Negotiation
We negotiate far more often than we think: a salary, a price, whose turn it is to do the dishes. This is where we gather what psychology and game theory know about the moment two people want different things and still have to reach an agreement.
Roger Fisher, a law professor at Harvard, didn't give his students a formula for negotiating better. He gave them a single question that ch…
Daniel Kahneman didn't just study the anchoring effect in laboratories: he also taught it in his negotiation classes. His advice for handli…
A woman signs the contract for a new car. The tradein value of her old car has just dropped below what she'd originally been promised.
In December 1948, a veteran senator from Texas decided to teach the newly elected Lyndon B. Johnson a lesson in humility, deliberately offe…
The prisoner's dilemma does not prove that people are selfish. It proves something more uncomfortable: that two reasonable people, each doi…
A middleaged man is admitted to hospital with chest pain. The doctor considers him low risk and keeps him on the ward with a monitor.
In 1944, a writer going through a rough patch ran into two men, by chance, at New York's famous 21 Club, both capable of deciding the rest…
In 1968, while the United States chose its president, a foreign policy adviser with no official position did something unusual: he promised…
Sun Tzu has his own aisle in every business bookstore. Lao Tzu doesn't, and that's a shame: the Tao Te Ching says more about how to lead wi…
The accommodating negotiator style prioritizes the relationship over the outcome: it yields easily to keep the peace with the other party.…
The collaborative negotiator style looks for solutions that benefit both sides: it understands the other party's interests before proposing…
The competitive negotiator style prioritizes its own outcome: it defends its position firmly, even at the cost of some tension. Negotiation…
The compromising negotiator style looks for a reasonable middle ground for both sides: it gives up something in exchange for the other side…
The avoidant negotiator style prefers to dodge conflict: it postpones or avoids negotiation rather than facing it directly. Research calls…
In 1926, a man who introduced himself as a count asked Al Capone for 50,000 dollars. Two months later he walked back into Capone's office a…
A boy of eleven or twelve is selling fivedollar tickets to a Boy Scout show. The passerby he approaches says no.
Hitting a punching bag while thinking about whoever drove you up the wall seems like the healthiest way to let rage out. In 2002, an Americ…
Two men are arguing at a table beside Lake Ohrid, in Macedonia. They have been talking over each other for a while, louder and louder.
You never need to lie in a negotiation. That is the claim of Steve Gates, the founder of a consultancy that has spent years training negoti…
About 3,750 years ago, a king of Babylon had a rule carved into a black stone more than two meters tall that we still repeat today: if a ma…
A man is in a park. Two strangers playing with a frisbee throw it to him and, for a while, the three of them play together.