Winning an argument on the merits loses the outcome, because the person defeated is less willing to act than before.
The paradox is real and turns on two different senses of winning. The argument is a contest about who is right; the situation is a question of what will now happen. Establishing the first frequently forecloses the second, because a person who has been shown to be wrong in public has acquired a reason to resist.
In practice
- A meeting in which one party is comprehensively refuted produces a decision that is never implemented.
- A correction issued publicly is accepted privately and acted on by nobody.
- Standing
- Consistent with work on reactance and on defensive processing; the maxim's form is rhetorical rather than empirical.
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- The folk laws of argument and attention