Before you read this blog post, I have to
ask you to do a little work. It is
necessary for you in order to understand the rest. You have to choose either to blink (shut your
eyes and open them again) twice, or to stand up and count out loud to ten
before sitting down again. Choose one
and do it now please.
Okay.
So did you pick one and do it?
You may be cheating and have done neither. Since this is a blog for non-native speakers
of English, you may not have understood, and be scratching your head in
confusion instead. But my guess is that
most people chose to blink twice.
The reason that you probably blinked twice
is that it seems a lot easier and less effort than standing up and counting to
ten. I’m sure that you didn’t
particularly want to do it, but the choice seemed very easy in comparison with
the alternative. That at least is my
theory. I have found that it is a great
technique for getting people to do things that they don’t want to do. If you simply try to force them to do
something then they will naturally resist.
But if you can set up a situation in which they have to choose between
what you want, and something worse, then they will likely do what you want
without complaint.
I thought about this technique recently
when I was trying to get my son to go to his cot at night. He is two and a half now, and often resists
being put in his cot. I let him lie in
my futon beside me for half an hour or so before I lift him out and put him in
his cot to sleep alone. Understandably
enough, he prefers to stay in the futon, where he can kick me and roll over on
top of me, and get up and run around whenever he wants.
So for a while I had a battle getting him
to move from the futon to the cot after half an hour. I would just tell him it was time to move and
lift him into the cot. He would scream
and shout, demanding to stay where he was.
In the end he often cried himself to sleep, frustrated that he had been
abandoned in the cot.
So I tried saying to him one night, “You
have to leave the futon now, but you can choose where to sleep. Would you like to sleep in the cot, or in the
laundry room?”
Of course I wouldn’t really make him sleep
in the laundry room, but he didn’t know that.
So he thought about it and said, “Cot.”
I lifted him into the cot and he went to sleep peacefully, happy that he
had made a good choice.
Don’t think that the rigged choice is a
technique that is only ever used on children.
In British politics now, it seems to be the only technique Prime
Minister Theresa May knows. She has
negotiated a very unpopular deal with the EU, which Parliament does not want to
vote for. The most recent opinion polls
show that 80 per cent of people think the government has done a bad job of
negotiating, and that 55 per cent of Britons would now vote to stay in the
EU. Almost six million people have
signed a petition asking the government to cancel Brexit. An estimated 1 million people marched in London
recently to demand another chance to vote to stay in the EU. But the only choice the Prime Minister is
offering is to agree to her bad deal or to face a huge economic crisis by
leaving the EU without a deal. Mrs. May
wouldn’t really leave the whole country to sleep in the laundry room, would
she?
Vocabulary:
to scratch one’s head in confusion – not to
know what is going on to such an extent that you place your hand on your head
and scratch like your head is itchy
to resist – to oppose; to refuse to accept
and work against
a cot – a small, raised sleeping place for
a baby or small child that is hard to climb out of
frustrated – feeling unable to change
things or get what one wants
to be abandoned – to be left alone without
help
an opinion poll – a survey of people’s
attitudes
a petition – an official letter to the
government, asking them to change something
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