Speaking to Emotions Instead of Logic in Conflict

Douglas E. Noll, lawyer, professional mediator and educator of conflict resolution at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution

PARIS—President Emmanuel Macron set off a wave of criticism from his political opposition Wednesday by using a vulgar term to lash out at people who haven’t been vaccinated against Covid-19, framing their refusal to inoculate as a betrayal of French citizenship.

Matthew Dalton
Wall Street Journal

“The unvaccinated, I really want to annoy them. They undermine the solidity of a nation.

“When my freedom threatens that of others, I become irresponsible. An irresponsible person is no longer a citizen.”

Emmanuel Macron

Leadership communication can be experienced in shocking ways at times. Did that person just communicate what I think they communicated? Who do they think they are?

Communication is not a mere expression of words. It carries meaning and can elicit strong reactions, positive or negative. Leaders can find it unnecessarily challenging and perplexing to help people who don’t want to be led.

Who knows if Emmanuel Macron’s comments were calculated and strategic or off the cuff. This Special Series explores what leaders interested in this conversation happen to think about the French President’s statement and the effectiveness of it or the failure.

“The efficacy of Macron’s statement depends on his objectives,” Doug Noll says.

Noll, a lawyer and professional mediator, who also teaches graduate classes at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Caruso School of Law at Pepperdine University, elaborates about Macron’s communication, “If he intended to motivate unvaccinated people to become vaccinated, this statement would have the opposite effect. If he was posturing for those who are vaccinated and was simply expressing the frustration of the majority, he was probably persuasive to the vaccinated.”

There is a better way for the French president to be influential or increase the likelihood of being persuasive in this polarizing debate about vaccination, Noll says.

“My observation is that if Macron wants to persuade the unvaccinated to reconsider, he should approach the group from an emotional perspective. As I teach, you cannot change an emotional belief with logic and facts. You have to use emotions to change emotional beliefs. This is done primarily through affect labeling or emotional reflection,” he says.

How this could work in practice could look and sound something like Macron communicating in a specific manner.

“He could say something like, ‘Many of you who have chosen not to be vaccinated feel disrespected. You feel that you have been treated unfairly and that your rights have been infringed. This is frustrating to you and makes you angry. You are worried and anxious about your right not to be vaccinated and feel abandoned by your government. You do not feel heard,” Noll begins, before continuing…

“Your anger is taking the form of protest to be heard. And your protest, not becoming vaccinated, is endangering everyone around you, your loved ones, your friends, your neighbors, and even yourself,” Noll adds, before stating how Macron could be most blunt in his communication and use the power of question to stimulate new thinking.

“Even though you would rather be infected with COVID and possibly die, your decision affects everyone else. So how do we as a society balance your need to be heard, respected, and to make personal choices about your health against the need to protect our friends, neighbors, and communities against a deadly and pernicious disease?” 

So how and why does this approach work in practice and not just theory?

“Affect labeling is the only form of listening that brain scanning studies have shown to work. The seminal study was published in 2007 by neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman and his team at UCLA,” Noll says. “His fMRI studies showed that affect labeling activated the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and simultaneously inhibited the amygdala and other limbic regions associated with strong emotions. From what my research reveals, no other communication skill has been empirically proven with fMRI studies.”