WHEN QUESTIONS ARE NOT FAIR

Questions are not innocent. They are powerful. And anything powerful can be powerfully misused. In NLP we know that part of the power of questions lies in how questions direct the brain. Ask a question and the brain is so wired as to go off looking for an answer. Another aspect of questions is that you can ask questions which presuppose the very answers that you are wanting the other person to provide. Those are manipulative questions.

“Did you wash your hands before or after you took the cocaine?” How do you answer a question like that? You cannot just say yes or no. If you did, you would be accepting the presupposition that you took cocaine. If you spent time explaining yourself, it would seem that you are evading the question and not answering the question. Either way, the questioner has got you. You’ve been had.

In Awaken the Giant Within, Anthony Robbins relates a story about a poll question which people responded to as if it was true— that is, they took the unspoken assumptions of the question as if they were facts. That’s what happens with a presupposition in a question.

“One example occurred during the 1988 presidential election, just after George Bush had announced Dan Quayle as his running mate. A television news organization conducted a nationwide poll, asking people to call a 900 number to answer the question, ‘Does it bother you that Dan Quayle used his family’s influence to go into the National Guard and stay out of Vietnam?’ The glaring presupposition built into this question, of course, was that Quayle had indeed used his family’s influence to unfair advantage— something that had never been proven. Yet people responded to it as if it were a given. They never questioned it, and just automatically accepted it. Worse, many people called to say that they were extremely upset about this fact. No such fact was ever substantiated!” (1990, p. 190, bold added),

That’s what we call a presuppositional question, one that manipulates the hearer to get the hearer to make a pre-determined response. And in last week’s Vice-President debate, I heard several questions by Susan Page that were of that nature. She asked some really semantically loaded, manipulative questions. That is, she presupposed things and presented the question in such a way that it would be very difficult to call out the loaded assumptions. Previously Chris Wallace did that in some of his questions to the President.

What I found jarring in terms of fairness was that Susan Page mostly asked straight-forward questions to Harris and dis-empowering presuppositional questions to Pence. Page asked Pence a few straight-forward questions, but most were loaded with unquestioned assumptions. Check it out for yourself.

To Kamala Harris:

What would a Biden administration do in January and February that a Trump administration wouldn't do? Would you impose new lockdowns for businesses and schools in hotspots? Would you like to respond? If the Trump administration approves a vaccine, before after the election, should Americans take it and would you take it? Have you had a conversation, or reached an agreement with Vice President Biden, about safeguards or procedures when it comes to the issue of presidential disability? And if not, and if you win the election next month, do you think you should? Do voters have a right to know more detailed health information about presidential candidates, and especially about presidents, especially when they're facing some kind of challenge? Would raising taxes put the recovery at risk? But if you look at the Biden Harris campaign website it describes the Green New Deal as a crucial framework. What exactly would be the stance of a Biden Harris Administration toward the green New Deal? What's your definition— we've seen strains with China, of course, as the Vice President mentioned, we’ve seen strains with our traditional allies in NATO and elsewhere. What is your definition of the role of American leadership in 2020? If Roe v Wade is overturned, what would you want California to do? Would you want your home state to enact no restrictions on access to abortion?

To Mike Pence: Why is the U.S. death toll, as a percentage of our population, higher than that of almost every other wealthy country? How can you expect Americans to follow the administration safety guidelines to protect themselves from COVID when you were at the White House have not been doing so? In recent days, President Trump's doctors have given misleading answers or refused to answer basic questions about his health. And my question to each of you, in turn, is, is this information voters deserve to know? Should Americans be braced for an economic comeback that is going to take not months, but a year or more? This year we've seen record-setting hurricanes in the south. Another one, Hurricane Delta is now threatening the gulf. And we have seen record-setting wildfires in the West. Do you believe, as the scientific community has concluded, that man-made climate change has made wildfires bigger, hotter and more deadly? And it made hurricanes wetter, slower and more damaging?

It’s easy to answer straight-forward questions and yes/no questions. The person answering can simply say yes or no and explain the answer. It is much more difficult to answer a question that is semantically loaded with assumed presuppositions. It generally makes one sound defensive.

The real solution is to question the question. “When you say ‘as the scientific community as concluded,’ do you mean that every single climate scientist believes that?” You can also call attention to the assumptive nature of the question. “In your question, you are assuming things to be true and loading it up semantically.” You can then refocus the question which can be answered. “Here is the question I will answer.”

[Want more? See Mind-Lines: Lines for Changing Minds and Inside-Out Persuasion]