a risky conversation.
Let’s not completely disregard instincts. They can be extremely helpful when you have a deep background in a particular area (because of our good friend pattern recognition). The more you’ve cataloged experiences with something the more you can rely on your instincts to pull from that catalogue to guide you. Like the way my grandma can make perfect homemade pie dough from scratch without any measuring instruments; no measuring cups, spoons, or scale. She’s got the reps to put her mixing bowl directly under the faucet and instinctively know when she’s added just enough cold water.
It’s impressive.
But because instincts rely on past experiences, they fail us when we’re in unfamiliar territory. Instincts are also more prone to error when our emotions are elevated or in situations where we’re susceptible to bias. In the particular situation of a risky conversation, there are specific errors we make that should cause us to question our instincts.
Our instincts make us believe logic will illuminate
Emotions get a bad wrap. For some reason our intuition is to avoid them at all costs in risky conversations. We tend to run to the other end of the spectrum and rely on logic to pull everyone onto the same page. We go into Spock mode and ‘illuminate’ our conversation partners with facts, figures, and anecdotes we bet they weren't aware of.
The problem with this is that knowledge is social. We accept information based on who is sharing it, not if it stands up to scrutiny. We under-scrutinize information from trusted sources and tend to over-scrutinize information from untrusted sources (people outside of our own groups). Alternatively, when we hear a ‘fact’ that contradicts what we already know to be true, we tend to dismiss it all together and never really engage with it. It goes in one ear and out the other.
When this happens in both directions of a conversation, we get into reasoning ruts where we’re explaining disparate logical frameworks at each other. It’s no longer a conversation, it’s two related yet contradictory monologues taking up the same time and space.
Our ‘facts’ fail to persuade. And even worse, the conversation becomes less about ‘what’s right’ and more about ‘who’s right’. It gets very personal without intending to do so. And when this happens it typically results in each point-of-view becoming further entrenched than where the conversation started.
We are complex, irrational creatures. I could lecture a friend from Boston all day about the superiority of the New York Yankees. How they’ve won more world series, have built the strongest brand in the MLB, and claim the best of the greats like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But there is no chance my friend is changing their allegiance from their beloved Red Socks. That’s because, like most things we care about, it’s not a matter of logic.
Our instincts persuade us to believe we’re not safe
All it takes is hearing one piece of information we don’t like, and our amygdala upstage our prefrontal cortexes faster than Katniss can volunteer as tribute. Our brains go into survival mode where our higher-level thinking and emotional regulation skills are repressed. Our brains’ only goal is to mitigate threats and to help us survive. This is when we tend to go into fight, flight, or freeze.
Super helpful when we’re hiking and come across a bear in the woods. Less helpful when our coworker casually says something insensitive.
Our instincts accentuate the negative
Have you ever retold the events of a risky conversation and exaggerated (just a little)? Maybe it sounded something like:
“I didn’t appreciate it when you yelled at me to…”
and then you get interrupted with a correction that sounds like:
“Woah, I didn’t yell in that conversation.” (and they’re right 😬)
We tend to perceive hostility or anger when there is none. It’s easy to interpret criticism as rejection, confidence as certainty, or being misunderstood and being dismissed. When our adrenaline is amped up, we remember our interpretations of emotions, not simply the events as they happened.
Our instincts make us believe we’re being perfectly clear
When we speak we make a lot of sense to ourselves but, it’s almost impossible to convey our meaning 100% accurately the first time. We use words that mean different things to the people we’re speaking with. There are gaps and holes in our meaning that we can’t see. Even when we stumble over our words at first we keep going until we’ve better articulated our idea, until we’ve nailed it. However, the longer we talk, the more likely we are to lose their attention.
Our instincts make us assume the worst of them
This is especially true when our conversation partners are less than 100% clear with their communications, which happens all. the. time. We very clearly see the holes and gaps in their communication and our instinct is to fill those gaps with what we think their meaning is. When we do that we fill the gaps with the worst possible version of meaning. It’s easier for us to believe they are too immoral, too close-minded, or too dang stupid to know any better rather than try to genuinely understand where they are coming from in its full context.
As much as you’d like to read this and believe you're the exception to this error, you’re not. Behavioral scientists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error and they’ve been able to replicate it in 100% of the studies testing it, in an array of different situations (note: that’s a high number for the social sciences). Much like the virus in ‘The Walking Dead’, our tendency to assume character flaws in others is a messy human condition we’re all vulnerable to.
Let’s think about this a little deeper. Say you’ve got a cousin who makes a critical comment about immigration. We hear that comment without exploring context and assume they hold beliefs as deeply and as widely as that politician you can’t stand. It’s much more likely, your cousin agrees with said politician in some areas but not others, after all, you’ve probably never aligned 100% with the folks you’ve voted for. We all tend to assume the worst unless we have repeated evidence to the contrary. The view we hold of our cousin is no longer based in reality, it’s prejudiced. It’s shaped by the biases and narratives we are flooded with daily through the media and social media.
There is an antidote for the fundamental attribution error that works with 94% accuracy (according to the American Physiological Association). Surprise surprise, it’s having a conversation with someone who holds a different point of view, specifically someone who belongs to a different in-group than you. Having risky conversations not only keeps us grounded in reality but we’re less likely to write each other off as ‘just another sheeple’. As an added bonus, we’re more likely to avoid having others assume we’re too immoral, close-minded, or stupid and have our points-of-view actually heard and understood.
That doesn’t make risky conversations easy but it does make risky conversations worthwhile. On an individual level we’re able to do something about the prejudice that exists in our relationships and communities. We can have a conversation that explores background, nuance, contradictions, and the impact of the ideas we hold.
We have instincts for a reason but they can’t be the only tool in our toolbox for navigating charged and complicated conversations. We’ve got to build up skills around conflict resilience so we can recognize and shift out of survival mode. We’ve got to grow our communication skills so that we can really be heard and understood, and more genuinely understand in return. And we’ve got to increase our emotional agility so we can better discern intent behind something that is insensitively phrased.
Trust your instincts when you’re questioning if that lunchmeat is still good. Don’t rely on them when you’re discussing complex ideas with complex people.
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