Here’s why you can never win online arguments (and what to do about it)

Most of us have started a discussion on Facebook or Twitter – then immediately regretted it after angry people pile in to explain just how wrong you are.

But it might be to do with the nature of online communication, a new study has suggested.

It’s much more difficult to sympathise with people when you’re communicating online, according to a new study published in Psychological Science – we ‘dehumanise’ people when we read their words.

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In other words, it’s very difficult to understand what a person’s really thinking, or why they think it, when you’re just reading what they’re saying.

The researchers conducted three experiments where people discussed divisive topics – the 2016 US election – and found that if people are talking out loud it’s easier to see each other’s point of view.

The researchers write, ‘hearing a person explain his or her beliefs makes the person seem more mentally capable—and therefore seem to possess more uniquely human mental traits—than reading the same content.

The researchers say that if people discuss the same topic ‘out loud’ they may find it easier to understand opponents as human beings.

The researchers write, ‘These results suggest that the medium through which people communicate may systematically influence the impressions they form of each other. The tendency to denigrate the minds of the opposition may be tempered by giving them, quite literally, a voice.’

‘A person’s speech communicates his or her thoughts and feelings. A person’s speech also conveys mental capacity.