As you connect with someone in conversation your trust in each other gradually develops as the conversation proceeds. However, sometimes people act as if they are connecting when they are only pretending, and with this false connection they play all manner of games.

If someone is playing a game with you, you might feel uncomfortable and then attribute the reason to your own failings in conversation. So it's good to be able to recognize when someone is playing a game and have counter-moves ready.

12.1    The Status Game

Keith Johnstone includes a chapter on status in Impro, his book on improvisation for actors. In observing people he noticed how status plays a major part in human conversation and he describes how humans play complex games of one-upmanship that are constantly fluctuating and readjusting.

Someone's status often accords with their role in real life, so you'd expect someone with social prominence, wealth and education to have high status; but it doesn't necessarily work like that. A condescending waiter may at that moment be high status while his customer, an awkward professor, is low status. It is high status to top someone's comment with a superior comment of the ”my boat/house/salary's bigger than yours” variety. It's also high status to play “one-downmanship”, where you claim that your misfortune is worse than the other person's. For example, “You may have had a hernia operation, but I actually died for several seconds on the operating table.” Low status is played out in agreeing, paying deference and being subservient to the high status player.

Status games are incredibly common in conversation. Human interaction is seldom neutral in terms of status, and in conversation people constantly adjust their status in relation to each other. Many conversations are subtle power plays with each player jockeying for position whilst attempting to disguise their ploys. Every player is trying to win the game, and that involves creating losers. Such conversations can seem like normal social intercourse, but there's a competitive current constantly running underneath that under a guise of pleasantness can become quite nasty.

You weave intricate webs when you play status games. If you win a point too comprehensively, other people in the conversation may gang together to isolate you, and then you have to make a low status comment to get back in the game again.

Here's a conversation where new acquaintances are discussing holidays.

(Slightly higher status – that “stunning” tops “nice and safe”, and “only accessible by boat” sounds superior too.)

(Too strong higher status.)

(Blocking the high status.)

(Supporting the block with a joking put-down.)

Ann and Sara laugh. (Conspiracy against Cathy.)

(Goes lower status to adjust and re-enter the group.)

Keith Johnstone describes the significance of body language in status games. High status players take up a lot of space, move deliberately and hold strong eye contact. Low status players shrink into a small space; constantly fidget with their hair or face, make small meaningless noises, and glance briefly at you, then glance away.

Some people play the game in an obvious way with big power gestures. Others play a hidden game, with subtle power shifts, in flux all the time. In some small groups, the interplay of shifting status is as complex as a game of chess!

12.2    The Manipulation Game

Sales manuals have always suggested ways to manipulate people through conversation. One of the ways people are manipulated is through their unwillingness to break certain accepted codes of conduct. Some salespeople don't play by the same social rules as the rest of us and exploit people's good will. As soon as you suspect that someone is using a sales technique rather than taking part in a genuine conversation, put up your guard and stop considering the exchange a conversation, because it isn't – it's a sales pitch. The rules are different.

A sales person asks you various questions aiming to lead to a final yes from you. Customers who don't like to be impolite by saying no to every question find themselves cornered into saying yes at the end. To play your side of the game – not to be sold to if you don't want to – you don't need to block with a series of no's and feel impolite doing it. Instead, answer briskly and positively, very happy to agree but never to be convinced. Here's a car salesperson in action:

Agreement without being convinced takes the wind out of their sails. They can't push and persuade if you refuse to play their game. Changing the subject at the end isn't a bad move either!

12.3    Old Games

Conversations sometimes get stuck in a groove when two participants play the same tune over and over again. For example, one partner plays bully and the other victim, and time and again, over the years, their conversations slip into that groove:

Or one person always acts helpless, and the other person regularly comes to the rescue.

If the second person stopped colluding in the habitual dance, they might say instead:

Thus forcing the first person to abandon their whining child role.

The “Yes but” game is a familiar one to a lot of people. A rescuer offers help and advice to a victim, and is continually rebutted by “yes but”.

Usually the questioner just gives up defeated, or makes a summarizing comment about how hard it is to get jobs these days. And the victim has won – again.

Eric Berne describes various such stuck roles in his book Games People Play. He suggests that at different times people act like adult, child or parent. To the simple question, “Are you joining us for dinner in town tonight?” one person might answer straightforwardly like an adult: “Yes, I'd like to” or “No, I'm afraid I can't.” Another person might act like a child: “Why? Do you think I can't manage on my own?” A third person might act like a parent, treating the other person like a child: “You'd save your money if you ate at home more often.”

Many people carry on for years thinking they're having unique conversations when they're playing an old familiar game. The biggest leap to escape from this is to realize you are playing a game.

12.4    Naming the Game

Another way to counteract such games is to step outside the matrix and name the game. For example, “I've asked you three questions, and each time you have answered, ‘yes, but’.”

Naming what you perceive can often unblock a conversation that has got stuck. If one party is hiding a strong emotion, it's often useful to name what you notice without accusation: “I'm aware that you are sounding flat. What's that about?” Or, “I'm feeling stuck in this conversation. Are you feeling that too?”

This can be especially useful if the other person is mocking, belittling, or being cynical or sarcastic. You may try confronting the behaviour and they refuse to be pinned down. “Of course I wasn't being sarcastic – can't you take a joke?” If that happens, name specifically what you perceived: “You did or said specifically this, and I made the following meaning from it. This is what is going on.”