Now, I don’t particularly care for the term “win” in a debate, as this is largely a matter of opinion, not fact. However, you can increase your odds of getting undecideds on your side or even opening your ‘opponent’ up to considering a different viewpoint if you follow these tips.

Let’s start with the general tips.

Smile Genuinely and Don’t Interrupt — Respect Goes a Long Way

Most of us aren’t in Congress or addressing the UN, trying to influence the fate of the entire world with our rhetoric. Instead, we’re getting into it with coworkers, or, at best, trying to win a local election. As such, you don’t have to present yourself like the characters attending the Council of Elrond in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. You can relax and smile. You can listen to what a person says without interruption, too.

Now, when I say smile, I mean to do so genuinely. Most people can detect a fake smile from a mile away, and you turn people off worse than if you stepped up to the podium (even if it’s just figuratively) with a scowl on your face. Your eyes will give you away if you fake it.

This simple step does a number of things for you, regardless of whether you’re debating in front of people or not.

For one, it lets your opponent know that you respect him or her. If you’re following my series on Stoic philosophy, respect is going to play a role in it. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said in a sermon on Jesus’ command to love your enemies that love (in our case, respect) is a mindset, not an emotion. Hate, likewise, is a mindset, or at least has the potential to become a cancerous mindset, having grown from a small, emotional tumor.

Love is refusing to knock your perceived enemies down when you have the chance, and in a debate, respect is refusing to treat your opponent like crap even if you think he/she is way off base. It’s a great mindset to cultivate because not only will your audience respect you for being the bigger person, but your opponent may not be quite as defensive. Defensive arguments aren’t so much a sign that you’re winning (although they can be), but are usually a sign that your smug attitude has hindered the debate process.

No audience likes the smug know-it-all. Just ask anyone who’s watched Ben Shapiro go into a debate. He’s cold, relies exclusively on his own research, and doesn’t ever seem to humanize himself or his opponents. Because of this, whether you think he’s right or wrong, it’s hard to like him. He doesn’t build bridges, he burns them, and he’s not in a position where he needs to be burning some bridges; he comes off as someone who just wants to be right, and that’s not the way to win people over, which is your ultimate goal.

Use Humor and Analogies if You’re Comfortable with Them

Humor goes a long way towards disarming people and making you seem likable. The only problem you’ll have is if your humor is, well, not humorous. I’m not saying you have to be a stand-up comedian, although George Carlin was fantastic at what he did (just saying), but if you can put a humorous spin on something, do it. You can make a sarcastic (but not disrespectful) remark, use hyperbole, or anything else you feel like could get a laugh.

Humor is something that should really be practiced before you try it out, though, unless you know for certain that your humor will work towards driving your point home while at the same time getting a chuckle.

Analogies are a bit easier to use, as are metaphors and similes — a trio of friends who work great when used hand-in-hand. They can be funny, but they don’t have to be. All you have to do is work your message into a little story (but not a full-blown parable) that will make it easier for your audience to grasp.

Full-blown stories can work, but you have to be careful how you use them. They aren’t appropriate in debates where the moderators or audience want short little soundbites (I hate that…), but in other situations they’re fantastic. Humans are storytellers by nature, after all!

I’ve never used a story in a formal debate, but I did have the opportunity to use one when I was running as an alternate delegate for Ron Paul. A young, hopeful politician took the stage and went on and on about why we should vote for him, and then he made the mistake of deciding to take some questions. An older man sitting in the back chimed up that he thought it was time the Republican party embraced the idea of eliminating the War on Drugs.

He opened a can of worms I don’t think he intended to open.

All of a sudden, people started chiming up about their own stories. One guy’s wife was a doctor who had seen first-hand the effects of drugs, even ‘harmless’ drugs like marijuana, on people, and it could really mess up people’s minds and bodies.

Another woman knows of whole families torn asunder because one member was a druggie. Some remarked on the moral decline of allowing such dangerous behavior.

I decided that the poor guy shouldn’t get railroaded, so I decided to add my $.02. The people in favor of ending the War on Drugs usually resorted to pointing out the fact that the laws allow the cops to racially profile minorities, the lengthy minimum sentences, etc. Since this was a room that was clearly responding to personal stories, however, I decided to frame my argument as one calling for an end to hypocrisy.

My father was an alcoholic, and at the time of this election, he was on hospice for liver failure. Luckily, he managed to get off hospice and live another four years before a heart attack ultimately took him, but at the time he’d just gotten over a spell in the hospital in which he looked more like a banana than a human being. His stomach was bloated, his eyes and skin sallow, and a series of small strokes created a shotgun effect in one eye.

Drink had destroyed his life. I told how my parents divorced when I was eight years old, him having chosen to drink instead of being a father or husband. I detailed the many relationships he lost to his addiction and how his health finally began to fail.

“How is it,” I finished, “that if my father had destroyed his life and ripped apart his family by smoking, injecting, swallowing, or inhaling something illegal, he could have been forced into treatment and it would have been considered wrong, but because he chose a legal addiction to give his life to, it’s merely a tragedy?”

I didn’t push the issue, just left it there as food for thought. It was the proper time and place to use the story to counter everyone else who was using stories to explain why drug laws were necessary, and it was a time when simply stating facts and statistics were falling on deaf ears.

Lead with Emotions, Follow with Facts

We all like to consider ourselves intellectual, don’t we? We are above being pulled into arguments that essentially amount to “Think of the children!” and prefer to look at the data first… Not!

Regardless of our own self-perceptions or how we score on the Myers-Briggs Test, all of us are ultimately led by our emotions. I tend to think that the difference between someone who scores as an F and someone who scores as a T on those kinds of tests is that the F allows him/herself to be led by emotions, period. Someone who is a T is led by his/her emotions but tries to justify it through logic.

This is why stories are so effective, given the chance to use them. They pull people in and get them caught up in things that aren’t empirical data. However, you still have to be able to follow up with facts to make a very effective argument.

I’m going to use three examples, two of bad arguments and one of the more perfect ways to engage with someone.

The first is Ron Paul. He was a very popular candidate who the media constantly vilified. He had a passionate support base but very seldom did people seem to take to his debates. He won people over when he held rallies and was given the chance to speak without interruption. Why?

He led with facts. If you already agreed with those facts, then voting for him was a no-brainer. If you didn’t, however, you likely wouldn’t be moved by him in debates. When a question was asked, candidates have only seconds to summarize their position and why. If you have an anecdote to tell, this format works perfectly for you, but if you rely on facts and figures, you’ll bore your audience, they might perceive you as cold, and you likely won’t have the time to explain why the data supports you.

The next example was about a debate I watched regarding transwomen in women’s sports. Are transwomen at an advantage that makes their participation in women’s sports inappropriate? The man who was arguing against their participation used primarily facts and studies, presenting the data in its raw form and then explaining it to laypeople. The transwoman, on the other hand, focused exclusively on emotion. The argument presented boiled down to “If you don’t let transwomen participate specifically in women’s sports, transpeople will kill themselves.”

This a dangerous argument to make, as impressionable kids could get the idea that if you make suicidal threats or gestures, the world will bend to your will, not to mention, many people caught up in abusive relationships deal with their partners’ constant suicide threats as a means of control. Moreover, a purely emotional argument can have unintended side-effects, such as when the documentary The Cove premiered and stirred up anti-Japanese sentiment.

The film followed a tiny Japanese village that, once a year, still slaughtered dolphins. Most Japanese people do not eat dolphins, and Japan is hardly a gross offender when it comes to the slaughter of these magnificent creatures, but that’s where the documentary focused, portraying Japanese people as aggressive and too ignorant to understand what they’re doing is wrong. Is it any wonder that the movie sparked not a cry for all nations to protect dolphins but instead cries of hatred for the Japanese?

Finally, there’s Mister Rogers, the man who did it correctly when he petitioned for government funding of PBS where his show, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, aired. He began by finding a common point of interest with the man who would ultimately decide the show’s future by saying that they both clearly cared about children and their development.

He follows up by pointing out his own credentials and background in psychology, letting everyone know that they can actually trust that he knows what he’s talking about before using stories of his own children to draw his listeners into his world of catering to emotional development of children.

He explains how the television is the perfect tool for this kind of thing, and how if children are going to be watching TV, they may as well get something other than violence out of it. He explains the facts, alternating between them and little anecdotes from the show and how it allows children to process their emotions and relationships in healthy ways. All the while, he’s never putting anyone down, but reinforcing the idea that he wants what they want: children who grow up into well-adjusted adults.

Is it any wonder that he won?

Don’t Appeal to Authority or Allow Your Opponent to Drag You into that Battle

The appeal to authority argument is the opposite of an ad-hominem attack, for the person giving the argument simply points to an authority figure and says, “He/she agrees with me, so why don’t you?”

Example:

Person A: You’re a scientist, right?

Person B: Yeah…

Person A: Well, Hawking said X, which is the opposite of what you’re saying, but since everyone knows Hawking was smart, why don’t you agree with his theory?

This is a bad argument to make, and don’t let people drag you into it. You can disagree with prominent figures of your party, candidates you support, your teachers, etc. without betraying them and the causes or ideas they support. The best way to handle it when someone tries to bait you with that kind of an argument is just to shrug your shoulders and respond, “So what?”

Don’t Lose Your Cool!

Do you want to lose your debate fast? Let someone bait you into losing your cool. The fastest way that this happens is by the twisting of words, and it happens in debate all the time. This is why when Ron Paul says he would cut foreign aid to all countries because all it really is is taking money from poor people in America and giving it wealthy people in poor countries, the media twists it to “He doesn’t support Israel!”

When you make an argument and someone says, “So basically you’re saying…” and proceeds to say something you haven’t said at all, mischaracterize what you’ve said, or greatly oversimplify it, it’s tempting to lose your composure and rip them a new one.

Bad mistake.

Instead, clarify what you are saying and move the conversation forward. Don’t spend time defending yourself excessively or getting dragged down into a bog of suppositions. All that will happen is you’ll look foolish in your attempts to defend yourself.

Finally, Go in Prepared

I said earlier to lead with emotion, follow with facts. On that note, make sure you’ve actually prepared facts before you get baited into an argument.

I’m sure most people have come across YouTube videos where someone is holding a sign saying, “I believe X. Change my mind.” If you click on any of them, you’ll notice something interesting: the person issuing the challenge almost always wins.

This isn’t by accident, and it’s why you should avoid being bated into these very tempting arguments. The entire encounter is like going to a casino in that it’s rigged from the start to give the house the upper hand, as the one daring others to engage him/her in a debate has already done the research and is prepared; the poor saps who just come across him/her aren’t.

Whoever has issued the challenge will be arguing with facts, the person who has accepted the challenge will be arguing purely on emotion, fueled by the fact that he/she likely feels offended. When you go into a debate with a defensive attitude, you’ve already lost — especially if you don’t have the facts to back up your feelings. The house, so to speak, has all the advantages.

Do NOT get baited into arguments you aren’t prepared for.

Following these tips will certainly help you next time a water-cooler argument breaks out at the office, or you find yourself needing to engage in a formal debate. Good luck!