Cause and effect distortions can be sneaky. This happens when someone thinks they know what caused something simply because the two things happened together. It’s like the rooster thinking that crowing makes the sun come up. He must be right. It happens every time. People do that a lot with their emotions. They’ll say someone made them angry, as if they had no responsibility for their emotions. Everyone understands what they mean, but people can go too far with this. If they do it to manipulate people, as in emotional blackmail, then you might want to say something like, “Even I am amazed at the power I have over your every emotion.” Or you could simply restate that you are doing what you do for perfectly good reasons and let them sort it out. After all, if you don’t pay attention to emotional manipulation and you DO pay attention to their mature, appropriate behavior, you will probably have a better time, and they will respect themselves more. It’s good to bring the best out in others. You could say that this is meta to the meta level, because when you produce a strategy that serves your personal well-being or higher values, then you have gone beyond coming up with cute responses to show other people that they are illogical. You have taken things to another level. It is understanding and using the meta-level that is important, not having a lot of snappy comebacks that could alienate people. This section was designed to build your knowledge and observation skills, not make you think you need to be sarcastic or directly confrontational all the time in real life.