Tactics Tuesdays: Socratic Questions for Under-the-Radar Effects

Socratic questioning is a powerful rhetorical technique for breaking people out of dogmatic beliefs. Use it to bust bad opinions… and turn girls into fans.

Everybody’s had the experience of being in a conversation with someone and hitting points of resistance every which way.

You’re talking with a girl and she brings up some opinion you don’t agree with… then when you try to get her off the topic she won’t budge, insisting on staying with this disagreeable topic. Maybe it’s a political opinion, or a cultural one, or something else. Whatever it is, it’s grating to your ears, and it’s allll she wants to talk about.

If you express the contrary opinion, you’re certain she’ll blow up. And in any event, debates about opinions aren’t sexy. Not conducive to seduction.

If you just go along with her opinion and feign agreement, you risk looking insincere, especially if it’s an opinion you don’t hold, and especially if it’s one that undermines you (e.g., her: “Men are just so obsessed with sex it’s disgusting. I hope you’re not like that”).

You can agree and amplify, which is going to work in some cases by turning it from a serious debate into a funny bit of banter… but if she’s too deep into ‘rant mode’ (or she’s one of those totally humorless chicks) even this may backfire.

What if there was a way you could defuse all her wound-up energy around this opinion, while allowing her to feel a lot more connected to you, while at the SAME TIME even potentially pointing out some cracks in her thinking that lead her to reconsider her most staunchly-held beliefs?

There is such a way:

Socratic questioning.