A Way Of Thinking To Help Understand Another Person

What is Miller's Law and what is it for?

Miller's Law was formulated by George Miller, Princeton Professor and respected psychologist. It reminds us of the importance of suspending judgment about what someone else is saying, so one can first try to understand what the person is saying without overly tinting it with our own colored glasses.

It goes like this: To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.

Applying Miller's Law is not easy. We are so used to trying to get our message across, and judging and interpreting the meaning of what other people say that we tend to respond too quickly, often without having any signficant understanding of the other person.

If there is a single "golden rule" of communication, this may be it.