{"id":267169,"date":"2010-02-02T14:51:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T19:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pon.harvard.edu\/?p=9665"},"modified":"2010-02-02T14:51:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T19:51:26","slug":"let-them-know-how-you-feel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/267169","title":{"rendered":"Let them know how you feel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adapted from \u201cYour Good Mood May Work Against You,\u201d first published in the <\/em>Negotiation<\/a> newsletter. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Just before a meeting with her boss, Cindy peeks into his secretary\u2019s office and whispers: \u201cHow\u2019s his mood today?\u201d When the secretary gives a thumb\u2019s up, Cindy decides the time is right to ask for a big raise.<\/p>\n

Intuitively, most of us wait until others are in a good mood before presenting controversial requests. Moreover, we try to keep this strategic thinking under wraps.<\/p>\n

Researchers Eduardo B. Andrade and Teck Ho of the University of California at Berkeley bring new evidence to bear on this conventional wisdom. The researchers divided their study participants into pairs, randomly assigned them to roles, and asked the \u201cproposers\u201d to divide a pot of money between themselves and the \u201creceivers.\u201d Only two divisions were allowed: a \u201cfair\u201d 50-50 division or an \u201cunfair\u201d division\u201475% for the proposer and 25% for the receiver. If the receiver said yes, the subjects received the proposed split. If the receiver said no, neither subject received anything.<\/p>\n

In a twist on this prototypical \u201cultimatum game,\u201d Andrade and Ho manipulated the receivers\u2019 moods. They tried to put half in a happy mood, in part by showing them a funny sitcom, and the other half in an angry mood, in part by showing them a disturbing movie clip.<\/p>\n

The proposers were told which clip their receivers had watched. Some of these proposers knew that their receivers were unaware that they had this knowledge; these proposers made significantly more unfair offers to receivers in the happy condition than to receivers in the angry condition. Other proposers knew that their receivers were<\/em> aware that they had this knowledge about the clips; these proposers did not<\/em> make unfair offers significantly more often.<\/p>\n

In plain English: Cindy is likely to feel comfortable negotiating aggressively with her boss\u2014as long as she thinks he isn\u2019t aware that she knows about his good mood. But suppose that the secretary announces, \u201cI told her that you\u2019re feeling great today!\u201d when she ushers Cindy into the office. Now Cindy is likely to be inhibited from trying to take advantage of the boss\u2019s expansive mood.<\/p>\n

This research provides important defensive advice: discuss your positive feelings openly at the outset of talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adapted from \u201cYour Good Mood May Work Against You,\u201d first published in the Negotiation newsletter. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Just before a meeting with her boss, Cindy peeks into his secretary\u2019s office and whispers: \u201cHow\u2019s his mood today?\u201d When the secretary gives a thumb\u2019s up, Cindy decides the time is right to ask for a big raise. Intuitively, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}