Disagreements are a fact of life, whether you're online or off it. But it's a fact universally acknowledged that arguments are frequently more entrenched on the internet.

Luckily, for the commenters and Facebook-feuders of the web, a new study from researchers at Cornell suggests that there are some specific techniques you can use to win arguments online. (Short of never engaging at all, of course, which is a victory of its own kind).

Need to deal that relative posting conspiracy memes all over Facebook? Follow these tips.

The study, which will be presented in April at the International World Wide Web Conference, analysed 18,000 threads in the subreddit r/changemyview over a 2.5-year period. The forum is an unusually open-minded place: Users post their opinions on topics ranging from comic books to capital punishment and invite people to persuade them that they're wrong. If the original poster is persuaded, he awards his opponent a "delta," the mathematical symbol for change; if he's not persuaded, he does nothing.

That last bit is important, because it allowed researchers to identify and analyse the arguments that actually change people's minds. And while they were looking at r/changemyview specifically, Cornell's Chenhao Tan — a PhD candidate in computer science and the corresponding author of the paper — said they believe their findings can be generalised to other online settings and social networks. So if you want to shut down the latest conspiracy meme on Facebook, or if you'd like to push back against a political campaigner in your Tinder matches, try the following techniques: