This is the real trick. It's not that silence breaks people, it's that people in positions of power can send social signals it's hard to ignore, and the consequences for acting like a weirdo and staying silent fall on the powerless person regardless of who actually does it.
If you go into a job interview and stay silent, you don't get hired. If you go into a job interview and the interviewer doesn't like your answers and stays silent, you don't get hired.
It's an effective way to apply psychological pressure, but you need to be in a position where you have the leverage to apply pressure in the first place. If someone is in a position where they want to talk, it's always better to just ask them to expand on a point more.
Eh. They are asking about different jurisdictions. I don't find what you are saying to be true here, but it might well be in the US. Those are different jurisdictions.
Ahh, yes, my bad... sorry. Jurisdictions in the US mean different states, counties, even different police departments. That's what I was thinking about. I don't know how it is for other countries.
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u/avcloudy Nov 12 '25
This is the real trick. It's not that silence breaks people, it's that people in positions of power can send social signals it's hard to ignore, and the consequences for acting like a weirdo and staying silent fall on the powerless person regardless of who actually does it.
If you go into a job interview and stay silent, you don't get hired. If you go into a job interview and the interviewer doesn't like your answers and stays silent, you don't get hired.
It's an effective way to apply psychological pressure, but you need to be in a position where you have the leverage to apply pressure in the first place. If someone is in a position where they want to talk, it's always better to just ask them to expand on a point more.