Dr. Alison Wood Brooks

And all of a sudden, someone makes a little belittling comment and you're like, whoa, I thought this was supposed to be fun and easy and sort of routine.

What's going on here?

That can shoot down to our identities of this sort of hot magma at the core of who we are in hurtful ways.

And in those moments, we tend to be very defensive.

Yeah, or quiet.

We feel silenced.

Attacked.

So there's a really exciting emerging science of receptiveness here that can help us.

Scientists Hannah Collins, Mike Yeomans, Julia Minson have studied what good conversationalists, kind people, how they manage these moments when all of a sudden things get heated.

Yeah.

For whatever reason.

And they looked at the language that people use to confront this.

And there's a really concrete recipe of being receptive to an opposing viewpoint that can help so that the conversation doesn't escalate and get overheated in that moment.

And it's quite a skill set to develop.

It makes me feel more confident to engage.

What is it?

So the first piece is acknowledgement saying, I think I heard you say here, what I'm hearing is, right?

So going back to this acknowledgement affirmation, it makes sense that you would feel that way.

Like maybe sometimes I'm not doing enough.

It makes sense that you feel that way, but you saying that also makes me feel a certain way.