Top Dog, Underdog

by Martha Beck

The "Right as Might" Assault

In dog packs, being big and strong is the quickest way to dominance. In humans, sheer physical power, though useful, is often trumped by being right. Many know-it-alls have high IQs, but such low EQs (levels of emotional intelligence) that they actually think people admire them for saying things like "It's a common misperception that, as you so quaintly phrased it, 'You never know what's going to happen,' but that rationale applies mainly at a subatomic level of analysis, while in a macro setting, Laplace's model of a mechanistically determinate universe remains a remarkably robust predictive cosmology."

In a few paragraphs, we'll discuss appropriate responses to such comments. But your initial response to a know-it-all assault like this one should be to remain calm and resist the urge to bite.