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Why Do We Shout When We Argue? Lack of Confidence

 By Vanessa Bohns

Research shows that we are overconfident in our beliefs but underconfident about being heard. So we compensate by being loud.

There is a lot of shouting in today’s discourse, from both sides of the political spectrum. Shouting matches have erupted on the House floor between Democrats and Republicans over individual Congress members’ vaccination status and in school board meetings over critical race theory and masking requirements.

It’s clear that shouting doesn’t actually persuade anyone. So then, why do we do it? Recent research points to a surprising answer: lack of confidence.

As a social psychologist I’ve studied the misperceptions people have about influence for more than 15 years, and I’ve seen that while we often are overconfident in our beliefs, the tendency to shout—whether over our neighbors, friends or adversaries—comes from underconfidence in our ability to convince others.

For a long time, it seemed as if researchers were constantly uncovering new ways in which people were overconfident. For example, in 2002 a team of Stanford researchers reported in the journal “Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin” on three surveys in which participants rated themselves as less susceptible to bias than their peers or than “average Americans.” In one follow-up, respondents stood by their assertion even after hearing an explanation of how their own view of themselves could be biased.

Ironically, the more assertive we are, the less persuasive we become.

Using similar methods, researchers have found that the average person thinks of himself or herself as better in myriad ways (more moral, creative, athletic, even a better driver) than the average person—a statistical impossibility.

In contrast to those findings, research has recently converged around a very different conclusion when it comes to our beliefs about our social proficiencies, such as our ability to win friends and influence people.

In one study reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2017, participants were asked to indicate their answers to survey items such as who had more friends, was part of more social circles and had a wider social network—themselves or other people. Participants displayed classic overconfidence on several nonsocial items; for instance, they believed they had larger vocabularies than other people. But they were decidedly underconfident on the social items, believing themselves to have fewer friends, smaller social circles and narrower social networks than other people.

A number of other studies published in the last five years have revealed people’s tendency toward underconfidence in the social domain. For example, people surveyed when exiting a public space believed other people had been less interested in them than they were in the people around them. People interviewed following a brief conversation with a stranger thought the other person had liked them less than that person had indicated having liked them to the experimenters. Participants who were asked to predict how difficult it would be to get others to comply with their requests found that it was easier than they expected to convince both friends and strangers to agree to do an annoying and tedious task, such as counting beans in a jar.

Together, these two seemingly contradictory, but actually complementary, sets of findings create a perfect storm that leads to shouting. Believing ourselves to be more moral and less biased than other people makes us overconfident in the things we believe. At the same time, assuming that others are not paying attention to us and not listening to what we have to say makes us underconfident in our ability to get our opinions out there and convince others of them.

In other words, we shout because we feel as if we are shouting into the void.

Ironically, overcompensating for lack of confidence in our proficiency as influencers leads us to use overly assertive language, which is actually an ineffective tool for persuasion. In this way, our pessimism can become self-fulfilling, leading to a downward spiral of dwindling influence as we shout louder and louder to be heard.

In one series of studies, a group of researchers directly examined the question of whether people overestimate how assertive they need to be in order to be persuasive. Participants were asked to choose between two types of messages to persuade someone to make a health change—one relatively gentle, one more “shouty” and commanding. The experiment also employed different scenarios about how important the stakes were and whether the target of the message was receptive to advice or not.

The researchers found that people chose the assertiveness of their messages based solely on how important they thought the issue was and ignored the other person’s receptiveness. When they felt the stakes were high, they chose the “shoutier” message regardless of the other person’s openness to advice.

We know from research on persuasion that this is the exact wrong thing to do if you want to persuade someone. In other work, the same group of researchers found that those very sorts of assertive messages tend to backfire in reality, particularly when the other person is less receptive. Indeed, the effectiveness of softer appeals for persuasion has been extensively documented by experts who have studied message assertiveness in the domain of health communication, including campaigns to reduce smoking and increase exercise.

People’s intuitions about how to get across their opinions and advice run counter to decades of research on persuasion and social influence, which shows that less is often more. We shout because we don’t think people will listen to us otherwise. As a result, we are overly assertive when trying to get our message out there, despite the fact that our arguments, advice and appeals would actually be more effective if we made them a little gentler.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-we-shout-when-we-argue-lack-of-confidence-11629518461?mod=hp_listb_pos1

Pakistani Religious Minorities Protest Forced Conversion Of Girls

Dozens of Pakistani religious minority activists rallied in Islamabad on August 11 against the forced conversion of girls, often as a precursor to marriage.

The activists marched from the National Press Club toward the parliament and held banners and chanted slogans seeking government action to stop such conversions to Pakistan's official religion, Islam.The protest was organized by the Minorities' Alliance Pakistan, a political party established in 2002.

Some of the demonstrators held images of Shahbaz Bhatti, the party's founder, who served as minority affairs minister from 2008 until his assassination in 2011. Bhatti was shot dead in Islamabad after campaigning against Pakistan's widely criticized blasphemy laws.

Nearly 97 percent of Pakistan's population of around 238 million people are Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim, but there are small Hindu and Christian communities.Critics cite the routine targeting of young women from Pakistan’s Hindu minority for simultaneous conversion to Islam and marriage to Muslim men -- often under alleged coercion.

Some have dubbed the most notorious hubs for such processes "conversion factories."

The protest against the forcible conversion follows a mob attack on a Hindu temple in the province of Punjab after an 8-year-old Hindu boy was charged under Pakistan's stringent blasphemy laws, which are often abused and frequently used to target minorities like Hindus and Christians.

https://gandhara.rferl.org/a/islamabad-protest-religious-conversions/31405032.html

China condemns suicide bombing in Balochistan, calls security situation in Pakistan ‘severe’

By APOORVA MANDHANI

A suicide bombing in Gwadar Port, Balochistan, Friday evening on a vehicle carrying Chinese nationals led to the deaths of two local children and four were injured.

New Delhi: China Friday condemned the suicide bomb attack in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan area on a vehicle carrying Chinese nationals that led to the deaths of two Pakistani children while four others were injured.

In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan highlighted that the security situation in Pakistan has been “severe” recently and that there have been several terrorist attacks one after the other that have resulted in Chinese casualties.It added that the embassy “launched the emergency plan immediately, demanding Pakistan to properly treat the wounded, conduct a thorough investigation on the attack, and severely punish the perpetrators”. The embassy also asked Chinese citizens in the country to remain vigilant.

The suicide blast took place at the East Bay Road in the port of Gwadar Friday evening in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province.Pakistan’s interior ministry was quoted as saying that a young boy ran out of a fishermen colony nearby and exploded himself about 15-20 meters from the convoy.

“The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan strongly condemns this act of terrorism, extends its sincere sympathies to the injured of both countries, and expresses its deep condolences to the innocent victims in Pakistan,” noted the embassy statement.

#Pakistan - #Lahore - Assistant commissioners with ‘rich family background’ in #Punjab perform poorly, reveals confidential report

 

Relatives of important personalities, who are serving as senior bureaucrats in the Punjab province, have failed to perform their duties, reveals a confidential report of the Punjab government. Out of the 143 Assistant Commissioners (ACs) in Punjab, those posted in the capital city of Lahore had the most disappointing output and execution of their duties, highlights the report, a copy of which is available. 

The bureaucrats were ranked on the basis of public opinion, a secret poll and feedback from their subordinates. Ibrahim Arbab, the son of Shehzad Arbab, the special assistant to the prime minister on establishment in the establishment division, ranked 132 out of 143. The younger Arbab is the assistant commissioner of Model Town in Lahore.

Zeeshan Ranjha, the nephew of the chief election commissioner, got a scorecard of 134 out of 143. Ranjha is the assistant commissioner in Lahore Cantt. While the commissioner in Lahore City ranked 138 and that of Raiwind, 139. However, the top performers, who ranked in Category A, were the assistant commissioners in Chak Jhumra, who ranked first. The civil servant in Sargodha ranked second and the one in Layyah, came in third.  

The commissioner in Taunsa, the hometown of the chief minister Punjab, also had a dismal performance and received a rank of 141. In fact, the bottom three performers were Taunsa, Attock and Hazro.

How the Taliban Used Pakistan

By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The Taliban have returned to power in Afghanistan. Far from a victory, that could ultimately be a setback for Pakistan.

Pakistan had already won the Afghanistan war when the Trump administration signed a deal with the Taliban last year. The fall of Kabul has formalized the triumph. Or so the narrative reverberating in Islamabad, and around the world, goes.

The army’s “good Taliban, bad Taliban” strategy has been rooted in distinguishing between jihadist groups that target Pakistan and those that can be controlled to fulfill the geostrategic objectives of the military establishment. The return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan is naturally considered the culmination of two decades of Pakistan providing the group, and its affiliates, with havens to sustain themselves until the departure of the U.S.-led coalition.

And yet, the endgame wasn’t bringing the Taliban back to power; it was setting up a radical Islamist regime that would toe Pakistan’s line in the region. Viewed through this lens, Pakistan’s success is less certain. Moments after taking charge in Kabul, the Afghan Taliban released leaders of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), including former deputy chief Faqir Mohammad. The Afghan Taliban have released around 2,300 leaders of the TTP, who have duly felicitated the former for taking over Kabul, after having already pledged allegiance to Hibatullah Akhundzada.

The Taliban are already negotiating with India. They have called the Kashmir issue “internal and bilateral,” clarifying that the jihadist group, at the very least, does not intend to take sides in a conflict that Pakistan has actively Islamized.

Pakistan’s premise of backing Taliban rule in Afghanistan to counter “Hindu India,” conceived almost half a century before the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime came to power, is unraveling amid uninhibited Islamist-Hindutva engagement.

This, along with the booming alliance of Taliban on both sides of the Af-Pak border, begs the question of whether Pakistan, and its “good Taliban, bad Taliban” strategy, has actually been victorious. Even more ominously, the developments suggest that as much as Pakistan used Taliban for its gains, so too did the Taliban use Pakistan for its gains.

We are witnessing the Taliban’s rendition of a “good/bad” strategy. “Good” Pakistan helped Taliban leaders dodge the U.S.-led forces, while diverting some of the resources taken from the West toward the Taliban. “Bad” Pakistan now believes the Taliban have any geopolitical, or ideological, obligation to reciprocate.

To ensure Talibanization in Afghanistan, and Islamist inertia at home, Pakistan sacrificed over 80,000 of its citizens, which the military establishment has loudly dubbed “collateral damage.” The investment in the project was to such an extent that immediately after the Trump-Taliban deal, Prime Minister Imran Khan began echoing eulogies for Osama bin Laden. This week, Khan touted the Taliban takeover as “breaking shackles of slavery,” prompting demands in the United States to cut aid to Pakistan. The ubiquitous cheerleading for the Taliban’s triumph delineates the extent to which the pro-Taliban Islamist rhetoric has been etched in Pakistan.

While Pakistan’s Islamization was an inevitable corollary of its birth and sustenance as a multiethnic realm, the mullah-military takeover has been the result of both regional and domestic ambitions of the army. This has translated into a political setup in Pakistan where today both the prime minister and the leader of the antigovernment opposition coalition are unflinching Taliban cheerleaders. However, in the decades dedicated to sustaining an Afghanistan that suits the Taliban, the military establishment has also created a Pakistan that suits the Taliban.The Taliban’s vocal allies, this side of the border, are those that excommunicated the Pakistan Army and launched some of the most brutal attacks in the country to “establish true Islam.” The gory Islamic Sharia might be incorporated in the Pakistan Penal Code, but will be more visibly implemented in Afghanistan. The rhetoric of Medina state might be echoing in Islamabad, but will be more accurately mimicked in Kabul. What, then, is stopping the Taliban from channeling these political narratives, and its jihadist allies, to aspire to align Pakistan with Afghanistan’s strategic interests, and not the other way around?

Pakistan, and the army that runs it, are completely subservient to China, but have failed to reassure Beijing that Islamabad can safeguard the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) from the country’s multipronged militancy. Such has been the fixation with Talibanization in Afghanistan that Islamabad has seemingly been willing to alienate China just to cling on to its duplicitous security policy of picking and choosing jihadist groups, which the establishment believes are its sure-shot bet to dictate matters along the Af-Pak border. What if the Taliban convince Beijing that they can be better orchestrator of these groups?

Already agreeing to facilitate China’s crackdown on Uyghur separatists and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the Taliban have $1 trillion worth of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth to offer Beijing as well. If the group can also become a more convincing guarantor of projects currently affiliated with CPEC, the fulcrum of the $1.9 trillion worth Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), not only can the Taliban forge a stronger alliance with China, the group can also help extend its influence across the Af-Pak frontier, which it doesn’t recognize as a border.

The Pakistani Taliban have duly been making gains in synchrony with the Afghan Taliban’s return to power. And if South Asian jihadist outfits continue to gravitate toward the consolidated Islamic Emirate, they would be more than willing to create turmoil in Pakistan as the Taliban’s strategic assets.

https://thediplomat.com/2021/08/how-the-taliban-used-pakistan/

Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari strongly condemns the terrorist attack on a Chinese cavalcade in Gwadar

Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has strongly condemned the terrorist attack on a Chinese cavalcade in Gwadar resulting in loss of precious human lives.

In a statement, the PPP Chairman demanded that the Federal government provide adequate security to Chinese citizens working on different projects across the country. He said that Federal government must remove Chinese concerns about the protection and safety of their citizens in Pakistan.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also expressed sympathies with the families of those who lost their lives in the terrorist attack, and demanded best possible medical treatment for those wounded in the attack.

https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/25366/