Dr. Heidi Grant

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How To Recognize Motivational Strengths (Yours, and Everyone Else’s)

January 17, 2011 by Heidi Grant Leave a Comment

From my Fast Company blog:

Why do colleagues working toward a common goal so often fail to see eye-to-eye when it comes to achieving it?  At times, you feel like you aren’t on the same page, or even the same planet, as your coworkers, even when everyone involved is clearly capable and has a proven track-record of success.  Why the disconnect?

The answer is a remarkably simple one:  There is more than one way to look at the same goal.  Take for example a goal that many of us share:  I want to do my job exceptionally well.   For some of us, doing our jobs well is about achievement and accomplishment – we have what psychologists call a promotion focus.  In the language of economics, promotion focus is about maximizing gains and avoiding missed opportunities.

For others, doing our jobs well is about security, about not losing the positions you’ve worked so hard for.  This prevention focus places the emphasis on avoiding danger, fulfilling responsibilities, and doing what feel you ought to do.  In economic terms, it’s about minimizing losses, trying to hang on to what you’ve got.

Promotion and prevention-focused people work differently to reach the same goal.  They use different strategies, have different strengths, and are prone to different kinds of mistakes.  One group will be motivated by applause, the other by criticism.  One group may give up too soon – the other may not know when to quit.

So, do you spend your life pursuing accomplishments and accolades, reaching for the stars? Or are you busy fulfilling your duties and responsibilities – being the person everyone can count on? Start by identifying your focus, and then use the information below to better understand and embrace your strengths, your potential weaknesses, and the strategies that will work best for you.

What Motivates You – Criticism or Praise?

When you are promotion-focused, your motivation feels like eagerness – an enthusiastic desire to really go for it.  Eagerness is enhanced by positive feedback –the more you are succeeding, the more motivated you become. Confidence heightens your energy and intensity. Doubting yourself takes the wind right out of your sails.

When you are prevention-focused, your motivation feels like vigilance – you are on the lookout for danger.    Vigilance actually increases in response to negative feedback or self-doubt.  There’s nothing like the looming possibility of failure to get your prevention juices flowing.  Over-confidence or effusive praise, however, may lead you to let down your guard, and undermine your motivation.

Do You Embrace Risk, or Avoid It?

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” pretty much captures the promotion-focused philosophy. The promotion-minded have a habit of saying “yes” to every opportunity, having what psychologists call a risky bias.  Prevention-minded people, on the other hand, are cautious. They tend to say “no” more, or having a more conservative bias.

These biases manifest themselves in all sorts of ways.  For example, people with prevention goals are reluctant to disengage from one activity to try another, preferring the devil they know to the one they don’t. But their conservative nature also makes them less likely than their risk-loving colleagues to procrastinate, for fear that they won’t have time to get the job done.

Is Your Thinking Abstract or Concrete?

When people have promotion goals, they feel free to be more exploratory and abstract in their thinking.  They brainstorm.  They generate lots of options and possibilities to reach their ideals, and are more creative.  They are also particularly good at picking up on connecting themes or synthesizing information.

In pursuit of prevention goals, abstraction and creativity seems reckless and time-consuming. Prevention-focused thinking is concrete and specific – you pick a plan and stick to it. The prevention-minded are great with details, and have better memory for what they’ve seen and what’s still needs to be done.

Speed or Accuracy?

Executing any modestly complicated task involves what psychologists call a speed-accuracy tradeoff.  The faster you go, the more mistakes you make.  But going slow has costs too – particularly if time is valuable and you are in a hurry to get the job done.  It won’t surprise you to learn that promotion and prevention-minded people end up on opposite sides of this particular trade off, with promotion favoring speed and prevention preferring the slow-but-flawless route.

Are You Better at Getting There or Staying There?

Promotion-focused thinking leads to energetic and enthusiastic motivation in the shorter term, but can be less effective when it comes to long-term maintenance.  Prevention-focused thinking, on the other hand, is ideal for making sure your hard-earned gains don’t slip away.

Do You Get What You Want?

When it comes to negotiating, having a promotion focus will give you the clear upper-hand. Studies show that promotion-minded negotiators stay focused on their (ideal) price or pay targets, while the prevention-minded worry too much about a negotiation failure or impasse, leaving them more susceptible to less advantageous agreements.  When it comes to getting what you want, it pays to focus on what you have to gain, rather than what you might lose.

Armed with an understanding of promotion and prevention, so much of what we do (and what our coworkers do) makes a lot more sense.   Perhaps now you see why you’ve always been a risk-taker, or why you’ve always avoided risks like the plague.  It’s clear why you are uncomfortable with being too optimistic, or why you are known for your sunny outlook.   You get why some things have always been hard for you, while others came easily.

There’s no need to fight it – embrace your promotion- or prevention-mindedness!  After all, both kinds of motivation can bring you success, and each brings something of value (e.g., innovation, attention to detail) to your organization. Just remember to take with a grain of salt the well-meaning advice and input from others when it doesn’t feel right for you, focus on the strategies that play to your own strengths, and see the value in what your differently-motivated colleagues are bringing to the table.

The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010

December 21, 2010 by Heidi Grant Leave a Comment

The end of 2010 fast approaches, and I’m thrilled to have been asked by the editors of Psychology Today to write about the Top 10 psychology studies of the year.  I’ve focused on studies that I personally feel stand out, not only as examples of great science, but even more importantly, as examples of how the science of psychology can improve our lives.  Each study has a clear “take home” message, offering the reader an insight or a simple strategy they can use to reach their goals, strengthen their relationships, make better decisions, or become happier.   If you extract the wisdom from these ten studies and apply them in your own life, 2011 just might be a very good year.

1)  How to Break Bad Habits

If you are trying to stop smoking, swearing, or chewing your nails, you have probably tried the strategy of distracting yourself – taking your mind off whatever it is you are trying not to do – to break the habit.  You may also have realized by now that it doesn’t work.  Distraction is a great way to resist a passing temptation, but it turns out to be a terrible way to break a habit that has really taken hold.

That’s because habit-behaviors happen automatically – often, without our awareness.  So thinking about George Clooney isn’t going to stop me from biting my nails if I don’t realize I’m doing it in the first place.

What you need to do instead is focus on stopping the behavior before it starts (or, as psychologists tend to put it, you need to “inhibit” your bad behavior).  According to research by Jeffrey Quinn and his colleagues, the most effective strategy for breaking a bad habit is vigilant monitoring – focusing your attention on the unwanted behavior to make sure you don’t engage in it.  In other words, thinking to yourself “Don’t do it!” and watching out for slipups – the very opposite of distraction.   If you stick with it, the use of this strategy can inhibit the behavior completely over time, and you can be free of your bad habit for good.

J. Quinn, A. Pascoe, W. Wood, & D. Neal (2010) Can’t control yourself? Monitor those bad habits.   Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 499-511.

2) How to Make Everything Seem Easier

Most of us have grown accustomed to the idea that our moods, and even our judgments, can be influenced by unrelated experiences of sight and sound – we feel happier on sunny days, more relaxed when listening to certain kinds of music, and more likely to lose our tempers when it’s hot and humid.  But very few of us have even considered the possibility that our tactile experience – the sensations associated with the things we touch, might have this same power.

New research by Joshua Ackerman, Christopher Nocera, and John Bargh shows that the weight, texture, and hardness of the things we touch are, in fact, unconsciously factored into our decisions about things that have nothing to do with what we are touching.

For instance, we associate smoothness and roughness with ease and difficulty, respectively, as in expressions like “smooth sailing,” and “rough road ahead.” In one study, people who completed a puzzle with pieces that had been covered in sandpaper later described an interaction between two other individuals as more difficult and awkward than those whose puzzles had been smooth. (Tip:  Never try to buy a car or negotiate a raise while wearing a wool sweater.  Consider satin underpants instead.  Everything seems easy in satin underpants.)

J. Ackerman, C. Nocera, and J. Bargh (2010)  Incidental haptic sensations influence social judgments and decisions.  Science, 328, 1712- 1715.

3)  How To Manage Your Time Better

Good time management starts with figuring out what tasks you need to accomplish, and how long each will take.  The problem is, human beings are generally pretty lousy when it comes to estimating the time they will need to complete any task.  Psychologists refer to this as the planning fallacy, and it has the very real potential to screw up our plans and keep us from reaching our goals.

New research by Mario Weick and Ana Guinote shows that, somewhat ironically, people in positions of power are particularly poor planners.  That’s because feeling powerful tends to focus us on getting what we want, ignoring the potential obstacles that stand in our way.   The future plans of powerful people often involve “best-case scenarios,” which lead to far shorter time estimates than more realistic plans that take into account what might go wrong.

The good news is, you can learn to more accurately predict how long something will take and become a better planner, if you stop and consider potential obstacles, along with two other factors:  your own past experiences (i.e., how long did it take last time?), and all the steps or subcomponents that make up the task  (i.e., factoring in the time you’ll need for each part.)

M. Weick & A. Guinote (2010) How long will it take? Power biases time predictions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

4) How to Be Happier

Most of us tend to think that if we just had a bit more money we’d get more satisfaction out of life, but on the whole, this turns out not to be true.   So why doesn’t money make us happier?  New research by Jordi Quoidbach and colleagues suggests that the answer lies, at least in part, in how wealthier people lose touch with their ability to savor life’s pleasures.

Savoring is a way of increasing and prolonging our positive experiences.  Taking time to experience the subtle flavors in a piece of dark chocolate, imaging the fun you’ll have on an upcoming vacation (and leafing through your trip photos afterward), telling all your friends on Facebook about the hilarious movie you saw over the weekend – these are all acts of savoring, and they help us to squeeze every bit of joy out of the good things that happen to us.

Why, then, don’t wealthier people savor, if it feels so good?  It’s obviously not for a lack of things to savor.  The basic idea is that when you have the money to eat at fancy restaurants every night and buy designer clothes from chic boutiques, those experiences diminish the enjoyment you get out of the simpler, more everyday pleasures, like the smell of a steak sizzling on your backyard grill, or the bargain you got on the sweet little sundress from Target.

Create plans for how to inject more savoring into each day, and you will increase your happiness and well-being much more than (or even despite) your growing riches.  And if you’re riches aren’t actually growing, then savoring is still a great way to truly appreciate what you do have.

J. Quoidbach, E. Dunn, K. Petrides, & M. Mikolajczak (2010) Money giveth, money taketh away: The dual effect of wealth on happiness.  Psychological Science, 21, 759-763.

5) How to Have More Willpower

Do you have the willpower to get the job done, or have you found yourself giving in to temptations, distractions, and inaction when trying to reach your own goals?   If it’s the latter, you’re not alone.  But more importantly, you can do something about it.  New research by Mark Muraven shows that our capacity for self-control is surprisingly like a muscle that can be strengthened by regular exercise.

Do you have a sweet tooth?  Try giving up candy, even if weight-loss and cavity-prevention are not your goals.  Hate exerting yourself physically?  Go out and buy one of those handgrips you see the muscle men with at the gym – even if your goal is to pay your bills on time.  In one study, after two weeks of sweets-abstinence and handgripping, Muraven found that participants had significantly improved on a difficult concentration task that required lots of self-control.

Just by working your willpower muscle regularly, engaging in simple actions that require small amounts of self-control – like sitting up straight or making your bed each day – you can develop the self-control strength you’ll need to tackle all of your goals.

M. Muraven (2010) Building self-control strength: Practicing self-control leads to improved self-control performance.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 465-468.

6) How to Choose a Mate

What role does personality play in creating marital bliss? More specifically, is it your personality, your partner’s personality, or the similarity between the two that really matters when it comes to being happy in your marriage? A study of over 10,000 couples from three countries provides us with some answers.

Your own personality is in fact a powerful predictor of your marital satisfaction.  People who were more agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable reported being significantly happier with their spouse.  That spouse’s personality was also a reliable, though slightly less powerful, predictor of relationship satisfaction.  Keep these same traits – the “Big 3” for happiness in a marriage – in mind when you are seeking Mr. or Ms. Right.

Finally, there’s personality similarly – which, as it happens, doesn’t seem to matter at all. The extent to which married couples matched one another on the Big Five traits had no predictive power when it came to understanding why some couples are happy together and others not.   This is not to say that having similar goals or values isn’t important – just that having similar personalities doesn’t seem to be.

So if you are outgoing and your partner is shy, or if you are adventurous and your partner doesn’t really like to try new things, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a satisfying marriage.  Whether you are birds of a feather, or opposites that attracted, you are equally likely to live a long and happy life together.

Just try to be generally pleasant, responsible, and even-tempered, and find someone willing to do the same.

P. Dyrenforth, D. Kashy, M.B. Donnellan,  & R. Lucas  (2010) Predicting relationships and life satisfaction from personality in nationally representative samples from three countries: The relative importance of actor, partner, and similarity effects.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 690-702.

7) How to Feel More Powerful

In the animal kingdom, alphas signal their dominance through body movement and posture.  Human beings are no different.  The most powerful guy in the room is usually the one whose physical movements are most expansive – legs apart, leaning forward, arms spread wide while he gestures.  He’s the CEO who isn’t afraid to swing his feet up onto the conference room table, hands behind his head and elbows jutting outward, confident in his power to spread himself out however he damn well pleases.

The nervous, powerless person holds himself very differently – he makes himself physically as small as possible: shoulders hunched, feet together, hands in his lap or arms wrapped protectively across his chest.  He’s the guy in the corner who is hoping he won’t be called on, and often is barely noticed.

We adopt these poses unconsciously, and they are perceived (also unconsciously) by others as indictors of our status.  But a new set of studies by Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy, and Andy Yap reveals that the relationship between power and posing works in both directions.  In other words, holding powerful poses can actually make you more powerful.

In their studies, posing in “high power” positions not only created psychological and behavioral changes typically associated with powerful people, it created physiological changes characteristic of the powerful as well.   High power posers felt more powerful, were more willing to take risks, and experienced significant increases in testosterone along with decreases in cortisol (the body’s chemical response to stress.)

If you want more power – not just the appearance of power, but the genuine feeling of power – then spread your limbs wide, stand up straight, and lean into the conversation.   Carry yourself like the guy in charge, and in a matter of minutes your body will start to feel it, and you will start to believe it.

D. Carney, A. Cuddy, and A. Yap (2010) Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance.  Psychological Science, 21, 1363-1368.

8) How To Tell If He Loves You

“If he really loved me, then he would…”

Everyone who’s ever been in a relationship has had thoughts like this one.  If he loved me he would bring me flowers, or compliment me more often, or remember my birthday, or remember to take out the damn garbage.    We expect feelings of love to translate directly into loving behaviors, and often judge the quality and intensity of our partner’s feelings through their more tangible expressions.  When it comes to love, actions speak louder than words, right?

Well, not necessarily.  According to new research by psychologists Lara Kammrath and Johanna Peetz, romantic feelings like love, intimacy, and commitment reliably lead to some loving behaviors, but not others. In their studies, love predicted spontaneous, in-the-moment acts of kindness and generosity, like saying “I love you,” offering a back rub, or surprising your partner with a gourmet dinner – the kinds of loving actions that don’t require much in the way of forethought, planning, or memory.

On the other hand, love does a lousy job of predicting the kinds of “loving” behaviors that are harder to perform, often because they have to be maintained over longer periods of time (e.g., remembering to do household chores without being asked, being nice to one’s in-laws) or because there is a delay between the thought and the action (remembering to buy your wife a gift for her birthday next week, keeping a promise call home during your conference in Las Vegas.). When it comes to the harder stuff, it’s how conscientious you are, rather than how much in love you are, that really matters.

So if you’re trying to get a sense of how your partner really feels about you, the smaller, spontaneous acts of love that occur without much forethought are a much  better indicator of the depth of his love than whether or not he remembers your birthday or to take out the trash.

L. Kammrath & J. Peetz (2010) The limits of love: Predicting immediate vs. sustained caring behaviors in close relationships.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

9) How to Make It Easier to Cut Your Losses

Sometimes, we don’t know when to throw in the towel.   As a project unfolds, it becomes clear that things aren’t working out as planned, that it will cost too much or take too long, or that someone else will beat you to the punch.  But instead of moving on to new opportunities, we continue to devote our time, energy, and money to doomed projects (or even doomed relationships), digging a deeper hole rather than trying to climb our way out of it.

Why?  The most likely culprit is our overwhelming aversion to sunk costs – the resources that we’ve put into an endeavor that we can’t get back out. We worry far too much about what we’ll lose if we just move on, and not nearly enough about the costs of not moving on  – more wasted time and effort, and more missed opportunities.

But thanks to recent research by Daniel Molden and Chin Ming Hui, there is a simple way to be sure you are making the best decisions when your endeavor goes awry:  focus on what you have to gain, rather than what you have to lose.

Psychologists call this adopting a promotion focus. When Molden and Hui had participants think about their goals in terms of potential gains, they became more comfortable with accepting the losses they had to incur along the way.  When they adopted a prevention focus, on the other hand, and thought about their goals in terms of what they could lose if they didn’t succeed, they were much more sensitive to sunk costs.

If you make a deliberate effort to refocus yourself prior to making your decision, reflecting on what you have to gain by cutting your losses now, you’ll find it much easier to make the right choice.

D. Molden & C. Hui (2010) Promoting de-escalation of commitment: A regulatory focus perspective on sunk costs.  Psychological Science.

10)  How to Fight With Your Spouse

Having a satisfying, healthy relationship with your partner doesn’t mean never fighting – it means learning to fight well. But what is the best way for two people to cope with their anger, frustration, and hurt, without undermining their mutual happiness?

Thankfully, recent research by James McNulty and Michelle Russell provides the answer.  The best way to deal with conflict in a marriage, it turns out, depends on how serious or severe the problem is.  Did your spouse drink too much at the party last night, or is he drinking too much every night?  Did she splurge a little too much on clothes last month, or are her spending habits edging you closer and closer to bankruptcy?  Did he invite his mother to dinner without discussing it with you first, or did he invite his mother to live with you without discussing it first?  Little problems and big problems require very different approaches if you want to have a lasting, happy marriage.

When it comes to minor problems, direct fighting strategies – like placing blame on your spouse for their actions or expressing your anger – results in a loss of marital satisfaction over time.   Flying off the handle when he forgets to pick up the dry cleaning yet again, or when she spends a little too much money on a pricey pair of shoes, is going to take its toll on your happiness in the long run.  You really are better off letting the small stuff go.

In response to major problems, these same direct fighting strategies predict increased marital satisfaction!   Expressing your feelings, blaming your partner and demanding that they change their ways will lead to greater happiness when the conflict in question is something significant – something that if left unresolved could ultimately tear your relationship apart.  Issues involving addiction, financial stability, infidelity, child-rearing, and whether or not you live with your mother-in-law need to be addressed, even if it gets a little ugly.  Couples who battle it out over serious issues do a better job of tackling, and eventually resolving those issues, than those who swept big problems under the carpet.

J. McNulty & V.M. Russell (2010) When “negative” behaviors are positive: A contextual analysis of the long-term effects of problem-solving behaviors on changes in relationship satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 587-604.

The Motivational Secret to Great Negotiating

December 6, 2010 by Heidi Grant Leave a Comment

From my Fast Company blog:

Negotiating well is a powerful skill, and it doesn’t come naturally to most people. That’s because a negotiation is an experience that is rife with conflicting motivations.  When two parties haggle over price, the buyer needs to somehow reconcile his desire to pay the lowest possible price, with the knowledge that if he bids too low, the negotiation may break down and the seller could walk away.

These concerns are equally present when it comes to negotiations over salary – managers want to keep costs down, without losing their best people to better paying jobs.  And employees want to get the highest possible salary, without overplaying their hand and getting canned, or simply humiliated, in the process.

The key to a good outcome in any negotiation is a strong opening bid, since that bid is the jumping off point, as well as the frame of reference, for the negotiation that follows.  You are never going to end up paying less than your initial offer when purchasing a car, or making a bigger salary than you asked for when starting your new job. But a strong opening bid takes a certain amount of gutsiness – you need to overcome all those perfectly rational concerns you may have about taking things too far, only to end up embarrassing yourself and failing completely.

So how can you embrace risk, particularly when risk-taking doesn’t come to you naturally?  The answer is simple:  when you think about an upcoming negotiation, focus only on what you have to gain, and banish all thoughts of what you might lose.

Psychologists call this adopting a promotion focus.  When we think about our goals in terms of potential gains, we automatically (often without realizing it) become more comfortable with risk, and less sensitive to concerns about what could go wrong.  When we adopt a prevention focus, on the other hand, and think about our goals in terms of what we could lose if we don’t succeed, we become much more conservative and risk-averse.

These different ways of looking at the same goal (e.g., to pay the lowest price, to get the biggest raise) have profound effects on the way we approach negotiation.

In one study, psychologist Adam Galinksy and his colleagues divided 54 MBA students into pairs, and asked them to take part in a mock negotiation involving the sale of a pharmaceutical plant.  One student was assigned the role of “seller” and the other “buyer,” and both were given detailed information about the circumstances of the sale, including the fact that the “bargaining zone” would range from $17-25 million dollars.

Galinsky then manipulated the goal focus of the buyers.  Before the negotiation began, half were told to take a couple of minutes and write down “the negotiation behaviors and outcomes you hope to achieve… think about how you could promote these behaviors and outcomes,” giving the buyers a promotion focus.  The other half were told to write down the behaviors and outcomes “you seek to avoid” and how they “could prevent” them, giving those buyers a prevention focus.

Each pair began their negotiation with an opening bid from the buyer.  Promotion-minded buyers opened with a bid an average of nearly $4 million dollars less than prevention-minded buyers.  They were willing to take the greater risk and bid aggressively low, and it paid off in a big way.  In the end, promotion buyers purchased the plant for an average of $21.24 million, while prevention buyers paid $24.07 million.

Why? It turns out that approaching a goal with a promotion mindset helps a negotiator to stay focused on their (ideal) price target.   A prevention mindset, however, leads to too much worrying about a negotiation failure or impasse, leaving the buyer more susceptible to less advantageous agreements.

This is one of those things that’s worth taking a moment to think about – two negotiators, each armed with identical information, facing similar opponents, and yet one overpays by nearly $4 million dollars.  The only difference was that one negotiator was thinking about all that he could gain, while the other focused too much on what he had to lose.

So when you are preparing for your next negotiation, take a few moments to list all the ways in which you will benefit if you are successful.   Repeat them to yourself just before the negotiation begins.  Most importantly, shut out any thoughts about what could go wrong – just refuse to give them your attention.  With practice, this thought-training will become easier, and eventually automatic.  Risk-taking, believe it or not, can become second nature to you, if you think about your goals in the right way.

Many Heads Can Be Better Than One – Especially If They Belong to Women

October 11, 2010 by Heidi Grant Leave a Comment

From my Fast Company Blog:

In the modern workplace, almost all work of real consequence is carried about by small teams.   But even when very smart, very talented people are assigned to work together on a project, it’s clear that the resulting team can be a complete disaster.   Sometimes it seems like teamwork can turn otherwise competent people into childish morons.  Would we be better off relying less on teams, and more on individuals going at it alone?

Not necessarily.  Teams can be smarter and more effective than the individuals who make up the team – the whole can indeed be bigger and better than just the sum of its parts, but only under the right circumstances.

A new study conducted by researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Union College shows that the collective intelligence of a small group working together uniquely predicts their performance across a wide variety of tasks.  In the study, nearly 700 people were placed in groups of 2 to 5, and their ability to solve problems as a team was found to strongly predict their subsequent success on tasks as diverse as visual puzzles, games, negotiations, and logical analysis.

The average intelligence of members (measured individually, rather than as a group) did not predict team performance at all, and that’s really important. In other words, simply having a couple of really smart people in the group didn’t necessarily make the group itself any smarter.

It turns out that the collective intelligence of the team will only meet or exceed its individual potential if the right kind of internal dynamics are in place.  The researchers found that what is needed for a group to be “smart” is effective coordination and communication, and that this is most likely to be the present in groups with members who were more socially sensitive.

When groups contained people who were particularly skilled when it comes to perceiving and responding to others’ emotions, they demonstrated greater collective intelligence, and superior performance again and again.  Not surprisingly, groups where one person dominated in conversation and decision-making were collectively less intelligent, and less effective.

So, how can you ensure that your team will be socially sensitive?  The answer is simple: Add more women.  Teams in the study that contained more women were significantly more socially sensitive, and consequently more intelligent, than the male-dominated teams.

If you don’t have the power to change the gender makeup of your teams, fear not.  Their collective intelligence can still develop and improve – through better, more sensitive means of working together, or better collaboration tools.  Create opportunities for team members to express their feelings, and for others to respond to them.   Encourage face-time whenever possible (emotions are difficult to read on the phone, and nearly impossible over email).  Cultivating a work environment  where team members experiences are acknowledged and understood will create teams that are smarter, happier, and far more successful.

Follow me on Twitter @hghalvorson

Are Satin Underpants the Secret to Success?

July 30, 2010 by Heidi Grant Leave a Comment

When you are deciding who to hire for a job, or who to go out on date with, what kinds of information influence your decision?  Do you consider his or her education and background?  Sure I do.  What about friendliness and social skill?  Of course.  And physical appearance?  You bet.

What about the kind of chair you happen to be sitting in while making your decision?  Or perhaps the kind of object you happen to be holding in your hand?   My chair? No – nothing like that could possibly be affecting my judgments, right?

Wrong.  Your sense of touch is influencing you a lot more than you realize.

Most of us have grown accustomed to the idea that our mood, and even our judgments, can be influenced by unrelated experiences of sight and sound – we feel happier on sunny days, more relaxed when listening to certain kinds of music, and more likely to lose our tempers when it’s hot and humid.  But very few of us have even considered the possibility that our tactile experience – the sensations associated with the things we touch, might have this same power.

New research shows that the weight, texture, and hardness of the things we touch are, in fact, unconsciously factored into our decisions about things that have nothing to do with what we are touching.   Potentially, every decision we make.

Let’s start with weight.  Heaviness is something that we usually associate with seriousness and importance.  Consider expressions like the “gravity of the situation,” the trouble “weighs heavily upon him,” or she is  “carefree and light-hearted.”  So what happens when we make a decision while we are holding something heavy?

In one study, people who held a clipboard that was nearly 10 times heavier than their peers rated a job candidate they were reviewing as much better overall, and as having displayed more serious interest in the position.  In a second study, heavy clipboard holders recommended allocating significantly more government funding to serious social issues (like pollution) than lighter clipboard holders.  So when we are holding something heavy, we see seriousness and importance in people and issues that we might not otherwise.

(Tip:  Perhaps if you want to make the best impression at an interview, you should start by asking your potential employer to please hang on to your set of encyclopedias, that you just happen to bring along, while you use the restroom.)

Next, the researchers examined the effects of texture.  We associate smoothness and roughness with ease and difficulty, respectively, as in expressions like “smooth sailing,” and “rough road ahead.”   Once again, the studies show that people unconsciously transfer their tactile experience of roughness to their interpersonal decisions.  For instance, people who completed a puzzle with pieces that had been covered in sandpaper later described an interaction between two other individuals as more difficult and awkward than those whose puzzles had been smooth.  In another study, feeling roughness led participants to negotiate poorly, offering their opponent a better deal than the smoothness-feelers offered, because they saw the bargaining task as more difficult.

(Tip:  Never try to buy a car or negotiate a raise while wearing a wool sweater.  Consider satin underpants instead.  Everything seems easy in satin underpants.)

Lastly, the researchers studied the effects of experiences of hardness and softness.  We often associate hardness with qualities like stability, rigidness, and strictness, and softness with flexibility and yielding.  Consider expressions like “an iron will” and she “melted like butter.”

As with weight and texture, hardness exerts an influence on our perceptions and behavior.  People who had earlier examined a hard piece of wood judged an employee interacting with his boss as more rigid and strict than did people who had examined a soft blanket instead.

The tactile experience doesn’t always have to come through your hands, either.  In a second study, the researchers found that sitting in a hard wooden chair (instead of a soft cushioned one) made participants adopt more rigid, less cooperative negotiation strategies.  Each person was told to make an initial offer for a new car (worth $16,000).  After their first offer was rejected, they were told to make a another.  Hard chair sitters’ second offer was, on average, $350 closer to their first offer than soft chair sitters – in other words, the hard chair sitters didn’t want to budge from what they had originally said the car was worth.  They had a feeling they should stick to their guns, completely unaware that this feeling was coming from their backside.  (Perhaps this is the origin of the expression “hardass”?)

(Tip:  When you want someone to grant your request, start out by making sure they are seated on something soft.  Or, perhaps, stroking a cat.)

In all seriousness, we are more strongly influenced by all of our senses in ways most of us fail to realize.  It’s worth taking the time to think not only about the sights and sounds and smells, but also the things you touch most frequently – the furniture in your home and workspace, your clothing, your bedding.   Would work seem easier with a lighter laptop?  Would your coworkers get along better with plush seats in the conference room?  You can make whatever you’re touching work to your best advantage.   Trust me, folks – this is hard science.

Getting A Good Deal

April 27, 2010 by Heidi Grant Leave a Comment

Why my husband keeps me away from the bargaining table.

All my life, I have been a terrible negotiator.  I overpaid for everything, even though I have long understood, in principle, how a negotiation should be conducted.  I know that you need to “drive a hard bargain” and “be willing to walk away from the table” if you want to get the best possible deal.  I just never seemed to be able to do it, ever.

It’s reached the point that my husband forbids me from speaking whenever we are negotiating the price of a car, a home, or even a used toaster at the flea market.  And while I wouldn’t usually take too kindly to being silenced, I have to admit that I see his point.  In a negotiation, I am the weakest link.

In the past, I’ve always chalked it up to one fundamental problem: I fervently and rigidly conform to the social norm of reciprocity – that kindness should be repaid with kindness.  Which sounds noble, but in my case it’s borderline dysfunctional.  For instance, if the salesman shaved $100 off the price of a car, I felt that we should reciprocate his nice gesture by buying it.  Somehow, the fact that the car remained overpriced by a few thousand dollars didn’t quite enter into it for me.

A recently published paper, however, has made me question this explanation, and realize that there may be more to my problem than just pathologically wanting to appear nice.

This set of studies showed that when people know that they are about to negotiate, they see that looming negotiation as either a threat or a challenge. People who see a negotiation as a threat experience greater stress, and they make less advantageous deals.  Their poor performance is caused primarily by the fact that stressed negotiators behave more passively, and are less likely to use tough tactics aimed at gaining leverage, compared to the hard-ballers who feel negotiation to be more of a challenge than a threat.

This makes so much sense to me.  My husband absolutely sees negotiating as a challenge. He believes he has the knowledge and the ability to succeed.  He looks forward to a good haggle.  I do not.  Reading this paper, I realized that I have always seen negotiations as threatening, believing that I lacked whatever abilities good bargainers have.  I believed I was doomed to fail, and just wanted it over with as quickly as possible.  Why prolong a stressful, threatening situation, when you can throw in the towel and move on?

This is, of course, ridiculous.  When I stop and really think about it, I see that I am perfectly capable of negotiating as well as the next guy.   There’s nothing wrong with me.  I’m not missing the bargaining gene.  I’ve just always believed I wasn’t good at negotiating, and saw it as threatening, without ever really questioning whether or not that was actually true.

So, what do you do if, like me, you see negotiations as threats and opportunities for failure? Well, the first step is to realize that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy – believing that you lack the ability to succeed pretty much guarantees that you won’t.  But now ask yourself, is it even true that I lack the ability to succeed in a negotiation? What do your fellow bargainers have that you don’ t have?  The answer is almost certainly: nothing.  They don’t have special abilities.  They just believe in themselves.  They believe they can drive the hard bargain.  That’s what matters.

So whether he likes it or not, I’m joining my husband in our next negotiation.  I see now that believing that I am a lousy negotiator has made that belief a reality, and I refuse to accept this lie any longer.   Wait and see – I am going to get a great deal on our next toaster.

K. O’Connor, J. Arnold, & A. Maurizio (2010) The prospect of negotiating: Stress, cognitive appraisal, and performance.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

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