People Seldom Listen To Good Advice – Here’s Why
written by Jack Vaughan
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“I’m doing everything I can to help my daughter, but she just won’t listen to me.”
“I keep giving my buddy solid advice, but it never seems to sink in.”
“I don’t understand why my son is so stubborn.”
Ever been here? Because I certainly have.
It’s like this… You are in the midst of communicating with a person who you legitimately care about, and you keep offering them great advice, but for some inexplicable reason it doesn’t seem to stick. You try being more empathetic. You try being more firm. You throw in a joke. You furrow your brows. You try and you try until you formulate the most salient piece of advice since Marcus Aurelius’ first draft of Meditations… and once the conversation ends, the person you were talking to goes out and does the exact opposite of what you just told them to do.
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 your loved one 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 brains 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.”[1]
But the problem is this: the righting reflex undermines effective communication by tipping the conversational scales into an oppositional mode. Although you might be offering the world’s best counsel, between the lines of all advice is a hidden message – I know what’s best for you. Furthermore, when we tell someone to do something, we unwittingly trigger a natural psychological response in them that makes them want to do the opposite. This is rooted in reactance theory, and is known as the boomerang effect, 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.”[2]
Cue… “Hello, Goodbye” by The Beatles
You say, "Yes," I say, "No."
You say, "Stop" and I say, "Go, go, go."
But why? Why do they say goodbye when we say hello? Well, in addition to reactance, we must also consider the mercurial nature of ambivalence. Ambivalence is what happens when a person both wants and does not want something, or it is the wanting of two things that are at odds with each other. It is the paradox around which the great world of our bad habits spin — I want to eat healthier, but pizza sure sounds awesome tonight! And chances are, the person you are trying to give advice to is already in the throes of an internal struggle with ambivalence itself (even if it seems like they are completely unaware of their bad habits).
I like to think of it like this: inside every person is a very small, and immensely powerful Roman Senate. And when it comes to a bad habit, 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. And when you vote for one side of the cause, some of the little senators smile and agree with you, and some of the little senators frown and disagree. Thus, the votes keep piling up, and real change never happens. By casting a vote, we do little more that 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.”[3]
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 others.[4] This essentially means that your words of advice, thoughtful as they may be, are essentially doomed to fall on 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 =
People Don’t Listen to Good Advice
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 break-up 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; in particular, how it triggers reactance, perpetuates ambivalence, and ignores the ownness bias, and then we can accept the fact that this is why our efforts haven’t helped anyone any more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Resist the reflex!
This is the first step in truly helping the people we love. We can also 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, Guiding: The Conversational Key to Unlocking Change.
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[1] Miller, William R., and Stephen Rollnick. “Motivational Interviewing, Third Edition.” Helping People Change, 2012, pp. 24.
[2] Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Academic Press.
[3] Miller, William R., and Stephen Rollnick. “Motivational Interviewing, Third Edition.” Helping People Change, 2012, pp. 23.
[4] Richard M. Perloff and Timothy C. Brock (1980),"The Role of Own Cognitive Responses in Persuasion: a Conceptual Overview."