There once was a prison inmate nicknamed "Kentucky" who
surprised his counselor with his answer to this hypothetical
situation: What would you do if your landlord refused to
leave your apartment until you paid your overdue rent?
Kentucky's answer: "Kill him." Pressed to elaborate,
Kentucky explained that the landlord intended to kill him and
striking first was a clear case of self defense. No jury
would convict him.
So why was the landlord intending to kill him? "Because
that's what I'd 'a done if I'd been him."
Of course murder is what Kentucky would do. He was a
criminal, but Kentucky also revealed something rather
ordinary. He was committing an error every one of us commits
every day: he assumed other people were just like him, and
this blinded him to other possibilities, as it blinds us,
too.
How you ask?
Projecting your own preferences and intentions onto others
leads us to characterize our dealings with people in
win-lose terms, that is, that a favorable outcome for one
party necessarily results in an unfavorable outcome for the
other party. Researchers who study negotiating call this
fixed-sum reasoning, which means that if you combine the
bargaining outcomes for the two parties, you'll always get the
same total. If two people divide $100 through bargaining,
adding both shares will always equal $100. If two people
negotiate for an apple pie, no matter how they divide it,
their shares always add up to one pie.
What if one person doesn't like apple pie and really wants
the pie plate or the recipe? Such a preference would come as
a surprise to a pie lover afflicted with fixed-sum
reasoning who is accustomed to projecting his/her own
preferences onto others.
William Bottom, from Washington University in St. Louis,
recently demonstrated a surprising antidote for fixed-sum
reasoning: stereotyping. He conducted experiments in which
he encouraged fixed-sum reasoning in some students and
compared their bargaining outcomes to students he had
encouraged to stereotype their bargaining opponents.
He built into the experiment opportunities for
bargainers to gain substantial increases in outcomes over a
fixed-sum total, and he found that only the latter group of
students were able to discover them and agree to take
advantage of them.
Ordinarily we consider stereotyping to be a negative process
that leads to prejudice, but Bottom sees it as a beginning
for asking intelligent questions about differences between
yourself and others, questions that encourage searching for
the actual preferences of others. This questioning posture
stands in stark contrast to fixed-sum reasoning.
Consider this common business example: rent for retail space.
Given two parties, one the owner of a shopping center and the
other a retail shop owner searching for a location,
fixed-sum reasoning for rent would result in a certain
dollar amount, period. If it was too much, the retailer
would look elsewhere, and both parties would lose.
Now notice the change that occurs when both parties begin
with stereotypes of the other party. For example, a
stereotype that the property owner has excess money and is
looking for ways to assume risk to create the best possible
return, paired against a stereotype that the retailer is
small, poor, and operating on a close margin - that the
bankruptcy wolf is always stalking nearby, and excessive rent
could invite him in the door.
Of course these stereotypes may be wrong in specific cases,
but they may also be right. What if they lead each party to look for
unexpected preferences of the other party, preferences they
don't share? Perhaps the shopping center owner would like to
assume additional risk if it could lead to a greater return. Perhaps the retailer would be willing to reduce the
danger of failure if sales should be disappointing by sharing
some of the profits when sales are very good.
These preferences could lead to a rental agreement consisting
of a low base rent combined with a percentage of gross sales
over a threshold amount.
Stereotypes led to this outcome by replacing fixed-sum
reasoning with honest curiosity. Rather than: "Of course he
wants the same things I do," stereotypes lead to "I wonder if
he fits the typical pattern and really desires ________ above
all else? I think I'll investigate and find out."
Stereotyping is a thinking habit that can be very beneficial
when it is used in negotiating.
Reference: Bottom, William P., and Paul W. Paese (1997)
False Consensus, Stereotypic Cues, and the Perception of
Integrative Potential in Negotiation. Journal of Applied
Social Psychology, 27, 21, 1919-1940.
Business Practice Findings, by James Larsen, Ph.D.
A Cure for Fixed-Sum Reasoning
Researcher demonstrates a surprising antidote for fixed-sum reasoning.