Experimenting on Myself

Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You For Arguing, decided to experiment the pervasiveness of arguments by attempting to spend a whole day without being persuaded or persuading anybody . Heinrichs fails miserably as he is inevitably persuaded by his son, his wife, and even his wristwatch. I understood the point being made by Heinrichs but seriously doubted that he had conducted the experiment at all. After all, steering clear out of persuasion should be easy enough if you are mind is fixed on it, right?

I decided to test the experiment by putting myself through it. It is now 7:am, from now to 7:pm. I shall become immune to persuasion. As Heinrichs put it, I wont take any crap from anyone.

Later that day…

After spending many hours sans persuasion, I’m pretty sure that the author was telling the truth. The challenge proved to be much harder than I expected. Here is what happened:

Right after I finished writing the first two paragraphs of this blog, I moved on to a Sociales essay. I worked at a good pace and was nearly done in forty minutes. However, I could not find a good ending for it so I called my father up and asked him for a suggestion. My father gave me two suggestions that I did not like. Not wanting to agree to something bad but trying to avoid hurting his feelings in order to be able to ask him  to help me in the future,  I told him that his ideas were great  but that they should be tweaked in a different direction. Once he received my positive reinforcement, he gave me a better idea, which I used to finish my essay. As soon as he left the room, it hit me. Damn! I had used persuasion. Realizing that the experiment was going to be a little harder than previously thought, I decided to cheat, isolating myself in front of a television for more than four hours.

Finally, lunch was served. After we finished eating, my mother told me to do the dishes. On hearing this  I realized that it would be hard to get out helping in the kitchen  without persuasion, and having already faltered, bit my tongue and started scrubbing. Being only half done, I felt the need to quit.   Once my mother saw me leaving the kitchen she started shouting something about the dirty dishes. Without uttering a syllable, I went down the stairs to fetch the newspaper, handing it to her so she would forget about my undone chore. Was this persuasion? I think not.  

A bit later, my ten-year-old brother persuaded my mother to ask me to take him to the park. Handling my brother is extremely hard and not my idea of a chilled Sunday. I knew it would take the best of my persuasive abilities to avoid this. By then  it was only 2pm and I still had five more hours until the experiment ended. I decided that I wouldn't sacrifice my peace for science. And in any case, the result of my experiment was already clear: persuasion is inescapable. Seeing how uncomfortable it is to become a persuasion anarchist, I will now try the opposite and become and expert in manipulating persuasion to my own advantage.