It is fitting in light of the recent death of Peter Falk, who played a bumbling homicide detective in the 1970s television series Columbo, to discuss the upside of playing dumb. As Columbo, Falk would lull criminals into a false sense of security by playing dumb so he could trip them up and prove that they committed the crime he was investigating. Just like on TV, playing dumb can sometimes be a smart communication strategy.
Smart communicators sometimes play dumb to serve the larger purpose of maintaining interpersonal harmony. Sometimes people simply say foolish things, and when you hear something in a conversation that is best left alone, playing dumb can be an excellent strategy.
Not every comment merits a response, and sometimes issues come up in conversation that don’t even deserve acknowledgement. When you find yourself in this position, take a page from Lieutenant Columbo and play dumb.
Playing dumb doesn’t require much elaboration. Stick to three rules to make sure that the topic, question, or comment you are trying to ignore goes away.
Three rules of playing dumb
Rule #1: Hide nonverbal signals that you are playing dumb;
Rule #2: Don’t oversell your dumbness;
Rule #3: Don’t play dumb too often.
Rule #1 is the notion that you should never admit that you are playing dumb. Put on your best poker face and don’t give away that you are ignoring something. Rule #2 will help prevent your dumbness from being perceived as a permanent state, and rule #3 will ensure that you aren’t masking larger interpersonal problems by playing dumb. Heed these three rules, and you can safely play dumb occasionally.
Strongly consider playing dumb when communication topics that are generally unadvisable to talk about, like the timeless triad of sex, religion, and politics come up in a casual conversation. Also consider playing dumb when your conversational partner says something that you simply don’t think you should be hearing. And finally, play dumb when the other person says something that’s so obviously ill-advised that hearing no evil is a saintly response.
After you play dumb
After playing dumb, make sure that the conversational topic you are trying to avoid goes away—this was the purpose of playing dumb in the first place. There are three ways to do this.
First, if your dumb act leads the other person to switch topics, embrace the new topic. Playing dumb is likely to create some dead space (silence) in the conversation. Silence often exerts sufficient pressure on the other party to switch topics or establish new lines of inquiry. If so, embrace the new topic—as long as it isn’t something else that warrants the dumb treatment—and let the conversation move along.
Second, if your conversational partner doesn’t switch topics after you pretend to ignore the comment, switch topics on your own.
Third, if necessary, make a conversational exit. A conversation that encourages you to play dumb too many times or for too long is a conversation you should get out of.
Playing dumb can sometimes be a smart communication move. Don’t feel compelled to react every time an unwanted topic, comment, or question emerges in conversation. Let offending comments disappear without a trace when possible. Sometimes it’s in your best interest to hear no evil—or at least not to acknowledge it.