Negotiation
Tactic

Give Your Negotiation Counterpart a Low Soft Chair

Change the body language of your counterpart to reduce their power.

Two people negotiation with one person sitting in a much smaller chair

Overview

Why should you give a low, soft chair to your counterpart?

  • Upward Angle. Your counterpart will look up at you. Research confirms that even white rice seems more powerful with an upward perspective (Van Rompay, De Vries, Bontekoe, & Tanja-Dijkstra, 2012). If you’re negotiating through video chat, perhaps you could achieve the same effect by tilting your camera upward.
  • Contracted Posture. Ideally, give them an awkward chair — small enough so that they need to cram into it. This posture triggers a biological response that weakens their power (Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010).
  • Flexible Negotiation. Why a soft chair? Because a rigid chair will extract rigid behavior. In one study, people who sat in hard chairs were more rigid while negotiating — their counteroffers were less flexible (Ackerman, Nocera, & Bargh, 2010). It seems weird, but refer to my book The Tangled Mind for the reasons behind this sensory confusion.

  • Ackerman, J. M., Nocera, C. C., & Bargh, J. A. (2010). Incidental haptic sensations influence social judgments and decisions. Science, 328(5986), 1712-1715.
  • Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J., & Yap, A. J. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological science, 21(10), 1363-1368.
  • Van Rompay, T. J., De Vries, P. W., Bontekoe, F., & Tanja-Dijkstra, K. (2012). Embodied product perception: Effects of verticality cues in advertising and packaging design on consumer impressions... Psychology & Marketing, 29(12), 919-928.