Could you argue the side you disagree with — and sound like you mean it?
The game, five minutes. Five statements go on slips of paper. Each person draws the one they disagree with most, gets 90 seconds to argue it out loud as if they believe every word. The others vote: believer or faker? Then you confess your real view.
The slip menu, pick your five: Pineapple on pizza should be banned · Homework should be optional · Kids should set their own screen-time rules · Cats beat dogs · Everyone should learn to cook before they turn 12.
Three moves make it work. One: say their strongest point first, better than they said it. Two: name the one thing that would change your mind. Three: find the one thing both sides already agree on. Building the best version of the other side is called steelmanning — the opposite of knocking down a straw man. Wikipedia: straw man and steelmanning.
Round two, the switch. When the timer beeps, keep talking but switch to your real side. Notice how much faster the words come now that both maps are in your head. One rule: silly opinions only. Nothing that hurts real people, and no jokes about anyone in the room.
What the research says. Telling yourself "be fair" barely shifts anything; being made to argue the opposite does. In two experiments with 150 students, the ones pushed to consider the opposite ended up less biased than the ones told to be fair and unbiased. Lord, Lepper & Preston (1984), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Separately, working out what the other person actually wants — not just how they feel — helped people find hidden agreements and better deals, even when the thinking time was short. Galinsky, Maddux, Gilin & White (2008), Psychological Science.
How you win. The family votes for the most convincing performance, not the correct opinion. Anyone whose real view nobody guessed gets a point. Last place picks tomorrow's topic — and gets first pick of the slips.
Arguing the other side does not mean you switched sides. It means you are the only one at the table holding both maps.
When you have to defend a view you do not hold, habit stops working. You cannot win on volume and you cannot repeat what you already believe, so you have to go and find the actual reasons. That act — building the strongest version of the other side — is called steelmanning. Its opposite is the straw man: invent a weak version of your opponent, knock it over, feel clever. One of those teaches you something and one of them is just theatre. Most dinner-table arguments are two straw men in a trench coat.
Here is the part that surprises people. Being told to be fair does almost nothing. Being made to argue the opposite does quite a lot. In two experiments with 150 undergraduates, students pushed to consider the opposite of their own view ended up measurably less biased than students simply instructed to be fair, accurate and unbiased. Wanting to be fair is a mood. Considering the opposite is a method. Francis Bacon had noticed the underlying flaw four centuries earlier: the human mind misses possibilities that sit at odds with what it already believes.
A second line of research points the same way. In three studies of negotiation, people who worked out what the other side was thinking and wanting — perspective taking — were better at spotting hidden agreements and at creating value for both sides. Empathy, the warmer cousin, did not help nearly as much, and sometimes made people concede too easily. The lesson for a family is precise: be curious about the other person's head, not only kind about their heart. And brief effort counts; even a short stretch of active perspective taking before a conversation improved the outcome.
Now the honest part, because this game can be misread. Steelmanning does not mean every side is equally right. Some claims are simply false, and a beautifully built argument for a false claim is still false. The point is the test you apply before deciding: if you cannot state the other side so well that the person says "yes, that's exactly what I mean", you have been arguing with somebody who does not exist. Fix that first. And you are allowed to finish the conversation still disagreeing. Understanding is not surrender — it is aiming before you speak.
Tonight it takes one sentence. Before you answer a disagreement, say the other person's point back to them. If they say "exactly", you have earned the right to reply.