Here’s a new negotiating tactic: enjoy a family-style meal with your counterpart before making your opening bid.
When people in a business negotiation share not just a meal but a plate, they collaborate better and reach deals faster, according to new research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
In the study, “Shared Plates, Shared Minds: Consuming from a Shared Plate Promotes Cooperation,” forthcoming in Psychological Science, Chicago Booth Professor Ayelet Fishbach and Cornell University’s Kaitlin Woolley, a Booth PhD student at the time of the research, asked: could the way a meal is served and consumed boost cooperation?
Sharing plates is customary in Chinese and Indian cultures, among others. Because the custom requires people to coordinate their physical actions, it might in turn prompt them to coordinate their negotiations.
To find out, they asked study participants, all strangers to one another, to pair off in a lab…
For the rest of the article, please visit https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181211163227.htm.
Last modified: June 12, 2019
