CHOCOLATE CAKE V. FRUIT–OR WHY GET EMOTIONAL DURING “RATIONAL” NEGOTIATIONS
We were listening to a great story this morning which described an interesting experiment.
In his book How We Decide, and in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Jonah Lehrer writes about an experiment by Stanford University professor Baba Shiv, who collected several dozen undergraduates and divided them into two groups.
In the WSJ article, Jonah writes: “One group was given a two-digit number to remember, while the second group was given a seven-digit number. Then they were told to walk down the hall, where they were presented with two different snack options: a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad.”
Here’s where the results get weird. The students with seven digits to remember were nearly twice as likely to choose the cake as students given two digits. The reason, according to Professor Shiv, is that those extra numbers took up valuable space in the brain — they were a “cognitive load” — making it that much harder to resist a decadent dessert. In other words, willpower is so weak, that all it takes is five extra bits of information before the brain starts to give in to temptation.”
More importantly, I think this also explains why emotions bubble up so regularly in negotiations. We might think about all of the information rationally and organize ourselves and be completely ready for the negotiation but–once we are at the table and keeping track of all of that important information (like memorizing at least 7 numbers) we are on cognitive overload–we have a hard time keeping down the “emotional” side of our brain. And our impulses, to respond inelegantly, to assume the worst, or to yell, are much more likely to rise to the surface.
