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Negotiations: Starting high and ending with nothing
In October of 2011, we wrote a blog post on negotiating your salary. That post was based on research advising the negotiator to start “high”. At the time we cautioned against applying this wisdom since it was only one study. Sometimes we are prescient! Or in this case, we were appropriately cautious/skeptical.
New research says you run the risk of alienating your fellow negotiator and having negotiations break down entirely. Common wisdom, according to the researchers, suggests aggressive first offers (high if you are selling, low if you are buying). These researchers wanted to see how often an extreme first offer results in a negotiation impasse or breakdown. Does an extreme offer signal strength, or a simply a lack of interest in being reasonable and getting the case settled?
What they found is counter-intuitive. They looked at both how often negotiators were offended by extreme first offers and the negotiator’s sense of power (i.e., how many other options do you have).
They found that extreme first offers raised the incidence of people walking away from negotiations.
Almost everyone was offended by the extreme offers but only those negotiators with lower power walk away from the negotiation.
Further, beginning with an extreme first offer did not seem to result in a superior eventual outcome for the aggressive negotiator.
You would think that those with high power (i.e., with more options) would be the first to walk away. In our experience–the party with lower power may bluster and complain, but they don’t often walk away unless they have nothing to lose. They are trapped.
We recently had a case like this where the plaintiff would end up with $4 million dollars whether he prevailed or not. If he prevailed, he would potentially end up with a higher award. There was no incentive for him to “go away” or settle even though he was a scoundrel in the eyes of mock jurors. The defendant had to choose whether to proceed and bear the cost of litigation–or give him the money. It was a tough situation and certainly one that didn’t feel “fair” to the plaintiff.
Perhaps the situation researchers used in this study (either a personal rental lease or a corporate lease) is simply too far afield from the negotiations involved in high stakes (emotionally and financially) litigation. On the other hand, the counter-intuitive finding about negotiating with the low-power party is a good cautionary tale.
Schweinsberg, M., Ku, G., Wang, C., & Pillutla, M. (2012). Starting high and ending with nothing: The role of anchors and power in negotiations Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48 (1), 226-231 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.07.005
Simple Jury Persuasion: Activate their values
The first entry in our Simple Jury Persuasion series was titled “There is no such thing as persuasion”. The thesis was that you should craft your story to fit the jurors–rather than trying to pull them in your direction.
It’s more than two years (and a lot of posts) later and we still know it to be true. The difference is that now, we have much more research supporting the idea that values and attitudes lead the way in whether jurors ‘hear’ your trial story as also being their own.
There’s a long-standing argument about whether demographics (like age, race, gender, education, and more) can be used effectively to identify jurors good for your particular case. Trial consultants have historically said “no they don’t”. Occasionally we’ll do a mock trial where one of those variables is related to eventual verdict but we’re much more likely to see attitudes, beliefs and values pointing to ultimate verdict. And in those cases where a demographic variable appears relevant, it is usually due to a common life experience that shaped their viewpoint, and the key life experience would apply as well to people of another demographic segment.
In three different studies, researchers wanted to see if activating important values prior to the encountering of a persuasive message would enhance message processing. They had participants rate the importance of six different values (e.g., self-respect, loyalty, freedom, wealth, social power, and unity). They divided the values up into more important to the group (e.g., self-respect, loyalty and freedom) or less important (e.g., wealth, social power and unity).
What they found was that activating the ‘important values’–as rated by each participant–prior to hearing the persuasive message was helpful in the participant actually being persuaded. The researchers actually displayed the value labels on a screen (and in other ways)–the participant would see “self-respect” (for example) for a second or so prior to focusing on the message. We imagine there would be an issue with that in the courtroom. But there are other ways to “activate” values.
Activate as early as voir dire: Prime a receptive attitude in jurors by establishing a tone of commonly held values– let them know that what is important to them is important to you. Pay attention in voir dire and jury selection to the ways your jurors answer value and attitude based questions. If your client has visible negatives, you want to avoid jurors who express strong beliefs that will make it uncomfortable for them to support your client and quietly note those who are more open and tolerant.
Make your client ‘like’ the jurors: Introduce your client in a way that touches on universally held values–such as family, community involvement, education, church activities, volunteering, etc.
Use case themes tied to values: Tell your story in a way that touches on values and beliefs that jurors share. You can tell a story about a broken contract with themes of trust, good intentions or bad ones, and keeping your word.
Remember to be responsible: And this is different that ‘taking responsibility’ for the events at issue. Jurors are very focused on personal responsibility these days and want to see your client take responsibility for that for which it is truly appropriate to take responsibility.
Use what you say and how you introduce your client and tell their story to activate values in the jurors. The idea of shared values and beliefs makes whatever story you tell less threatening to jurors. Less threatening messages are less resisted and more likely to be ‘heard’ by jurors with disparate life experiences from your client.
Blankenship, K., & Wegener, D. (2011). Value Activation and Processing of Persuasive Messages Social Psychological and Personality Science DOI: 10.1177/1948550611424084
Feel the power of that deep and resonant voice!
Remember our Simple Jury Persuasion post on channeling James Earl Jones? Well, here’s another good reason to use a deep and resonant voice! And (of course) it’s backed up by research published in a peer reviewed journal.
As you may recall, earlier research found that women are particularly prone to remember information given to them in a deep voice. So there are reasons to use your own deep voice or to pluck a baritone associate from obscurity to gain practice in the courtroom. But now, we have information that there is benefit to the speaker with that deep voice as well as persuasive power for the listener.
Researchers knew from the literature on embodied cognition that when we speak, we influence not only others but we also feed our own reaction. For example, making sounds of distress, joy, sadness or anger often results in corresponding emotions within. They were also interested in the relationship of hearing a low voice and corresponding assumptions of the speaker being powerful. They wondered what would happen if they had research participants either raise their voice pitch (i.e., speak higher) or lower their voice pitch (i.e., speak in a lower tone than usual).
And the results? When you speak in tone lower than your usual voice pitch, you feel more powerful and you think more abstractly! When research participants listened to someone else speaking in a low voice, it had no influence on their own feelings of power or ability to think abstractly. They had to actually be doing the speaking themselves. In other words, when your voice drops in tone (not just in volume), not only do others pay closer attention, but you measure your words more meaningfully as well.
“The present results imply that when one needs to be powerful (for instance, when being placed in a high-power role or when trying to persuade others), lowering one’s voice is sufficient to feel and think like a powerful person and may help to get the job done.”
While we don’t necessarily recommend you have a special “deep and resonant courtroom-only voice”–there are actors and news anchors who have a special voice they use for certain situations. The point is that when you hear that deeper voice emanating from yourself, you feel more powerful and think more abstractly.
It’s an intriguing idea for courtroom performance–but would likely be a less useful and strategic tool for female attorneys. Women can still tilt heads and strike poses though so a deep voice isn’t everything! It will be interesting to see whether this same result is seen in research about women. Overall though, ditzy or flighty characters in movies and television are usually played by people with higher (even squeaky) voices, while gravitas is typically represented by lower (baritone or alto) voices.
Stel, M., van Dijk, E., Smith, P., van Dijk, W., & Djalal, F. (2011). Lowering the Pitch of Your Voice Makes You Feel More Powerful and Think More Abstractly. Social Psychological and Personality Science DOI: 10.1177/1948550611427610
R-rated pronouns and adjectives?
I never heard of the ‘secret life of pronouns’ nor the “dark side of adjectives” when I was growing up. Pronouns and adjectives were staid and predictable parts of speech that I struggled to make sense of in order to diagram sentences in [totally useless] homework assignments.
Now, however, we have pronouns revealing hidden meanings and manipulations. And guess what those bad-boy adjectives do? They cloud and obscure your intent. Really? I spend decades in elementary, junior high, high school, college and graduate school learning how to put adjectives into my writing and it makes my writing worse? Really?
Neuromarketing blog says the simpler the writing, the more likely it will go viral. We are not that interested in “going viral” with our posts but we are interested in what contributes to greater engagement and understanding in what we say and what we write. [Oh, who are we kidding? We love it when our posts echo through the information universe. We just don't like the adjective 'viral'.]
It takes confidence and experience to make how you talk and write less academic and less pedantic. We think of academic style writing as a skill that helps one to succeed in school and, if not modified, to fail in business. Here’s what we’ve learned from our mock jurors. And our moms too.
Keep it simple. Ideas that are spoken plainly are more credible. The simple story usually wins.
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Pennebaker, J. (2011). The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us. Bloomsbury Press.
Don’t try to bend me to your will!
Remember Uri Geller of spoon-bending fame? He could bend spoons as if they were Gumby. Although he now describes himself as a “mystifier”, he initially described himself as a psychic. And many believed. Their minds were changed by their observations of Mr. Geller.
It isn’t so easy in the realm of things that really matter. When confronted with new information on social issues, like the economy or the environment, the less we know, the more we resist becoming well-informed! The more pressing and important the issue–the stronger our resistance to learning. The researchers refer to this as “ignorance is bliss”. They studied the effect in two countries: Canada and the United States.
Researchers gave either a complex or simple description of the economy to Canadian adults (58 participants, average age 42). Those who were given the complex description saw themselves as more helpless to get through the economic downturn, had more dependence on/trust in the government to manage the economy and had less desire to learn more about the issue.
American subjects (163 participants, average age 32) gave their opinions on natural resource management and then read a statement declaring the US had less than forty years of oil supplies. Similar results were found–those who saw themselves as lacking knowledge about oil supplies both avoided negative information about the issue and became even more reluctant to learn more when the need was urgent.
The researchers say this is a result of 1) a lack of information about an issue 2) resulting in increased trust in the government and then 3) avoidance of information that would challenge their trust in the government. They concluded that people simply do not want to understand pressing social issues. We had to read this one twice. The research findings are certainly inconsistent with our experience. We believe that the researchers may be trying to over-simplify.
First, we see fewer and fewer mock jurors who trust the government. Whether they are well versed in complex issues or not, they are increasingly skeptical.
Second, we’ve done multiple mock trials and concept focus groups on both the economy and the energy industry and have learned there are pretty straightforward ways to help jurors believe they can understand (as well as helping them actually understand) what they need to grasp to make decisions on complex cases.
The researchers do mention that “participants who felt an issue was “above their heads” reported an increased desire to adopt an “ignorance is bliss” mentality toward that issue”. And perhaps therein lies the difference.
Academic research is all about describing behavior within a certain set of variables. They make no attempt to shape behavior or modify it. In the eyes of researchers, it is what it is. Applied research, such as the focus groups we conduct for clients, explore where people start getting lost, what they do with their confusion, and how we can satisfy their need to know through a better story, a better witness, or better evidence.
Litigation advocacy involves empowering people to understand more than they believe they can understand, so they can feel confident in their decision-making. We make repeated attempts to help real people understand complex information and feel competent to make judgments on it.
We prefer our work to theirs!
Shepherd S, & Kay AC (2011). On the perpetuation of ignorance: System dependence, system justification, and the motivated avoidance of sociopolitical information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology PMID: 22059846
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