The researchers only evaluated items that had “likes” from more than 100 people.  The researchers used data from over 58,000 people as subjects.  The results were fascinating.

For example, likes of Sarah Palin, Indiana Jones, Swimming, and Pride and Prejudice were most predictive of the personality trait that the person was satisfied with life.  On the other hand, if the person liked “Gorillaz” “Hawthorne Heights” or Stewie Griffin, they were likely to be disatisfied.  In addition, if a person liked “Foursquare” or “Kaplan University”, they were more likely to be conscientious and well organized.  On the other hand, if they liked “Wes Anderson,” “Anime,” or “Join if Ur Fat,” then the person was more likely to be spontaneous.

Another way of looking at the likes would be in conjuction with each other.  If a person liked “The Godfather,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Plato,” and “Cheerleading,” that person would most likely be a high IQ, satisfied, liberal/artistic and extraverted person.

The ramifications of this research are vast.  This could be used in jury selection, in interrogation, and job interviews to say the least.

If you would like to know your own personality, you can test it at http://www.youarewhatyoulike.com

By Steven G. Mehta

“NEXT TIME YOU find yourself in a negotiation, don’t just throw out a round number. In a series of experiments, researchers from Columbia University found that offering a precise number—e.g., $4,925 compared to $5,000—resulted in a significantly more deferential counteroffer, due to the perception that a precise opening offer was more reasoned and informed.”

Mason, M. et al., “Precise Offers Are Potent Anchors: Conciliatory Counteroffers and Attributions of Knowledge in Negotiations,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (forthcoming).

source: http://bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/03/16/jihad-career-strategy/wAjvqSVRWDysHbGMmmX40N/story.html

The question that i would ask, is what is the best time to do such an offer.  I would suggest that making a final offer or close to final offer with such precision is much more effective in the litigation context than the early offers.  However, in much of the real world negotiations outside of litigation, having such an offer from the outset might give more credibility to the other side really thinking about why you made the offer so specific.  

The reality is that text message, while efficient, is a very flawed method of communicating.  According to longstanding research by Mehrabian, 93% of communication is lost if you are just relying on the words themselves – which is exclusively the realm of texts. Moreover, when people communicate in short bursts, it is easier to misunderstand the meaning of the text than in other forms of written communication that is longer. Indeed, according to researchers Kato and Akahori in 2005, the smaller the amount of emotional content in a text message led to an increased amount of anxiety and frustration in the reciever’s reaction.

According to recent research, by David Xu, assistant professor in the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University, text messaging also leads to a greater likelihood of people lying in the text message.  Dr. Xu found that subjects who communicated via text messages were 95 percent more likely to lie or decieve than if they had interacted via video, 31 percent more likely to report deception when compared to face-to-face, and 18 percent more likely if the interaction was via audio chat.

Xu said this kind of research has implications for consumers to avoid problems such as online fraud, and for businesses looking to promote trust and build a good image, Xu said.

This also has implications for negotiations.  It is important to make sure that important negotiations are not conducted over text but instead through other methods.  Indeed, many negotiations require subtle clues to be interpreted.  Those interprations cannot occur through text messages.

It is also important to note that one benefit, however, of texting is for socially anxious people. For those people who are afraid of a face to face interaction, texting is beneficial. Indeed, research has shown that texting reduces the anxiety levels of persons who have difficulty communicating face to face.

Research Source: Wichita State University (2012, January 26). People lie more when texting, study finds.ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2012/01/120125131120.htm

By Steven G. Mehta

It is very common in mediation and negotiation for parties to want to vent their anger, frustration, or angst.  However, according to several participants who are on the listening end of such venting, there is only so much venting that they can take or accept without feeling like they have to say something in response.  This post discusses a few techniques to primarily be able to re-start the conversation from your perspective.

First, be careful to cut short a session when a person feels that they need to vent.  Sometimes, your perception of time is different than the other person’s.  Don’t simply judge the time to interrupt as being the one when the other person repeats themselves.  Sometimes, repeating a concept out loud is part of the process of venting and allows the person to digest their own feelings by expressing them again.  In fact, many times, the person’s own feelings may surprise himself or herself. In this situation, it is better to err on the side of allowing too much, rather than too little venting.

Second, if you feel like you have to interject a comment, be careful not to be defensive about your position.  Many people have the tendency to simply wait to present their position and come across as sounding defensive about their position, rather than actually wanting to hear the other perspective.

Third, when you do interject or interrupt, be careful in how you do it.  With some people, you may feel like that there is no right time, because they constantly have an uninterrupted flow of words that cannot be broken.  In those occasions, try the following as suggested by Linda Sapadin, Ph.D in the World of Psychology.  She provides 8 tips on how to interrupt.  Here are a few:

1. Segue into another topic.

   “That’s some story. But now I’d like to talk about something more upbeat.”

2. Be direct.

   “I need to interrupt you. I want to tell you what happened to me yesterday.”

3. Use the person’s name (always an attention-getter), then redirect.

   “Jen, I get what you’re saying; it happened to me too.”

4. Speak about your time situation.

   “Jared, I only have another minute to chat.”

These concepts. can be helpful in mediations or in negotiations.  

Take for example in the recent election cycle.  After Mitt Romney’s son made the comment about wanting to take a swing at Obama, Romney’s son then tried to exert dominance in the third debate by patting President Obama on the back.  President Obama then responded by touching Romney’s son at the end on the back.  Politicians are very astute in their knowledge of touch and constantly jockey to get the last “touch.”

Recently, researchers have proven this exact point. Jeroen Camps and his colleagues had 74 student participants perform a maze challenge in a race against a partner. The race was a competition.  In some of the experiment, the partner patted the losing subject on the shoulder three times, smiled and wished them good luck on the next one.  The control group didn’t have the touching of the shoulder.  Next the subjects entered into a game that required cooperation — the Dictator Game.

The revealing finding was that participants who’d been patted on the shoulder shared…[less] with their partner, suggesting that touch can backfire when it’s performed in a competitive context, perhaps because it’s interpreted as a gesture of dominance. Interestingly, there was no link between participants’ awareness of whether they’d been touched and their sharing behaviour; participants who remembered the touch rated it as neutral; and the partner wasn’t rated as more unpleasant in the touch condition. All of which suggests the adverse effect of touch on later cooperation was probably non-conscious.

A second study was similar but this time participants and their partner…either competed against each other on a puzzle or they cooperated. Again, afterwards, the partner wished them luck, smiled, and either did or didn’t pat them on the shoulder at the end, before they both moved to another room to play the dictator game. The results were clear – in a competitive context, touched participants subsequently shared fewer movie-prize credits with their partner, compared with those participants who weren’t touched. By contrast, in the cooperative context, touched participants went on to be more generous with their partner, as compared with participants who weren’t touched. (Camps, J., Tuteleers, C., Stouten, J., and Nelissen, J. (2012). A situational touch: How touch affects people’s decision behaviour. Social Influence, 1-14 DOI:10.1080/15534510.2012.719479; BPS Digest)

“Despite what some people might think, touching someone else may thus not always have desirable social consequences,” the researchers said. “A simple tap on the shoulder, even with the best intent, will do nothing but harm when used in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The ramifications for touch can be significant in negotiations and mediation.  You have to be careful to think about whether you are in a competitive negotiation or cooperative process.  Many negotiations in the litigation context can be extremely competitive and win-lose zero sum game.  On the other hand, if you are negotiating a joint venture in a cooperative setting or assisting as a mediator, touch might be beneficial.  The importance of this research is that you must be careful to analyze the situation before first engaging in touch.  Then consider what the effect might be on the other and how they might interpret that touch.

By Steven G. Mehta

“A study led by Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia explains part of what may happen. The researchers found that ‘Weighing the plausibility and the source of a message is cognitively more difficult than simply accepting that the message is true — it requires additional motivational and cognitiveresources.’

If the subject isn’t very important to you or you have other things on your mind, misinformation is more likely to take hold, according to the researchers. They point out that rejecting false information requires more cognitive effort than just taking it in. That is, weighing how plausible a message is, or assessing the reliability of its source, is more difficult, cognitively, than simply accepting that the message is true. In short, it takes more mental work. And if the topic isn’t very important to you or you have other things on your mind, the misinformation is more likely to take hold.”  (Pyschology Today, Why You’re Likely to Believe Political Lies )

When a person does take the time and effort to question the lie, they only take limited mental resources to do so.  They ask questions such as does this fit within my understanding of the world?  Do others believe it?  Is the source reliable?  So in essence, they filter the information even when they are questioning it.  As such, in order for the truth to come out, it must first overcome the mental laziness, and then must find its way through limited mental filters.

The problem with that filtration system is that only information that is consistent with your own beliefs will come through.  So on many occassions, the filter creates a self fulfilling prophecy that the false information will be believed.  In other words a lie is given, filtered, and then believed, which then reinforces your position or belief about issues related to the lie.

Moreover, when someone tries to demonstrate factually that the developed viewpoint is wrong, the entrenched parties often become even further entrenched citing the inaccuracy of the data.  For example, “The GOP had emphasized their conviction that unemployment would remain above 8 percent — and benefit Romney’s campaign. However, following the report that unemployment dropped to 7.8 percent during September, several Republican spokesmen immediately claimed that the figures had been falsified. And despite factual corroboration that the numbers were accurately determined, some doubled-down on their allegation that a conspiracy to cook the numbers must have occurred. ” (pyschology today)

The consequences of this misinformation are dramatic for mediation and litigation.  First, this demonstrates why people might believe the statements of experts.  At first, the information seems to be plausible; second, it fits into the system of beliefs that the juror believes, and thus becomes even more plausible.  Finally, in order for a person to really break down the lie, that juror must really care.  Many jurors do care; but certainly others can’t be bothered.  They don’t care enough to break down the intricate lie.  Thus they decide to accept it.  At least this way, they can go home earlier.

Second, in mediation the problem persists with the parties.  Many times, regardless of what facts you might present to one side or the other, they simply won’t believe the facts.  Instead,  you must work to change their view within their belief system.  In other words, you must find something that they believe and apply it to convince them that the position that they have taken is contrary to their beliefs.   In order to do this you must understand the specific advocacy position as it relates to the negotiation, and then look to their interests and beliefs.

Well interestingly enough some research demonstrates that my anecodotal experience is not necessarily far from the truth.

Psychologist Barbara Frederickson is an expert on flourishing and has been an advocate of finding ways to bring more positive emotions into our lives. In her research she discovered a critical 3 to 1 ratio, indicating that we need to have three positive emotions for every negative one in order to thrive. (via Barking Up the Wrong Tree).  

Another researcher,  Ed Diener, in his book Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth, also demonstrated that the number of good interactions to offset a bad interaction depends on the relationship.  His conclusions are set forth in the attached chart.

So what does that mean to negotiations, mediation, and the general world.  A lot:  Your hist0ry can affect your future, and it takes a lot more effort to repair something than it does to break it.  As negotiators, it is far better to try to maintain good relations, because if you don’t it is much harder to come back from a bad impression — especially because your relationship is not as close as some of the relationship in the chart.  Imagine where you as negotiating partners or opposing counsel fall in relation to the closeness of the connection and how many good interactions are necessary to offset one bad one.  I would hope that you can beat the odds of a mother-in-law.  But either way, you are not as close to your opposing counsel as you are to your children or parents.  As such, it will take a lot of good interactions to offset one bad interaction.

The Moral: Do Unto Others Better Than You would Do to Yourself in Negotiations or Pay the Price.

First, according to a study in the journal of Social Pyschology, we are 30% more accurate at predicting performance for a third party than we are at predicting our own future performance. According to the research, we base predictions about others on hard facts, but brush aside our own failures or shortcomings as aberrations.

Second, Yale psychologists have discovered that when we are in the middle of a “game” we are less likely to predict the performance of the game than when we are hypothetically playing the game. In other words, if we are in the midst of a problem or activity, our impartiality is less than if we were hypothetically thinking about that same activity.

Third, Casino operators count on the next bias which is often called the wishful thinking bias. Researchers have discovered that when there is an equal chance of a good outcome versus a bad outcome, study participants tend to believe that the good outcome will occur despite knowing that the evidence is contrary.

These biases demonstrate one of the powerful tools of mediation. Having an “unbiased” third party help to look at the outcome and evidence. A neutral mediator doesn’t or shouldn’t suffer from these biases; indeed, according to the first study, the mediator — when presented with all the facts — should have a higher likelihood of predicting the future than the parties themselves.

However, the mere fact that a mediator may be unbiased does not mean that the mediator’s views are determinative. They are merely helpful guides and perspectives that you may not otherwise see because you are too entrenched in the game or simply have a case of “wishful thinking.”

Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if I had stuck with my law career and mediation career together and kept both options open. According to a recent article by Pyschology Today, it is possible I may not have done either very well.

Based on a 20 year study, Timothy Judge of Notre Dame concludes that the simple ability to “confidently choose one course of action while abandoning others” may be a key trait towards success. Most people lack the mental acuity and focus to close the door on projects that may detract from their goal.

The article cites three great examples. Steve Jobs who quit college to start Apple, and then later cut 70% of Apple’s product line to pave the way for success; Howard Schultz who saved Starbucks — a nearly dead coffee house — by eliminating most of its products and focusing solely on coffee; and Henry Ford who quit family farming to build the car and who stated “Be ready to revise any system, scrap any methods, abandon any theory if the success of the job demands it.”

The reality in the context of mediation is that in my opinion there are thousands of people who want to be mediators; but there are very few that are willing to scrap it all to succeed. My advice to budding mediators, attorneys, or any other profession: Jump in with both feet, the worst that can happen is that you get wet, but maybe, just maybe, you will start to swim.