Negotiations

Today I got beaten down in negotiations. I think my key failure was I failed to frame the issue. If you fail to frame the assumptions then you are going to lose on the argument. Plus, I guess it is not always what reasonable for you but knowing what is reasonable for the other person.

Americans. So today was my first experience with Americans. Why surprised me most is the ease at which Americans live with the dicotomy of true and lies. Today we talked about success and failure. Psychology people attribute success to themselves (internally) and failure to events outside their control (externally). What our lecturer said today. When your boss askes you, its okay to blame it on external happenings, but you need to be aware of what internally you could have done better. This is just an example. American consider it okay to lie. They are comfortable acknowledging that lying is the best option; publically showing one face by privately having another. I from 10000 miles away knew this was happening, but it never occurred to me as to how blatant it is.

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."
- Stephen Grellet, 1773-1855 (French-born Quaker Minister)

People

I have three influence swimming around my head: poker, a Dale Carnegie book titled "How to wins friends and influence people, and a Neil Strauss book called "the game". All of these show me how people are not rational, and how people are strongly predisposed to certain behaviour. In poker (not that I'm a great poker player), there seem to be three kinds of people: bullies, the nuts, and the crazies. All of these stick to a flawed disposition. Bullies try too hard to push people around. They bet early in the play, and strongly...no one has 5 great hands in a row. The nuts wait until they know they have the best cards ie they'll wait until they have pocket aces. The crazies will just bet anything; they will come after you with nothing. All of these style are terrible and ultimately get beaten? why can't ppl evaluate and change? Is self awareness so hard? Are we are all like this? Is it just the degree that varies?

"How to win friends and influence ppl" is about what makes ppl tick. Its about what makes ppl feel important and special. The game is about picking up chicks and how to influence Dale Carnegies "feelings" to trick women into sex. Together they make up a strong tome on how to influence people. Dale Carnegie show what people really want, and Strauss shows how to manipulate that. The thought in this is that people are easily manipulated and how the smallest things can influence how we are perceived and how people react to us.

There is a very old social psychology study (harvard?)...can't be bothered finding the reference. Anyway, a subject is asked to come and interview a candidate. The researcher debriefs the subject in the lift on the way to meet the candidate. Because the researcher, has so much to carry, he asks the subject to hold his drink. Now get this; whether the subject liked and would hire the candidate in the following interview was significantly determined by the temperature of the drink he was asked to hold! A warm cup corresponded with the candidate having a "warm personality", and cold...well you gues the rest. Amazing! Secondly, another proven psychological bias, is that no one attributes this to the cup of coffee. No one says or will even consider that it was actually the cup of coffee/coke that made them decide who to hire.