I'd also like to throw in music in there. A friend of mine did some research [sorry don't remember the article link] on negotiation and music influence before the negotiation. If I remember correctly, classical music made the negotiator soft. So, next time you want to be a tough negotiator, don't listen to classical music before and give a comfy chair to your opponent at a soft musicky place :-)
Of course you should keep in mind, that the objective of (most) negotiations should be to find a solution that's equitable to all parties. And the other guy should still be happy with his position after he slept a night on it.
The object of the negotiation itself is to seek equilibrium. That goal is best achieved, though, by each party to the negotiation acting out of pure self-interest, not ceding any unnecessary ground to the other. (The Nash equilibrium of the Iterated Prisoner's dilemma has both sides defect on every turn, in other words.) To "win" the negotiation, both sides should be primed "hard."
> That goal is best achieved, though, by each party to the negotiation acting out of pure self-interest, not ceding any unnecessary ground to the other.
That's true for certain cases. In an iterated game, possibly with more than two players, enlightened self-interest could make people seek a reputation for fairness and generosity.
Also -- have you looked at the ultimatum game? It works like this: Alice proposes how to split a dollar between herself and Bob. Bob can accept the division, and both get paid out by the game, or Bob can reject, and nobody gets anything.
Real Bobs tend to reject `unfair' proposals, even when the game is not iterated. That's not rational (at least within the game). So if Alice where driving as hard as she could go with a rational Bob, she won't get anything when playing with Humans.
> Real Bobs tend to reject `unfair' proposals, even when the game is not iterated. That's not rational (at least within the game).
It is rational when you add to the game the human consideration of post-game retaliation. The threat of revenge for injustice (whether by the loser, or an arbiter) creates the potential for "fairness and generosity." Real Bobs are made to stop playing.
Gah! And how is one supposed to verify any of the information in such an article, without paying the gatekeeper? It strikes me as the epitome of ethical failure in science to block access to knowledge, or to only sell it, or to somehow ration it to specific people.
Pay-per-view articles in scientific publications present a significant drag on progress and pose an ethical dilemma of the first order. Science (information and data ought to be free) and a market economy (I have something you want and will sell it to your for the highest price I can negotiate) are antithetical. See Robert Laughlin's The Crime of Reason and the Closing of the Scientific Mind.
I've had like a $5 chair that kills my back (jabs into it) whenever I slouch against it for the past year. Every couple of weeks I think to myself: "I really should go buy a more comfortable chair" and then I reprimand myself because I feel like if I'm slouching I'm not working as hard as I could be. People have told me I'm masochistic, but I'm happy to see someone else who thinks I'm not being totally irrational.
(Meta: Why is parent on -4? This comment is relevant, and in the light of the article, it might make sense for the OP to discourage themselves from slouching if they associate that with not working hard. If you think garply needs a more comfy chair, don't downvote him, tell him where to buy one!)
It's interesting to see research on this, since it seems to confirm some ideas from NLP on anchoring. I wonder how strong the effect is, and if multiple techniques can be combined, e.g. give your interviewer a soft chocolate cookie and hide a cushion under him when he's not looking? Also, I'd like to know if you can do it without people realising they have been manipulated? Actually, look at Derren Brown's The Heist -- people can be manipulated to an extremely high degree in this way, without even noticing (well, they noticed once they had robbed the security van and met up with Derren...)
I'm of the mindset that the objects you use most are the ones that should be given the most attention, simply because extra consideration and money spent is most likely to affect your quality of life.
For me, it would be:
* Bed
* Computer
* Desk chair
* Shoes
* Phone
... and so forth. So I won't think twice about spending extra on these objects since I spend the majority of my day interacting with them.
For seating, my rule is it has to be comfortable enough that I can fall asleep on/in it, and that I shouldn't notice the object I'm sitting on.
Besides, humanity has designed millions of chairs throughout history. Millions of iterations. There's no excuse that they still produce chairs that are genuinely uncomfortable, and you owe it to yourself to find one that really does work for you.
My wife and I hunted around for a while, and bought a frickin' awesome mattress. It does wonders to your attitude to not wake up sore and stiff. And I like that my toes finally don't hold up the end of the sheets (california king FTW, though finding sheets for it is a PITA).
And, personally, I think people pay far too little attention to their feet. Good shoes are worth the money (unless you're a barefooter, in which case no shoes is worth the money (or Vibrams)).
