How to be Disagreeable

What happens when a classroom discussion about immigration sparks not one argument, but several...plus a disagreement inside the professor herself? In this episode, Dickinson College professor Noreen Lape recounts a tense moment in her “How to Be Disagreeable” course that forced her to confront emotion, miscommunication, and the limits of control in dialogue-heavy classrooms. The conversation explores the crucial difference between intellectual discomfort and psychological triggering, and why learning often requires risk, not retreat. Drawing on two decades of experience, Lape offers practical tools such emotional regulation and creating conversational norms for fostering brave, humane connections across deep differences.

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves.

Perfect. People are annoying. But when someone competent makes a Mitre mistake spills coffee trips over words, we like 'em more. This is called the Pratt Fall effect discovered by the psychologist Elliot Aaronson. Vulnerability humanizes us making competence more relatable and disagreements.

Strategic imperfection can build bridges that flawless arguments can't. The pratfall effect explains why admitting uncertainty can strengthen your position Argumentatively. The expert who acknowledges the limits of their knowledge seems more trustworthy than one who claims omniscience. The friend who says, I might be wrong, but gets a better hearing than the one who seems like they're always certain.

The politician who admits past mistakes could seem more honest than one with a seemingly [00:01:00] perfect record. Competence plus vulnerability equals influence, but timing also matters in workplace conflicts. Premature vulnerability looks like incompetence. You need to establish the credibility before your mistakes become endearing rather than disqualifying a new employee.

Admitting confusion might seem like Unpreparedness a respected colleague, admitting the same seems refreshingly honest. The pratfall effect only works when competence is already established and in personal relationships. The pratfall effect can diffuse tension. The parent who admits they don't have all the answers, could get more respect than the one who pretends perfection.

The partner who acknowledges their own flaws while addressing yours creates space for mutual growth, not shame or judgment. And the friend who laughs at their own mistakes while calling out yours avoids seeming hypocritical vulnerability, disarms defensiveness. Understanding the pratfall effect helps us use imperfections strategically.

Perhaps don't hide every flaw or mistake. Select [00:02:00] ones that humanize without undermining your core message. And in heated disagreements, admitting when you're uncertain or when the other person has a point, can paradoxically strengthen your position. Sometimes the most powerful move is showing you're human, not infallible, imperfect arguments delivered by imperfect people beat imperfect arguments delivered by people pretending perfection.

I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Noreen Lappe. Noreen is Professor of Educational Studies at Dickinson College. She leads a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations for a campus project called Dialogues Across Difference.

And she's currently working on a book entitled Disagreeable Classrooms Fostering Transformative Conversations Across Lines of Difference. Noreen, tell us an argument story. 

Noreen Lape : Okay one of my duties is to teach first [00:03:00] year seminar and this past spring I taught my first year seminar course called. How to be disagreeable.

And on the day that I was planning to discuss multidimensional listening we had on campus a speaker from the Greater Good Science Center whose expertise was listening. And I was able to have her come to my class. She came to my class, she's an award-winning filmmaker, and she, directed and produced a film called Listen.

She showed the students some exer excerpts from that film, and then she wanted them to think about she wanted them to listen for values, emotions, and meaning. And so in this one excerpt from the film, there were two immigrants. To the US who were arguing about US border policy and the one. Woman was more [00:04:00] about open borders and the man was against that.

And at one point in the film he asks her, are you pro-America or Pro World America? And she answered, I am pro immigrant. And as we watch this, their argument became increasingly tense. The man got angry at the woman and said to her, you are not a true American. He refused to talk to her and he walked out.

And then our guest hit pause and said, gave the students a moment to debrief, to talk to each other and think about what they heard in terms of emotions, values, and meaning. 

Michael Lee: Yeah. 

Noreen Lape : And then when she, called them back to discussion. One young man raised his hand and what he was trying to say was, boy, that argument was dysfunctional, but what he said was.

I could have argued either side of that disagreement better than either of those two people. [00:05:00] And at that moment, a young woman in the class started rolling her eyes and I could see her getting upset. And she said, how can you say that woman is a genius? I don't know what you're talking about.

And then he looked flustered and a third student. Very eloquently said, boy, that argument was dysfunctional. And then the young man said, what? She said, what She said, that's what I meant. 

And then the young woman said, then why didn't you say that instead of not making sense? And then it was the end of class.

By that time my guest was starting to talk to them about self distancing techniques and taking deep breaths. And then as I watched this unfold, I started having a disagreement with myself. What do I say? There's a guest here. Do I? If I stop it, am I curtailing their free speech? I would only do that if there's dignitary harm to someone.

Was there a harm done to someone in this conversation? [00:06:00] Is there a teachable moment here? I look at the clock, it's five minutes after class and it ends. 

Michael Lee: Wow. There is a lot going on there. 

Noreen Lape : Yeah. 

Michael Lee: So there is a speaker who's showing an excerpt about an argument. So there's an argument to process there, a memorable disagreement, and there's a trilateral memorable disagreement amongst students who have just watched the argument and then you have a disagreement.

Within yourself about how to approach this moment effectively after basically the bell has rung as a teacher, which aspect of this sticks with you the most? 

Noreen Lape : I think what sticks with me the most is the aftermath. All right, you know what I, what sticks with me is that I, I teach a course on how to be disagreeable.

I run this Dialogues Across Differences program. I know what to do in that situation, but I'm still always caught off guard. Now, 20 [00:07:00] years ago. I would've been flummoxed, but even having the tools in the toolbox, I still get, my brain starts racing. What do I do? What do I do? Which tools do I pull out?

Michael Lee: Yeah. You're experiencing some stress there. And then the stress is a, has a scrambling effect of which era do I take out of my quiver? Yeah. But talk you, you talked about your journey from. 20 years ago if this would've happened. Feeling flummoxed to now, still feeling caught off guard, as you say.

So talk about the tools that you have developed quickly in that last 20 years that have taken you from the point of flummoxing to caught off guardedness. 

Noreen Lape : My 20 years ago, my temptation would've been to say, oh, pH. I'm so glad it's the end of class. I can just leave because Time's Up Uhhuh and just pretend it didn't happen, and now I know. [00:08:00] Actually, even if it were the middle of class, I could have just said. This is important to me, but I'm not gonna talk about it now 'cause I need to think about how to approach this or use another tool. So rather than feeling oh, I, I got out of having to do this heavy lift, I used the time to redesign my lesson plan for the following week and approach it head on 

Michael Lee: And how did you do that?

Noreen Lape : I was thinking a lot, especially as I'm writing my book about how, that faculty who don't want to create disagreeable classrooms or are avoid teaching controversy in their classes. I think a lot of the times it's because what do we do when emotion erupts and how do we handle it?

And, I think. Emotional regulation and talking about that with students is a way to go about it. So [00:09:00] I designed the class around the topic of emotional reg regulation. So when I went back to class, I said to the students we need to talk about what happened. Last class emotion is a big part of disagreement.

And if you don't have a handle on it, you're gonna wanna self-censor or censor others. And then I prompted them with the question, what gets in the way of I, what gets in the way of good listening? I said, I asked them, how did you feel when you were watching the film? So that was the first question.

And and then I shaped the lesson around several concepts. We talked about emotional regulation versus emotional reaction triggering and contagion. And so that led us into a [00:10:00] discussion that helped us parse out what happened, 

Michael Lee: what's the difference between emotional reaction and triggering.

Noreen Lape : So we talked about how you could watch something like that argument 

Michael Lee: uhhuh 

Noreen Lape : and have an emotional reaction to it. And I told them guys, when I was watching it, I was feeling tense and stressed out and I almost put my head down and said, oh no. At one point when I saw it going south, that's having an emotional reaction.

I was situated in the present. And feeling that, feeling this emotion from watching this fight. A triggering puts you into the past. It's a word. It's a word that explains trauma and that's overused, and often used correctly. Because when you're triggered, you're brought back to the past and you begin to feel the stress of something that happened to you in the past.

Michael Lee: How do you feel about the, [00:11:00] either the phrase or the concept or the application of trigger warnings? 

Noreen Lape : Yeah. That that's a complicated thing and that, that's another thing. 20 years ago we didn't have trigger warnings warning, and I think trigger warnings.

Are an important way for professors to care for their students, as long as but it also comes with the students' understanding the difference between something that makes you uncomfortable, which is necessary to learning. Learning often involves discomfort versus something that.

Can bring you back to a past trauma that can retraumatize you, it's a difference. It's the difference between the discomfort of intellectual risk versus the potential of serious psychological harm. 

Michael Lee: And then, and you as an educator [00:12:00] who is interested in presumably creating. Spaces where students, faculty, staff, et cetera, are going to have emotional reactions to difficult conversations to encourage some dialogue across difference.

If I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like you're really walking a line there because in order to introduce these kinds of emotional reactions and then promote resiliency and bravery and curiosity, as we encounter one another across these really thorny controversies. You don't really know what's going on in everybody else's life.

And so you don't really know where they're gonna feel discomfort versus what I hear you saying. Which is about the present. 

Versus a past capital T trauma that has been triggered. 

And so then in your practice, as you encourage this kind of dialogue across difference and introduce controversial topics like immigration or whatever else that are going to be.

Stressful to discuss and emotional to discuss unless people are self-censoring. [00:13:00] Do you just issue blanket trigger warnings for any and every controversy because given that you don't know your audience ahead of time and what they've been through. 

Noreen Lape : Yeah. Yeah. And so I think you're right about walking a fine line there.

Because one of the things I struggle with and I don't think I've resolved is the boundaries around my care. So as a teacher, I practice an ethic of care, which would make trigger warnings. A, a sensible tool to use. If we were reading something that describes a sexual assault or something, I would tell my students that I wouldn't just say, surprise when you get to page 15.

But by the same token, I have to trust my students to do what's. Best for themselves, [00:14:00] but I think they they need to understand the difference between the discomfort that leads to learning versus triggering, and then make that choice for themselves. I can't control that. I can just explain it and do my ethical duty by letting them know.

That this description or discussion is going to be included in, in a class reading. 

Michael Lee: I think that's Van Jones, but I'm gonna butcher the quotation. Had a line that I thought was a good one, which was, colleges are supposed to keep you physically safe, but intellectually unsafe.

And it kinda links up a little bit with what you were just talking about there. Educational possibilities of discomfort. In other words, colleges or effective learning across the board, take college out of it. Effective learning across the board. Drop me in a Spanish speaking country with a limited knowledge of Spanish.

I'm [00:15:00] gonna feel a lot of discomfort. But in that discomfort, hopefully I'll pick up some context cues, be able to find a grocery store and so forth. But, so that. So my question is, where is the line between discomfort and whatever sensation is happening when somebody is being triggered? And can that triggering lead to the kind of discomfort that creates awakening or re-imagining and illusion or disillusionment?

In other words, it sounds like you're really leaning in and this is the fine line you're really leaning into. Discomfort is good. But when it crosses the line to what we're calling triggering, that is, that's a no go. 

Noreen Lape : No, because then I think people will have a mental health crisis. When people are triggered, they're in mental health crisis.

And I, I don't know that about my students. They have to care for themselves in that way, and the trigger warning enables me to let them [00:16:00] know that this thing is coming up, but discomfort. This is really an interesting question. I was just writing about this because I was trying to grapple with that as I'm writing my book.

What, when was the last time I was in a disagreeable classroom and what's that and what's that discomfort like? And one way I tried to answer that question last week, i'm, I I'm a left-leaning academic as many of us are. I spent last week at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC in a week long faculty seminar on the conservative intellectual tradition.

Because I wanted to know what's it like? And there was no triggering in this workshop, that's not what it was about. But what's it like to navigate, discomfort with ideas that maybe, I'm aren't my, in my belief [00:17:00] system or my value system? And so I think that is, that, that is, how would I put it? I think students, or maybe I just speak for myself as a student myself being put in situations of intellectual discomfort, which is. I prefer to use the term intellectual risk taking. I'm thinking of the Siegel Ben Perez book Cancel War. She uses this phrase, intellectual risk taking.

Michael Lee: Yeah. 

Noreen Lape : Which brings discomfort with it. 

Michael Lee: And so in your mind, the exposing yourself to new ideas. Is somewhat of a risky behavior. But let's say, to go back to the, to a, you assign a book or you have students watch a movie or frankly, just even the example you opened with, which was a disagreement about the border.

Noreen Lape : Yeah. 

Michael Lee: When you talk about, you used a phrase that I would like to return to, which is the difference between discomfort or intellectual risk taking and triggering is the risk of what you said was a mental health crisis. What do you mean by [00:18:00] that? 

Noreen Lape : I think that. When you are in, when you are feeling intellectual discomfort, the way I thought about it and wrote about it with my experience at a EI was, I lost my grounding.

I lost my grounding and I was trying to figure out my footing for that whole week. Where I, I read and studied with perfectly lovely people and we had amazing conversations, but I lost my grounding. I think that's different from being thrust back into the past and reliving an event that where you feared for your life.

And to me that's the difference there. I would not. Want to engage in speaking or writing or reading about things that would put me back [00:19:00] to a time when I feared for my life. 

Yeah, 

Michael Lee: that's right. And so what are you, in terms of navigating this fine line as we close, you're really walking this tightrope where you're leaning all in on risk taking.

But being trepidatious about these kinds of triggering episodes where people's past traumas, where they felt their life was at risk or their life was legitimately at risk, are then rere rehearsed in the context of a classroom, which really eliminates the positive dynamics of intellectual risk taking.

Noreen Lape : Yes. 

Michael Lee: So in terms of isolating just a couple of best practices or suggested outcomes, how do you best walk the tight rope? 

Noreen Lape : As a teacher. 

Yeah. I think a lot of the tools that the that that come from the dialogue community enable people to do that. And for example, I could go on, but I think one of the most powerful ones when [00:20:00] done right is establishing a community agreement.

That's very typical in dialogue circles, and I know a lot of people in a lot of classes do that where the professor and the students procreate a community agreement that states very clearly what, what they expect, what the students expect of each other, what the students themselves will promise to do or not do, and how they expect the professor to to be, to act to do, to make the class a positive learning environment.

So that students can engage with each other and take those kinds of risks. And in my class, after I talked about emo emotional regulation, that was the last part of the conversation. I said to them, our community agreement was broken. [00:21:00] What behaviors happened that made that broke that agreement, and what do we need to do to set it right?

Michael Lee: Well said. The power of a community agreement so that there can be some. Norm establishment as well as, for lack of a better word, self-policing or self-governing. To put that more affirmatively. Noreen Lepe, thank you so much for being on when we disagree. 

Noreen Lape : Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Michael Lee: When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse KZ and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.