Neuroscientist Tania Singer and her team recruited volunteers to play a game. Some were asked to play by the rules. Others were instructed to ignore them. To not play fair.

After all participants played the game together, they were then asked to observe each other in a second activity. Scientists measured some of the volunteers’ brain activity as they observed some of their former game opponents apparently being subjected to different levels of pain.

Result?

The brain areas that signal pain became active in all who thought they were observing pain in others. This provides neural evidence of their empathy.

Yet, when those who’d played “unfairly” in the earlier game appeared to be in pain, male volunteers who observed them showed significantly less empathetic brain activity than when they saw fair-players in apparent pain. In fact men felt more desire for revenge.

For women the response was different. They showed the brain responses of empathy regardless of how they felt about the participants’ moral behavior. Earlier research supports this finding.
Regrettably, I feel I’d respond more like a man in this experiment.

Learn more about how our brain affects our behavior in Donald Pfaff’s book, The Neuroscience of Fair Play. Relatedly read On Being Certain and Predictably Irrational.

Here’s the good news. Men and women can use meditation to change our instinctively negative reactions – even in the face of unfair or otherwise negative behavior. Monitoring the brains of Tibetan monks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, neuroscience professor Richard Davidson found that the monk’ first instinct was compassion rather than anger.

Here’s the bad news, at least for many of us.

To become that compassionate, monks spent at least 10,000 hours in meditation. Learn more about the power of compassion in Emotional Awareness, a book by the foremost expert on reading faces and on lying, Paul Ekman.

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Instinctively he reacts in one of two ways:

1. Stepping Back (saying little, going blank-faced, silent or even walking away) or
2. Escalating Up (counter-attacking, speaking louder, standing closer).

It’s instinctual – beyond our conscious choice. These are rapid, thin slices of gut reactions and responses. The charged air change happens in milliseconds. We’ve already made each other wrong.

Worse, we know it is easier to escalate up into conflict rather than over into connection – and more likely to end badly. That happens because our primitive brain is wired for survival.

Put more bluntly, self-protection trumps happiness or helpfulness in the sequence of gut instinctual reactions. Yet we can reduce the fear response and increase our ability to make connection, even in times of potential conflict. With practice, these steps have helped me, with this caveat: One can be convincing without being right.

“There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued.” ~ Thomas Huxley

Unless I fairly state his position first, he and bystanders will instinctively doubt mine.

The most likely way to change your mind or his is to:

1. Slow down your responses, especially when you feel like acting more rapidly.
2. Speak to his positive intent, especially when you feel like maligning his motives.
3. Re-state his view fairly, completely, without negative, emotion-laden descriptors As the author of Trust Me, Nick Morgan advises, “You have to argue the other side’s case on its own merits. To forestall criticism and avoid inflaming a debate further, understand and be ready to give the other side’s position. Fairly. First. And forthrightly.”
4. Ask for confirmation that you got it right, listen fully to his response and then confirm you hear any modifications he suggested.
5. Then and only then can you state your position and expect to be heard.
6. Brevity is better. It is less likely you’ll be interrupted and more likely you’ll be understood. (This is a point I struggle to practice.)
7. Ask others to comment. That’s when you see your stand through their eyes.  In so doing, you will know how to address what most matters to them. You may change how you feel about the issue.

“Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There’s an added benefit in taking this approach.

You are strengthening the thread of conversation – so others are more inclined to keep talking about the issue rather than getting sidetracked.  I called this Triangling in a book I wrote long ago, Getting What You Want. When two people can focus on the issue in front of them (the third point in the triangle) rather than on each other’s reactions, then it becomes safer to talk about the issue. You may feel less instinctual need to attack the other person or defend yourself.

Bottom line benefits: Afterwards, you may like yourself and the other person better.

Plus with this approach:

1. It is easier to stay calm and in the conversation.
2. Everyone has a greater chance of being heard rather than feeling attacked.
3. You are more likely to sway others and to be open to change.
4. Rather than being destroyed, relationships may even be strengthened.

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