In the very first episode of The Hidden Brain podcast, Shankar Vedantam talks with Sheila Heen, a professor at Harvard Law School about the concept of switch tracking. It is a pattern in conversations where one person’s feedback alters the course of the discussion causing the two parties to argue about entirely different things.

She illustrates with a clip from the sitcom Lucky Louie. The premise – Louie has just given his wife Kim a bouqet of red roses in anticipation of a romantic weekend getaway. What follows is this conversation.

Kim: Try not to take this the wrong way. If we are going to be married for the next 30 years, I need you to know that red roses are not my thing.[…..]
Louie: Can I critique how you just called me that?
Kim: I have told you before that I dont like red roses, remember?
Louie: I just think that you should have thanked me for the flowers first and then said you didn’t like red roses.[…..] It’s a gift. I guess I dont think it matters what it is, you still thank me.
Kim: I dont necessarily think that I should thank you for giving me something that I have specifically told you I don’t like.

Kim is talking about how Louie doesn’t listen to her while Louie is stuck on the fact that his wife doesn’t appreciate him. At this point, the argument becomes about whose topic is more important.

Sounds familiar? It definitely struck close to home with me. In almost every argument I have had and lost, I can pinpoint the time when I started responding to immediate feedback and lost sight of my main point. Often we have one-sided switch tracking conversations and respond to the other person within our minds, a conversation that he/she is blissfully unaware of.

Switch tracking derails any conversation whether one-sided or multi-sided. At the point we realize it is happening, the best thing we can do is take a step back and calm down. Then bring the diverging tangents to attention and really listen to each other’s concerns without interruption. Or just table the conversation for later when calmer minds can prevail.