Friendly advice

I have a friend. He is kind of lonely and arrogant. He won’t help anyone. His family has been through a bad time. I didn’t know whether he was helping his family or not. We all know hearing advice from someone is really bad. So I used this strategy. One day I met him and spoke to him for a few minutes. At last I asked him whether he was helping his family. After a long pause he replied in the affirmative, it was too obvious that anyone would say yes for that question. The strategy is, if he had really helped his family, during the long pause he would have thought about his family problems, if not, I am damn sure that he will think about helping his family in the future. This strategy the same as that of an advice.