"Don’t ask, don’t tell” was the colloquial term for official U.S. military policy from 1993 to 2011. What was that all about? Americans born on or before about 1973 probably remember—it concerned the armed forces approach to what then unapologetically was termed “homosexuality”. Actually, the entire policy was “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, and don’t harass,” and it was President Bill Clinton’s and the Legislature’s way simultaneously to both address and avoid the issue.
The policy is one obvious example
of questioning and answering influences on human psychology and interpersonal
relationships. All people personally are inclined to ask about some
issues and to avoid others. Knowing those inclinations of your own can
empower you to make good decisions. For instance, given the current toxic
social environment, most of us have learned to be very circumspect about what
formerly would have been casual, harmless political questions and
answers.
Even folk wisdom and popular
entertainment have touted the value of the avoidance technique. For
instance, in the Disney cartoon, "Bambi," (first released in 1942) a
diminutive, shy bunny, Thumper, quietly advised, "If you can't say
somethin nice, don't say nothin at all."
So, what does psychology say
about avoidant questioning and answering? As usual, I will discuss just
an idea or two. First, consider context. Your status vis-à-vis your
conversation partner is, of course, critical. Can you obviously avoid
answering without undue negative repercussions? Is the topic very
serious, marginally so, or light? What about your interlocutor? Is
it important for you to save face or impress that person?
Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K.
John (2018) divide questions as occurring within a cooperative context and
within a challenging one. In cooperative situations, the relative risk
would be avoiding a correct uncomfortable answer but, in the process,
inadvertently providing another one unfavorable to you. That can happen
if you are so relaxed that you do not sufficiently monitor that which you say,
and, therefore, say too much. The excess could be quantitative or
qualitative, either by rambling on too long, or by revealing sensitive
information.
Answering questions within a
challenging context, of course, is more likely to produce negative consequences
for you. Accordingly, Brooks and John recommend, ideally, that you enter
such conversations after having already decided what to keep private.
They also want you to be mindful of the importance of maintaining trust, and,
therefore, try not to blatantly refuse answering proffered questions.
Bitterly and Schweitzer (2020)
elaborate the basic principles presented above, but they focus on describing
five answer avoidance strategies much more than assessing their pros and
cons. The first is simply to decline answering, with its attendant
risks. The second is to blatantly lie and hope to get away with it.
Third, is to palter—provide a truthful answer or partial answer that
deliberately avoids revealing information that the questioner clearly wants to
know. Fourth, one could dodge the question, avoiding it by giving an
answer sufficiently close to the original question that the questioner readily
accepts it. Fifth, and finally, avoidance can be achieved via
deflection. There are two common approaches to do so. One can evade
answering a direct question by presenting a new one, or by injecting an
emotional distraction, such as a joke.
The aforementioned study offered
some advice about question avoidance. Those who avoided direct questions
by deflection were less likely to be regarded as untrustworthy or unlikeable
than were those who used the other assessed strategies. However, with
those findings in mind, Bitterly and Schweitzer provided some suggestions to
questioners. They encouraged questioners to anticipate deflection, to
have plans to counter it, and to persist in those efforts. If the
deflection simply cannot be remedied, questioners should know how to interpret
the deflections, and to factor that information into their judgements about the
issue, the deflector, and the deflector’s sensitivities.
Perhaps, in some situations,
“don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, and don’t harass” policy is good general
advice. Brooks & John and Bitterly & Schweitzer seem to
agree. But neither of their works said one word about my preferred method
of avoiding difficult questions. I would rather metacommunicate -
communicate about the communication - to handle the to-be-avoided
question.
The metacommunication strategy
allows one to be both honest and empowered. Why not provide an authentic
reason for your reluctance to answer? Ninety-nine percent of the time, your
interlocutor will accept your legitimate reason, and agree to defer the question,
at least temporarily. Of course, that strategy will not suffice in some
special situations. But, more often than not, if your conversation
partner cannot accept your wish to defer a question, maybe you need to rethink
your relationship with them.
References
Bitterly, T. B., &
Schweitzer, M. E. (2020). The economic and interpersonal consequences of
deflecting direct questions. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 118(5), 945-990. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000200
Brooks, A. W. & John, L.
K. (2018). The surprising power of questions. Harvard Business
Review, May 17.
