RECIPROCAL DISCLOSURE (AKA “GIVE A LITTLE”)
There’s a branch of economics called game theory, which seeks to understand
the way we make decisions when multiple people are involved—how we
second-guess other people’s motives, and what we choose to do as a result. It
can feel like working through the moves of chess or dating—“if I do this, then
maybe they’ll do that, which means…oh, I probably shouldn’t do this after all.”
And advanced game theory proves what psychologists have suspected for years,
which is that reciprocity is very important to us as human beings.
To demonstrate this, economists use a famous game called the Prisoner’s
Dilemma, involving two partners-in-crime being held in separate prison cells.
These two “players” each need to decide whether to collaborate or to cheat,
without being able to communicate with each other. “Collaboration” means
sticking to their pre-agreed story, which would allow both players to get off with
a light sentence. “Cheating” means snitching on the other player in order to walk
completely free, while leaving the other player to serve a long sentence. The
game’s payoffs are constructed to encourage both players to cheat on the other,
to create an interesting dilemma for the players.
Researchers have staged the
game many thousands of times over the years, using different stories to explain
the same basic set of tradeoffs. And their results show that the classic “cheating”
solution is actually appealing only when the game is played just once. As soon
as the Prisoner’s Dilemma is set in more real-world terms—by allowing players
to interact more than once, with each person having a chance to adapt his or her
behavior to the other’s, as in a real relationship—researchers found that a very
different dominant strategy emerged:
reciprocity
, also known by economists as
“tit-for-tat.” That is, if you cheat this time, I’ll cheat next time; if you collaborate
this time, I’ll collaborate next time. Not exactly Mother Teresa, but not Gordon
Gekko, either.
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Neuroscientists examining brain scans of people playing Prisoner’s Dilemma
(and other similar games) have also seen evidence of our preference for
reciprocity. They found that when one player chose to cheat rather than
cooperate, it made the other player tense up and activated the part of his or her
brain that deals with conflict resolution and self-control. When a player chose to
cooperate, this activated the reward system in the other player’s brain. And when
they
both
cooperated, there was a happy buzz in both players’ brains. In other
words, reciprocity feels good.
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That’s why charities give out buttons and pencils when they’re trying to raise
funds. It’s why someone telling us some juicy gossip (“I heard that…”) is quite
likely to draw some nugget of information out of us (“Well,
I
heard…”). It’s one
reason that it can feel awful to say “I love you” to someone and be met only with
a smile rather than an “I
love you, too.” Reciprocity is a powerful force for
social harmony.
So how does this affect our ability to build rapport? Some years ago, I
discussed the importance of reciprocity with a group of partners from a private
equity firm. Their business involved buying underperforming companies and
turning them around, so they could resell the companies for more money some
years down the line. They appointed experienced executives to run the
companies they owned, and they wanted these executives to keep them in the
loop about all the issues they were wrestling with. And for that, they knew they
needed to build trust. But it was proving mighty hard.
It turned out that their
handpicked executives didn’t much feel like pouring their hearts out to the
owners, and the owners weren’t entirely sure why.
After speaking to some of their executives, I realized what was going on. The
executives didn’t really see the private equity guys as real people. In their eyes,
they were simply corporate overlords, to be avoided if possible, and certainly not
to be confided in. The private equity partners were shocked and disappointed.
But when I asked them what they’d shared with the executives of their
own
thoughts and concerns about work or life, they looked bemused. They were
certainly ready to spout advice or ideas. But talk about their own personal wor
ries with these executives? “Why on earth would we do that?” they asked.
Because, I said, they were expecting the executives to do exactly that. And it
wasn’t fair to expect something from others that they weren’t
prepared to do
themselves.
So, gradually, the private equity partners accepted the idea that showing a
little of themselves might encourage more openness from the executives. It was
new to them, but the results were quick and stark. One of them, Johan, was a
burly man who rarely spoke about his feelings, and he certainly didn’t relish the
idea of opening up about concerns in his professional life. But he decided that he
would feel comfortable talking about the worries he had about a construction
project on a beach house of his. It wasn’t particularly deep,
but it was a good
first step. The next time we met, Johan was beaming. “I was in the car with an
executive after a meeting, so I thought, ‘This is my chance,’ and I started talking
about the beach house. It was very surprising,” Johan said. “He started talking to
me about all sorts of things. We eventually did discuss how things were going at
the company, too. It’s the best discussion we’ve had.” Of course, it wasn’t the
beach house that tripped the switch; it was the fact that Johan was willing to
open up about something on his mind.
Arthur Aron, a psychology professor at Stony Brook University, wouldn’t
have been surprised to hear Johan’s story. His research has showed that less than
an hour of reciprocal disclosure is enough to create remarkable closeness
between strangers. On a scale of 1 to 7, hundreds
of volunteers rated their
“deepest” relationship as a 4.65 for closeness. After talking about their answers
to personal questions for forty-five minutes, random pairs rated their closeness
as 3.82—not all that much lower.
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The upshot: if you’re trying to build rapport,
be willing to reveal a little of yourself.
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