Hard Ass
The hardness of chairs and their effect on negotiating
Welcome!
“The Argienti stopped moving, and the one nearest Erasmus said, “Give us the pendant and we will make your death painless.”
“Erasmus frowned. That…really wasn’t a very good place to start negotiations, to be completely honest.”
~ M.J. Raynaud ~
Our senses inform our behavior. A study published in Science (2010) found that sitting in a hard chair was associated with how hard they flexible they were when negotiating.
Among participants who made a second offer, hard chairs indeed produced less change in offer price (M = $896.5, SD = $529.6) than did soft chairs (M= $1243.6, SD = $775.9), F(1, 66) = 4.30, P = 0.042. Controlling for whether people reported wanting to buy a car in the next year strengthened this effect, F(1, 65) = 6.95, P = 0.010. Thus, hardness produces perceptions of strictness, rigidity, and stability, reducing change from one’s initial decisions, even when the touch experience is passive in nature. These findings highlight the metaphorical specificity of haptic priming effects: Instead of changing the overall valence of evaluations, hard objects made others seem both more negative (strict and rigid) and more positive (stable), with corresponding effects on decision-making.
Another study in Science (2008) found that offering a warm beverage to another might have interpersonal benefits. Study participants who held a warm beverage estimated a stranger’s personality to be warmer than when the participant was holding a cold beverage.
A 2012 study found that having to look up at someone made them look more powerful. This was true for objects as well; they seemed more powerful when viewed at an upward angle.
Not only the hardness of a chair affects the sitter, a paper from 2012 found that smaller uncomfortable chairs lowered the effective power of the person in the chair.
Of course there is more to negotiations than the tactile. Culture has a tremendous influence as to how negotiations are handled. The World Economic Forum has put together this primer on negotiating differences between countries.
"Determining national characteristics is treading a minefield of inaccurate assessment and surprising exception. There is, however, such a thing as a national norm," he writes. …
Americans lay their cards on the table and resolve disagreements quickly with one or both sides making concessions. …
Indonesians tend to be very deferential conversationalists, sometimes to the point of ambiguity.
Finale
“Everything is a negotiation with you, Brekker. You probably bartered your way out of the womb.”
~ Leigh Bardugo ~
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Your friend,
DJ