Well, science has finally done it! What’s 'it'? Given aid and comfort to the nags and whiners (whingers in some parts) of the world! Can you feel the (lack of) excitement? The message from the data seems to tell people whose gift is grinding down the will to live in others - Go ahead and drive people to exhaustion, it works! When their defenses are down, when they can’t put up any more of a fight, YOU WIN!
At least this is how the research has been interpreted by some. When I read about this (in an article in The Australian) I was left with some nagging questions.
I can accept the idea that this bad behavior works in the short term. But at what cost? What are the long term consequences? When people use these approaches to get what they want, what happens to their relationships? What is the natural reaction when you see a person who you know to whine and nag heading in your direction? And maybe more to the popint, what happens when you learn about the way these behaviors work, and learn how to counter it? Because you can counter it. I have thoroughly covered the strategic ways you can respond to crank turners in my books on difficult people and persuasive communication.
Sadly, the science driving the study gives us no such insights. Now, I don’t work in a lab, so I don't have much in the way of science to back me up on what I confess to be mostly my opinion, tempered with real world experience derived from over two and a half decades of my own studies into human behavior.
Granted, these behaviors work. Just not for long. And that point is often the breaking point in relationships, and the backlash can be significant. Whiners and nags become unwelcome and unwanted. They come across as negative, obnoxious and oblivious to their effect on others. And those who deal with these bad behaviors tend to go out of their way to stay out of the way, and then become dismissive of more productive behaviors when coming from a grievous source. So, in other words, the bad behavior works, and then it doesn't. In the same way that a person becomes exhausted by dealing with nagging and whining, so nagging and whining exhaust their effectiveness. In what amounts to not much time at all, these behaviors provoke the opposite reaction to what they were meant to get in the first place.
If a person wants long term persuasive success, then building relationship almost always works better than tearing apart and beating others down. If a person wants the next interaction to be simpler than the last, more productive than then last, less work than the last, whining and nagging just don’t cut it.
I could go on, but I have no desire to be whiner or nag myself. I like people. I believe in their capacity to learn, grow and change for the better. Whenever I read that scientific studies are being used for erroneous conclusions that could have damaging results, I am moved to say something. Is the end near? No. It's right here.
