“Miscommunication occurs when people are having different kinds of conversations. If you are speaking emotionally, while I’m talking practically, we are, in essence, using different cognitive languages. (This explains why, when you complain about your boss—‘Jim is driving me crazy!’—and your spouse responds with a practical suggestion—‘What if you just invited him to lunch?’—it’s more apt to create conflict than connection: ‘I’m not asking you to solve this! I just want some empathy’).”

Here, Duhigg uses a hypothetical situation to illustrate the concept of miscommunication in a day-to-day context, introducing The Psychology of Connection. He uses dialogue to showcase the emotional mindset (“Jim is driving me crazy!”) and the practical, problem-solving mindset (“What if you just invited him to lunch?”). The contrast between the two highlights the potential for conflict when conversational mindsets are not aligned. The final line of dialogue (“I’m not asking you to solve this! I just want some empathy”) serves as a direct statement of one of the book’s core messages—the need for empathy and understanding in communication. The use of exclamation marks and the phrase “I just want” emphasizes the emotional tone of the speaker and their desire for connection rather than a practical solution.

“Like interest-based bargaining, the What’s This Really About? conversation succeeds by transforming a conversation from a tussle over where the dialogue is going into a collaboration, a group experiment, where the aim is figuring out what everyone is seeking and the goals and values we all share.”

By comparing an adversarial conversation to a “tussle” and then contrasting it with a conversation that is more of a “collaboration” and a “group experiment,” Duhigg highlights the shift from a competitive dynamic to a cooperative, exploratory one. The What’s This Really About? Conversation (See: Index of Terms) is thus not about winning or losing, but about finding common ground and understanding.