Eating a family-style meal may make you a better negotiator. Heres why

Eating a family-style meal may make you a better negotiator. Heres whyEating a family-style meal may make you a better negotiator. Heres whyI am not a sharer of food. Honestly, there is nothing scarier to me then when a friend says Lets get Tapas. I want a large big plate all to myself whether I am hangry or not. However, this lack of wanting to literally share a plate of food with people may be why I am not the best negotiator.According to new researchfrom the University of Chicago Booth School of Business our eating style can influence our collaboration and cooperation skills in a major way so if you are all about eating family-style, then you are probably a good negotiator.The study titled, Shared Plates, Shared Minds Consuming from a Shared Plate Promotes Cooperation forthcoming inPsychological Science, Chicago Booth Professor Ayelet Fishbach and Cornell Universitys Kaitlin Woolley, wrote, When people in a business negotiation share not just a meal but a plate, they collaborate b etter and reach deals faster.Negotiation chipsThe study welches conducted by asking participants who did not know each other to have chips and salsa with their partners. Half of the pairs received one bowl of chips and one bowl of salsa to share, while the others each had their own bowls.Then the teams were given a negotiation scenario in which one person in the pair was (randomly)assigned to act as management and the other as a union representative. They were asked to come to a wage agreement and were allotted 22 rounds of negotiations.An expensive union strike also came into play during the third round which was used to act as a catalyst for both sides to reach an agreement faster.Guess which teams did better? Those who shared chips and salsa averaged out at 9 days (the rounds represented days) to reach a deal while it was more like 13 days for the non-sharers on average. The researchers wrote the phenomenon of this was unrelated to how two people in a negotiating team felt about each other.Rather, what mattered was how well they coordinated their eating. They found similar results when they tried the experiment with teams of people that were friends as well.Even though technology allows for us to conduct meetings with teams spread out all over the world there is something about a team coming together for a meal that can really help them get to know each other and work more effectively.Basically, every meal that youre eating alone is a missed opportunity to connect to someone, says Fishbach. And every meal that involves food sharing fully utilizes the opportunity to create that social bond.

Asking more questions makes us likable, study finds

Asking mora questions makes us likable, study findsAsking more questions makes us likable, study findsHow do we make a favorable first impression in a conversation? Sometimes, we think getting noticed at a networking event means getting the last word or talking up ur accomplishments.But new research has found that to be remembered as likable in a conversation, you need to make the conversation engaging.And that means not making it all about you. In fact, not at all.A recent Harvard study found that people who asked questions were seen as more likable than people who spent time hogging the conversation and holding forth in a monologue.Whereas prior data demonstrate that people tend to talk about themselves, our results suggest this may not be an optimal strategy, researchers in the study wrote. We identify follow-up questions as an important behavioral indicator of responsiveness, and we find that asking a higher rate of follow-up questions reliably predicts partner liking.We like peo ple who ask questionsOur self-defeating instincts tell us to keep talking about our opinions, but the research found that the people who stopped to listen and follow-up were the real winners of the conversation.In one of the studies, the Harvard researchers got 430 participants to talk to each other one-on-one in instant messaging conversations. In each of the pairs, one of the participants was instructed to ask at least nine questions or at most four questions under the guise of getting to know one another. At the end of the 15-minute conversation, the question-responders rated the people who asked more questions as more responsive, and therefore, more likable than the conversation partners who asker fewer questions.Asking more questions works because it forces us to pay attention to our conversation partners and remain present. It shows that were curious, empathetic, and interested in the lives of others. Follow-up questions are particularly likely to increase liking because they require responsiveness from the question-asker, and signal responsiveness to the question-askers partner, researchers wrote.Interestingly, though, these findings change when you add an observer. In a separate study, researchers got participants to read the transcripts of 169 one-on-one conversations, and these third-party observers rated the people who asked fewer questions higher than the people who asked more questions. Researchers suggested that this is because follow-up questions matter more to the person in the conversation than to someone reading a transcript. In other words, you had to be there.Because a third-party observer is not present in the conversation by definition, none of the questions being asked can follow up on anything they have said, researchers said. These results provide converging evidence that people like question-askers because they perceive question-askers as more responsive (to them personally).Too many of us have tunnel vision and dont realize that a co nversations a two-way street. The Harvard study was drawing upon prior research that found that we like doctors who ask follow-up questions about their patients experience more than ones who dont. And in our personal lives, research has found that we are drawn to people who ask us questions about ourselves on our dates more than people who monologue about their accomplishments and success.Although most people do not anticipate the benefits of question-asking and do not ask enough questions, people would do well to learn that it doesnt hurt to ask, researchers concluded.Next time youre in a conversation, dont just talk- ask.

No BS Engineering Elephant Dung to Help African Farmers

No BS Engineering Elephant Dung to Help African Farmers No BS Engineering Elephant Dung to Help African Farmers No BS Engineering Elephant Dung to Help African FarmersBotswana is home to more than 130,000 African elephants, more than all other African countriescombined. Unfortunately, those elephants have begun exploring beyond the national parks, encroaching into areas where Botswanans live. This is a problem for people, since elephants that encounter human platzsettlements fight with livestock for water and raid crops at night. Angry farmers will set traps or tip off poachers to the locations of elephants.My teammates in the International Development Design Summit were each from different villages in Botswana. After a brainstorming session to identify the problems, we proposed developing a device for farmers to manufacture their own elephant repellent. We started with information from a local non-governmental organization called Ecoexist and found that elephants are afraid of fire, smoke, bees, and electricity. We knew that electric fences are too expensive for most small farmers and bedrngnis culturally suitable to protect ranchers water points due to the practice of free range livestock in Botswana.The bulk of the briquettes is elephant dung found near villages. The paint can protects the burning briquettes from the rain. Photo Engineering for ChangeMy team, composed of three locals and myself, got to work testing recipes for what we call a chili briquette. When burned, the smoke from the briquettes can turn away unwanted elephants. The bulk of the briquette is elephant dung itself, which is easily found close to villages where people gather firewood. The second ingredient gives the smoke an extra elephant-repelling kick chili peppers. Cooked sorghum porridge, a common breakfast food, was used as a binding agent. After conducting anwender research, our team identified a need for the chili briquettes during the rainy season when farmers plow and the elephan ts come to eat the crops. Knowing this, we designed a mbaula (metal stove) out of a paint can with a lid for keeping the rain off the burning briquette.Read More Spray-On Antenna Could Signal the Future of WirelessAfter testing the burning bricks, we identified a recipe that makes strong, irritating chili smoke and burns slowly to last all night. The chili briquettes use a ratio of 21 elephant dung to chili and a ratio of 201 elephant dung to soft porridge. The overall recipe is 20101 dung to chili to porridge. This contains the right amount of chili to produce strong-smelling, irritating chili smoke, and the right amount of fuel and moisture in the chili bricks for them to dry quickly and to burn for a long time. According to the farmers who have tested bricks so far, five nights of continuous burning are enough for elephants to change their corridors and stay away from the fields.The chili briquettes are such a cheap and simple solution theyve generated a high demand for a busines s to make and sell them to farmers and ranchers. My team used sketch-modeling to design and iterate a press mechanism that could produce enough force to compress the briquettes on a commercial scale.Importantly, my team members were not experts in engineering or design. But one goal of the International Development Design Summit is for participants to learn through trial and error. Accordingly, the first prototype we built was a wooden box that was hard to clean, made briquettes that were too small, and lacked the force to compress the briquettes properly.A metal press raises and lowers a heavy concrete lager to form the dung mixture in a removable mold.Our team split into two after creating the first prototype. I worked on the stove and tested briquette recipes while others began building a second press. That press was larger, made from metal, and had a handle that raised and lowered a heavy concrete block into a removable mold. Upon testing, we found that this prototype was too ex pensive and mechanically inefficient to produce affordable and well-compressed chili bricks. After the summit, many participants reported that they felt empowered to continue applying the design process to solve everyday problems. Two team members even agreed to continue developing the technology in their home villages of Kaputura and Rakops.There are now two new businesses in my teammates home villages of Kaputura and Rakops making and selling chili briquettes. The two innovation centers, established as part of the summit, will help the entrepreneurs with tools, design help, and business support as they scale up and protect many more elephants and humans from each other.Listen to ASME TechCast How Engineers Close Communication Gaps with Non-engineersAnna Libey is an Engineering for Change Research Fellow and an environmental engineer, with a focus on water and sanitation for international development. For more articles on in aller welt development visit www.engineeringforchange.org .